What it costs
What a London locksmith should actually cost
Realistic price bands for lockouts, lock changes and emergency callouts in London — and the one phone question that stops a £90 job becoming a £600 one.
There is no official price list for locksmithing in the United Kingdom, because there is no regulator to publish one. Prices are set by each firm, and they vary by hour, by day, by borough and by how desperate you sound.
So treat everything below as indicative bands, not quotes. The value is in knowing roughly where a fair figure sits, so you can tell when a number is out of the ordinary.
New: we also read the websites of 32 London locksmith businesses to see how much of this they publish before you call. Most do not say whether their price includes VAT, and very few say what changes at night. The sources, the method and the data are in what London locksmiths publish about their prices.
How to use this page: find the row that matches your job, then ring two or three firms and ask for a total. If the quotes cluster near the band, you are in normal territory. If one is wildly above, you have learned something useful about that firm.
What London firms advertise for a standard lockout
13 of the firms we read publish a price for getting you back into a house. They are different kinds of claim, so we do not pool them into an average:
- 7 advertise a “from” price, from £39 to £95, with a middle value of £75. A “from” price is a floor, not a quote.
- 6 advertise a range. The low ends run from £59 to £80 and the high ends from £89 to £150.
- 3 publish a separate, higher night or weekend figure, and 1 states that the price is the same at any hour. The others do not publish a separate night figure for a lockout.
VAT matters here: only some of these figures say whether VAT is included, so the rows are not like for like. Read the VAT column before comparing two firms. What a firm advertises is not what a customer pays: use it to judge whether a quote is in the normal range, then ask for one total, with VAT, at tonight’s hour.
| Business (links to the source page) | Standard lockout, as written | Night or weekend, as written | VAT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Hour Emergency Locksmith London | Emergency Door Opening (non-destructive): £75-£99 | after hours/weekend: £90-£120 | Excluded (VAT added) |
| 247 London Locksmith | Gain entry: £75 + | Gain entry: £110 + | Not stated |
| AMZ Locksmith Ltd | Standard Daytime Lockout: £80-£130 | No separate lockout figure | Not stated |
| Auto Pro Locksmith | House lockout £59–£89 plus VAT | Stated: “the same fixed pricing applies 24/7” | Excluded (VAT added) |
| Bullard Locks | £70-£135 | No separate lockout figure | Not stated |
| City Locksmith London | From £79 | No separate lockout figure | Stated both ways |
| Keytek Locksmiths London | Emergency entry / lockout From £95 | No separate lockout figure | Excluded (VAT added) |
| Locksmith1 | From £39 Its pricing page lists the lockout as starting at £39 with a ceiling of £250+ and says all prices are starting rates. |
No separate lockout figure | Included |
| London Locksmith Pro Ltd | Emergency Lockout from £65 | No separate lockout figure | Not stated |
| London Locksmith Services | Lock Out From £79 | No separate lockout figure | Not stated |
| Prime Alert Locksmith | typically starts at £55 on the low end | No separate lockout figure | Not stated |
| SMS Warehouses Ltd | Emergency Lockout: £70 - £150 | No separate lockout figure | Not stated |
| The East London Locksmith | Emergency Lockout (Daytime): £70 – £120 | Emergency Lockout (Night / Late Hours): £120 – £180 | Not stated |
Read between 29 August and 3 October 2026 2026; each firm’s own page is linked. Prices change without notice.
Where these numbers come from
Fair question, and most pages that publish locksmith prices never answer it.
What we did. These bands are synthesised from publicly advertised prices on UK locksmith websites, published price lists and cost guides, cross-checked against the Master Locksmiths Association’s own reporting on overcharging cases and the price points it identifies. Where sources disagreed we widened the band rather than picking a midpoint.
What we did not do. We have not run our own survey. Nobody has phoned forty firms and recorded what they quoted. So treat these as a reading of the public market, not a measurement of it.
Why we are telling you. A number with no stated method is just a confident guess with a table around it. You should discount anyone — us included — who publishes prices without saying where they came from.
What would be better. A proper sampled survey, with the number of firms, the date, and the spread published alongside. That is on our list to build. When it exists, this page will be rewritten around real observations and this section will say so.
The bands
| Job | Typical daytime, weekday | Typical night, Sunday or bank holiday |
|---|---|---|
| Simple lockout, opened without damage | roughly £65–£150 | roughly £120–£250 |
| Lockout needing the lock drilled and replaced | roughly £120–£250 including a basic lock | roughly £180–£350+ |
| Euro cylinder swapped for a decent anti-snap one | roughly £90–£180 fitted | higher, plus the night premium |
| Mortice lock replaced (BS 3621 rated) | roughly £120–£220 fitted | higher, plus the night premium |
| uPVC multipoint mechanism repair or replacement | roughly £150–£350+ | considerably more |
Central London and same-hour attendance push toward the top of each band. A booked morning appointment in an outer borough sits near the bottom.
