How much to charge for garage door spring replacement in 2026
Spring replacement is the most common repair in the garage door business, and the one most shops underprice. This guide is for owners. It covers what the market charges, why the typical price often loses money, and how to set a price from your own numbers.
What the market charges
- United States: $119 to $279 for a spring repair, with a median of about $200, across 26,000+ real quotes on Yelp (September 2026).
- Canada: roughly C$150 to C$300 nationally. At least one Calgary shop publishes C$380 to C$680 for a pair of springs.
Those prices tell you what customers are used to seeing. They do not tell you what the job costs you.
Why a $200 spring job often loses money
Costs moved and prices did not. The three largest door manufacturers raised prices 56% to 75% from 2020 to 2024, and opener surcharges and steel tariffs came after that. Google Ads leads for garage door repair now cost about $120 to $220 per booked job.
Do the simple math on a $200 job from a paid lead:
- Price: $200
- Springs at dealer cost: about $55
- Lead: about $150
- Left over: minus $5, before the truck, insurance, the tech's wage or your own pay.
The $200 price only works on repeat and referral customers. If most of your work comes from paid leads, you need a different number.
How to set your own spring price
A good price has two parts: labour at your real hourly rate, and parts at your cost plus a markup.
- Find your break-even hourly rate. Add up a year of costs (wages and payroll costs, trucks, rent, insurance, marketing, software, your own pay) and divide by the hours your techs actually sell. Our guide to the break-even labour rate walks through it, or run the free shop rate check.
- Add your profit. For a 15% net profit, divide break-even by 0.85.
- Set the task time. A standard torsion spring pair is about 1.0 hour on site.
- Mark up the parts. Cheap parts carry a bigger multiplier than expensive ones. A $55 spring pair at 3× is $165.
Example (a solo US owner-operator): $132,500 of yearly costs including owner pay, and 900 billable hours a year. Break-even is $147 an hour. With 15% profit the rate is $173. A spring pair at 1.0 hour is $173 of labour plus $165 of parts: $338. That is well above the $200 median, and it is what this business needs to stay open.
What a small change is worth: $50 more on 600 jobs a year is $30,000. For the owner above, that is almost a quarter of total costs.
Honest options raise the ticket, not the spring price
The largest national chain averages a little over $1,000 per ticket. It does not get there by charging $1,000 for the same spring. It gets there by offering choices. You can do the same thing honestly:
- Good: standard 10,000-cycle springs. A complete, safe repair.
- Better: 25,000-cycle springs and new cables.
- Best: 50,000-cycle springs, cables, sealed rollers and a tune-up.
Show the customer the years of life and the cost per year for each option. At 4 uses a day, a 10,000-cycle spring lasts about 7 years, and a 25,000-cycle spring about 17. The upgrade becomes a number the customer can check, not a sales pitch. For more on cycle ratings, see 10,000 vs 25,000 cycle springs.
Rules that protect your reputation
- The first option is always a complete, safe repair.
- Never invent failed parts.
- Put warranty terms in writing before work starts.
- No "today only" prices.
Let DoorBot do the math
DoorBot turns your costs into a full garage door price book, with 86 residential jobs priced from your own rate and parts costs, and builds good, better and best spring quotes with real spring sizes and years of life. Start with the free shop rate check, or try the full price book free for 14 days.
Sources: Yelp garage spring repair costs (September 2026); Elevarus garage door Google Ads benchmarks (May 2026); Firstline Garage on manufacturer price increases (2025); Owned and Operated interview with Tommy Mello (January 2026). Example numbers are assumptions for illustration.