What pest control actually costs, from the only rate cards anyone publishes
No private firm in Britain publishes a price list, which is why every UK average you can find is unsourced. Councils do publish theirs, so here are three of them side by side, and they disagree by two to one on the same job.
By The Pest GuyLast updated
The short answer
There is no national price for this, and the spread is wider than almost anyone expects.
Three councils, read on the same day, for the same rodent job: Hastings £62, Lancaster £91, Bury £105. The Direct Line survey of 270 councils puts the full national range at £10 to £283. That is a factor of nearly thirty, decided by your postcode.
And the headline is the less useful half. Lancaster's £91 includes up to five visits. Bury's £105 includes three, then charges £35 a visit. Hastings charges £129 for a mouse initial and £74 every time it comes back. The cheapest number in that list is not the cheapest job.
So the useful question is not what pest control costs. It is what your council charges, and what a private quote includes that the council price does not. Both are answerable, and the rest of this page is how.
Three published rate cards, side by side
Standard residential rates, read on 17 September 2026. These are schedules, not quotes.
| Job | Lancaster | Hastings | Bury |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rats | £91 for rats and mice together, including a £30 callout | £62 | £105 for rats and mice together |
| Mice | £91, as above | £129 initial visit, then £74 a revisit | £105, as above |
| Wasp nest | £64.50, additional nests £31.50 | £129 per nest | £70 per nest, £35 for another the same day |
| Fleas | £121 | £162 up to 6 rooms, £46 per extra room | £134 for a 1-3 bed, £198 for 4-6 |
| Bed bugs | £209 for a 2-bed, rising to £585 for a 5-bed | £233 up to 6 rooms, assessment free | £181 for a 1-3 bed, £256 for 4-6 |
Published residential fee schedules read on 17 September 2026: Lancaster City Council (schedule 2025-2026, page last updated 19 August 2026), Hastings Borough Council (effective 1 April 2026, prices include VAT) and Bury Council. Councils reset these annually, so treat every figure as dated rather than current.
Look along the wasp row. The same nest is £64.50 in Lancaster, £70 in Bury and £129 in Hastings. Nothing about a wasp nest changes at a district boundary. What changes is what the council decided to charge, and there is no mechanism making those numbers converge.
The rodent row is the one worth reading twice, because Hastings splits rats from mice and the other two do not. £62 for rats and £129 for mice, in the same town, for animals a treatment plan barely distinguishes. Which one you have is therefore worth settling before you ring anybody, and you can settle most of it off the droppings.
Wasps are the one job on this table where this site already has a longer answer, including the two cases where you should not be near the nest at all. The wasp nest page carries that, and the more important point on it: a UK nest is annual and never reused, so an old one in a loft is not a job at any price.
What the price actually buys, which nobody puts beside the price
A headline with no visit count next to it cannot be compared with anything.
| Council | What is included | Revisits and extras | On benefits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lancaster | Up to five visits: the treatment and four revisits. A £30 callout is inside the £91 | None to pay inside the five. Reoccurrence within a month is retreated free, up to the same maximum | Roughly half: £45.50 for rodents, £60.50 for fleas |
| Hastings | The initial visit. Fleas get the first revisit free where the officer's advice is followed | £74 each on mice. £68 if you decline treatment after a callout, plus a £52 invoice fee | Rats treated FREE. Mice £97, fleas £80, bed bugs £137 |
| Bury | Three visits on rodents, three on cockroaches, two on squirrels | £35 for each additional rodent visit. £53 if the technician cannot get in | Roughly half on Council Tax support: £54 rodents, £68 fleas, £91 bed bugs |
Run Hastings and Lancaster against each other on a mouse job. Hastings opens at £129 and bills £74 a revisit. Lancaster opens at £91 and bills nothing for the next four visits, and retreats free if it comes back within a month. Two revisits in and the cheaper-looking option is £277 against £91.
That is the arithmetic every cost guide skips, and it is skipped because the people writing them are selling the visit rather than the outcome. It is also the shape of the question to put to a private firm, which is further down this page.
The concession column is the one to read if money is tight. All three roughly halve the bill on benefits, and Hastings treats rats for nothing at all on it. Hastings lists what qualifies: Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit or Income Support, with proof no more than three months old. Nobody selling you a treatment will raise this.
A quarter of councils no longer do this at all
Before you plan around a council price, check there is one. Direct Line Home Insurance put a freedom of information request to UK and Northern Irish local authorities in January 2025 and got 270 usable replies, published on 9 April 2025. What it found:
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Councils treating rats and mice free of charge | 5% of the 270 that replied |
| Councils with no pest control service, or that have discontinued it | 24% |
| Fee where one is charged | £10 to £283 |
| Council pest callouts to UK homes in 2024 | 291,132, of which 91% were rodents |
Direct Line Home Insurance FOI research, published 9 April 2025. FOI to all UK and NI local authorities, January 2025; 270 usable replies. This is an insurer's research, not a government statistic.
Twenty-four per cent with no service, or one that has been discontinued. In a quarter of the country the council option does not exist, and the published rate cards above are from the three quarters where it still does.
The other number worth holding on to is five per cent, the councils still treating rats and mice free for everyone. It is small, and it is not nothing, and you will not find out which kind of area you live in without looking.
