How Much Revenue Should Your HVAC Technician Generate? 2026 Benchmarks

Most HVAC business owners have a gut feel for whether a technician is "pulling their weight." But gut feel isn't a number — and without a number, you can't tell the difference between a performance problem and an operations problem.

Revenue per technician is one of the clearest financial signals available to a small HVAC business. It tells you whether your labor investment is translating into output, and whether your team structure is built to scale. The challenge is that most owners either don't track it formally or don't know what range they should be in.

Here's what the data looks like in 2026 — and how to read it for your own business.

The 2026 Benchmark Tiers

The HVAC industry doesn't produce one clean number for revenue per technician because the range is genuinely wide. Role type, experience level, service mix, and whether a technician is trained to sell all affect the output significantly.

That said, the industry has settled into a reasonably consistent tiered framework:

Below average: under $180,000 annually A technician generating less than $180k per year is a signal worth investigating. It may reflect inefficient dispatch, a heavy proportion of low-ticket work, or a skills gap — but it can also indicate an onboarding issue, territory mismatch, or someone who isn't yet comfortable identifying additional service opportunities at the job site.

Average: $180,000 – $250,000 annually This is the baseline range for a competent residential service technician doing standard maintenance and repair work. If you're in this band, your technician is carrying their weight — but there's meaningful headroom above this level with the right support and training.

High-performing: $250,000 – $450,000 annually Well-run HVAC companies in 2026 are targeting this range as their standard for experienced technicians. Getting here typically requires a combination of efficient dispatching, flat-rate pricing, and technicians who can identify and communicate additional repair or replacement opportunities without it feeling like a sales pitch.

Top performer (selling technician): $500,000 – $1,000,000+ This tier belongs to technicians who are genuinely skilled at presenting system replacements, upgrades, and maintenance agreements at the point of service. These aren't just technical specialists — they're trusted advisors who happen to carry tools. The revenue ceiling here is real: top-performing selling technicians at well-run companies have been documented generating over $2 million annually.

The 5x Compensation Rule

A useful back-of-envelope check: a technician should generally be generating at least five times their total compensation in annual revenue.

A tech earning $70,000 in total comp should be producing somewhere in the $350,000–$400,000 range. If the ratio is significantly below 5x, something in the equation — pricing, dispatch efficiency, ticket size, or the technician's service approach — needs attention.

The industry benchmark for wages as a percentage of revenue sits at 14–20%. Total fully loaded labor costs (wages, taxes, benefits) should stay under 22% of service revenue to maintain healthy margins.

Why the Range Is So Wide

The gap between a $180k technician and a $900k technician isn't entirely about individual skill. Several structural factors shape where a technician lands:

Service vs. installation split. Service technicians typically generate lower gross revenue than installation crews, but often at higher margins. If your revenue-per-tech number looks low, check what proportion of your volume is service versus install before drawing conclusions.

Dispatch efficiency. Drive time that isn't billable directly reduces output. Technicians spending two hours a day in transit between jobs will structurally underperform technicians with tighter routing — regardless of what they do at the job site.

Ticket size and pricing model. The average HVAC repair ticket reached $1,205 in 2025, up 47% from 2021. Businesses still pricing off older models are leaving revenue on the table. Flat-rate pricing, properly implemented, increases average ticket size and removes the ceiling on what a single service call can generate.

Maintenance agreement ratio. Technicians with a higher proportion of customers on maintenance agreements generate more stable, predictable recurring revenue. Agreement holders also convert at higher rates for repairs and replacements — they already trust the technician standing in front of them.

Selling skills. This is the biggest differentiator between the average tier and the top performer tier. A technician who can walk a homeowner through why a 14-year-old system with a failing compressor is a replacement candidate — not a repair candidate — will consistently generate more revenue per call than one who fixes the immediate problem and moves on.

What This Means for a Small HVAC Business

If you're running a team of four to eight technicians, even modest improvement in revenue per tech compounds quickly. Closing the gap from $200k to $300k per technician across a team of five is an additional $500,000 in annual revenue — without adding headcount.

The levers available to you are operational (dispatch, routing, pricing) and human (training, hiring for selling ability, setting clear performance expectations). Most businesses underinvest in the human side, partly because it's harder to measure and partly because the hiring process doesn't surface whether a candidate has the instincts to operate at the higher tier.

That's worth thinking about carefully — not just for the technicians already on your team, but for every technician you bring on from here forward.

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Read next: Why Top-Performing HVAC Technicians Generate 4x More Revenue — and How to Hire for It