An evening or a Saturday sits between the two columns, not in the right-hand one. Those hours carry a premium over a weekday daytime rate, but not the full small-hours premium. The price check splits the three separately and will give you the middle band.
Why the night price is so much higher — and when it is justified
Someone is getting out of bed, driving across a city, and carrying stock. A genuine premium of somewhere between fifty and a hundred percent over the daytime rate is normal and fair.
What is not normal is a night rate three or four times the daytime rate, appearing only after the van arrives. That is not a premium, it is a captive audience.
Practical consequence: if you are safe, warm and it is 9pm, ask what a booked appointment tomorrow morning would cost. Hearing both numbers in the same call is often the cheapest thirty seconds of your week.
The single question that protects you
Ask it before anyone gets in a van:
“What is the total I will pay, including callout, labour, parts and VAT — and can you text me that figure now?”
Note every part of that sentence:
- Total, not “the callout is £X”. The callout fee is the smallest number in the transaction and it is the one they will happily give you.
- Including parts. “Plus parts” is where a £15 cylinder becomes £180.
- Including VAT. A firm that is VAT-registered and quotes without it has added twenty percent to your bill in silence.
- Text me that figure. A written quote is very hard to argue with later, and asking for one immediately separates the professionals from the rest.
If they will not put a number in writing before travelling, ring someone else.
What actually drives the price up
Destructive versus non-destructive entry. Most standard UK domestic locks can be opened without damage by a competent locksmith. If the lock is drilled, you are also buying a replacement lock and paying to fit it. Ask on the phone whether they expect to open it non-destructively — and ask again on the doorstep, before tools come out.
The lock they fit. A basic euro cylinder is a few pounds. A properly rated anti-snap cylinder — look for TS007 3-star, or Sold Secure Diamond — costs meaningfully more and is worth having, because cheap cylinders are vulnerable to snapping. Fine to pay for the good one. Not fine to be charged for the good one and given the cheap one. Ask to keep the packaging.
Insurance-grade mortice locks. Many home insurance policies require a BS 3621 rated mortice deadlock on final exit doors. Fitting one is a bigger job than swapping a cylinder, and priced accordingly.
Where you are, and when. London road charges, parking, and the hour of the night all end up in the number. Reasonable, if disclosed up front — and there are two separate schemes people constantly confuse.
| Charge | Amount | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Congestion Charge | £18/day | Central zone only. Mon–Fri 07:00–18:00, Sat/Sun/bank holidays 12:00–18:00. Nothing outside those hours. |
| ULEZ | £12.50/day | London-wide, 24 hours. Only for vehicles that fail the emissions standard — most modern vans are compliant and pay nothing. |
Three things worth knowing before one of these lands on your invoice:
- At 3am there is no Congestion Charge. It stops at 18:00 and restarts at 07:00. An £18 congestion line on an overnight lockout needs explaining.
- ULEZ is not automatic. It applies only to non-compliant vehicles. Ask whether their van is compliant.
- Both are per-vehicle, per-day — not per-job. A locksmith doing five jobs in the zone that day pays the charge once. Billing it in full to all five customers collects it five times over.
Worst case for a non-compliant vehicle in the central zone on a weekday afternoon is £30.50. Both schemes are suspended on Christmas Day. TfL publishes both here. Figures checked 11 September 2026 — the Congestion Charge rose from £15 to £18 on 2 January 2026, so older guides quoting £15 are out of date.
Ways to pay less without taking a risk
- Wait until morning if you have somewhere safe to be. This is the single biggest saving available.
- Ring three firms. Ten minutes of calls on a lock change routinely moves the price by a third.
- Book, do not emergency-call. “Can you come tomorrow between nine and twelve?” is a different product from “come now”.
- Ask what the lock costs separately. A firm confident in its pricing will tell you the part and the labour as two numbers.
- Pay by card. Card payments leave a record, and paying by credit card can bring additional protection on larger amounts. Cash on the doorstep leaves you with nothing to dispute.
If you think you have been overcharged
Do not pay in cash under pressure, and do not sign a blank job sheet.
Under UK consumer law, a service must be carried out with reasonable care and skill, and where no price was agreed in advance you are required to pay only a reasonable price — not whatever appears on the invoice. That is the lever.
Keep the invoice, the parts, any text messages, and photographs of the work. Then get proper consumer advice from Citizens Advice, who can also refer matters to Trading Standards. If you paid by card, contact your bank about a chargeback or a Section 75 claim promptly.
The short version
Daytime simple lockout: think under about £150. Night: think under about £250. Anything far beyond that needs an explanation you understand before the work starts — not after. And the sentence that saves the money is always the same one: what is the total, including everything, in writing, before you set off?