How much does an EICR cost, and what decides it?

An EICR is priced on time, and time is driven by circuits, so the honest answer is "it depends on the board, not the bedrooms". Most straightforward domestic reports land in the low hundreds of pounds; a one-bed flat with six circuits costs less than a five-bed house with two consumer units, whatever the postcode. Anyone quoting one flat price for every property, or a price that looks too good to be true, has usually decided in advance how little testing they intend to do.

What the price is actually made of

• A floor that covers the visit. Travel, setup, paperwork and the liability of signing a legal document exist whether the property has four circuits or forty. That is why very small properties don't get proportionally tiny prices.
• A per-circuit component. Every circuit on the schedule needs its details recorded and its tests run: continuity, insulation resistance, polarity, earth fault loop impedance, RCD operation where fitted. Some inspectors price this explicitly ("per circuit"); others fold it into a banded quote by property size, which is the same maths with rounder edges.
• Access and occupancy. Furniture over sockets, tenants needing power-down windows, boarded lofts. Empty properties are quicker, and some inspectors price them lower.
• Region and demand. London and the South East run higher, as with all trades.

What the price should include, and what to ask before booking

A written report with the full schedule of circuit details and test results, the schedule of inspection outcomes, and every defect recorded with its classification code (C1, C2, C3 or FI) and the regulation it offends. If the "report" on offer is one page and a tick, it is not an EICR in any meaningful sense.

What it deliberately excludes

Remedial work. An EICR is an inspection, not a repair visit. Defects found are priced and fixed separately, and a decent inspector quotes that work as its own job. Be wary of pricing structures where a suspiciously cheap inspection funds itself on the remedials it "finds": the inspection and the fix having separate prices, from an inspector willing to explain each code, is the honest arrangement.

Why the cheapest quote usually costs the most

Testing every circuit properly takes the time it takes. A price far below the local market only works if circuits are sampled thinly, tests skipped and recorded as limitations, or the paperwork rushed. A landlord who buys that report owns its gaps: the document is their legal evidence for five years, and an under-tested unsatisfactory-that-should-have-been costs far more than the £50 saved. Cheapest-wins is also a miserable market for good inspectors, which is why the ones with recommendations rarely bother competing on price alone.

For the trade: pricing it without apologising

Price the visit floor honestly, know your per-circuit time with your own instruments, and put the extent, limitations and exclusions in writing on the quote: the argument you avoid later is worth more than the line takes to write. Where the paperwork time shrinks, the economics move: if the schedule fills itself in as you test and the report is finished when the testing is, the same day fits more inspections at the same price, which is exactly the part Pascal was built to remove.