Why a private firm will not give you a number, and what to do about it
No private pest control firm in Britain publishes a rate card. Not one. That is worth sitting with, because it means every article promising you the average UK cost of pest control is built on nothing checkable, and almost all of them are published by someone who sells the callout or sells the lead.
I am not going to add another invented average to that pile. What I can do is hand you the only published numbers that exist and the questions that make a quote explain itself.
Take your own council's figure first, because it is public and it is a real price for real work in your actual area. Then put four questions to whoever is quoting, all of them lifted straight off the council schedules above:
- How many visits is that, and what does a revisit cost? The single biggest source of difference on the table above.
- Is proofing included, or extra? Blocking the way in is the part that decides whether this is over. A price that treats the animals and leaves the gap is a price for doing it again next year. Ask how high they intend to look, too, because mice reach roof level up a creeper.
- What happens if it comes back, and for how long? Lancaster retreats free inside a month. Ask what your quote does.
- Is there a fee if I decline the work?Hastings charges £68 for a callout where treatment is declined, and £52 to raise an invoice. A private firm may too, and you would rather know before the van arrives.
A quote that answers all four is a quote for a job. One that only gives you a headline is a quote for a visit, and those are not the same purchase.
About this resource
Every price on this page is a council's own published residential fee schedule, read on 17 September 2026: Lancaster City Council, Hastings Borough Council and Bury Council. The national range, the proportion of councils charging and the callout volumes come from Direct Line Home Insurance's freedom of information research to UK and Northern Irish authorities, published 9 April 2025, which is an insurer's research rather than a government statistic.
The honest limits, and there are three. These are schedules, not quotes: councils reset them annually, Hastings' runs from 1 April 2026, and none of them is a price for your job. Three councils are a sample chosen to show the spread, not a national average, and I have deliberately not calculated one from them. And there is no private-sector figure anywhere on this page, in either direction, because no firm publishes a rate card and every number I could find traced back to a site selling the work or the lead. The absence is the finding.
Before any of it matters, there is a prior question this page does not answer. Whether the bill is yours at all turns on your tenancy, your landlord's repairing obligations and where the pests are coming from, and it is the most useful page on this site. Read it before you pay anyone.
Common questions
How much does pest control cost in the UK?
There is no national price, and a "UK average" tells you nothing about your quote, because no private firm publishes a rate card for anyone to average. What can be checked is what councils publish. Read on 17 September 2026, Lancaster charged £91 for rats and mice, Bury £105, and Hastings £62 for rats but £129 for mice. The Direct Line FOI of 270 councils put the national range at £10 to £283. That is the honest answer: a spread of roughly four to one for the same job, decided by which side of a boundary you live on.
How much is pest control for rats or mice?
On the three published schedules read for this page, between £62 and £129 for the treatment, and that is before you ask what it includes. Lancaster bundles up to five visits into its £91. Bury gives three visits for £105 and charges £35 for each one after that. Hastings charges £129 for a mouse initial visit and £74 for every revisit. The cheapest headline in that list is not the cheapest job.
Can I get pest control for free?
Sometimes, and it is the money most people leave on the table. All three councils read for this page roughly halve the charge for residents on benefits, and Hastings treats rats free on the concessionary rate. The Direct Line FOI found 5% of the 270 councils that replied treat rats and mice free of charge for everyone. A firm quoting you has no reason to mention any of that. Check your own council before you accept a quote.
What do councils charge for pest control?
Whatever they have decided to, which is the point. The published schedules read for this page run from £62 to £129 for rodents and from £64.50 to £129 for a wasp nest. The Direct Line FOI puts the full national range at £10 to £283 and names Southampton at £283 as the highest. It also found 24% of responding councils have no pest control service at all, or have discontinued it, so in a quarter of the country the council price is not a price.
Why will nobody give me a price over the phone?
Because no private pest control firm in the UK publishes a rate card. That is not evasiveness on any one firm's part, it is how the trade works, and it is why every "average UK cost" article you can find is unsourced. It also means you are negotiating without a reference point, which is the problem this page is meant to solve: take your own council's published figure as the benchmark and make the quote explain itself against it.
Is pest control worth the money?
It depends entirely on whether the thing being treated is the problem or the symptom, which is why this site keeps saying find the way in. Paying a professional to kill the mice in your kitchen is worth it if the same visit finds and blocks the gap they came through. It is worth very little if it does not, because the next ones use the same gap. Judge the quote on what it does about the entry point, not on how many rodents it promises to remove.
How many visits should a treatment include?
More than one, and the published schedules show what is normal. Lancaster includes up to five, Bury three, Hastings sells them one at a time. A rodent job in particular is not a single visit: bait has to be taken, checked and replenished. A quote covering one visit with no revisit and no proofing is a cheaper number for a different, smaller job.
What should I ask before accepting a quote?
Four things, and all of them come straight off the council schedules. How many visits are included and what a revisit costs. Whether proofing, meaning blocking the way in, is in the price or extra. What happens if it comes back, and within what window. And whether there is a callout or invoice fee if you decline the work, because Hastings charges £68 and £52 for exactly that. A firm that answers all four plainly is quoting for the job; one that only gives you a headline is quoting for the visit.
Should I just do it myself?
For some things, yes, and this site says so on the pages where it is true. For others the honest answer is that an amateur product cannot legally or practically do what is needed. What decides it is not the price, it is whether the job needs a professional-only product or work at height, and whether you can find and close the entry point yourself. The cost only matters after that question is settled.