How much does a gas safety certificate cost?

There is no set price for a gas safety certificate, and HSE says so plainly: Gas Safe Register has no control over engineers' charges, and the advice is to get quotes from three different engineers. What does exist is a stack of published figures, and they agree more than you would expect. Everything below is one of those published numbers, with the source and the date it carries sitting next to it, so you can see where a quote you have been given actually falls.

How much does a gas safety certificate cost in 2026?

Between £60 and £90 for a typical property, with £80 published as the UK average. Checkatrade's cost guide gives that band for a property with one boiler and one other gas appliance, such as a hob or a gas fire, and MyBuilder's price guide lands on the same £60 to £90 while noting it can reach £100. The two disagree about extras: Checkatrade puts each additional appliance at £10 to £15, MyBuilder at £20 to £50. Both are ballpark trade figures rather than rate cards, which is why the spread tells you more than the midpoint does.

Read those as published averages, because that is what they are. Checkatrade calls its own numbers ballpark averages and sends you to a local tradesperson for a real quote. They are useful for one thing above all: telling you whether the figure in front of you is normal, high or improbably low for the job being described.

What do the prices look like by appliance count?

Appliance count is what the trade actually prices on, and some certificate firms publish their whole list rather than quoting per job. Below is one London and M25 firm's published domestic gas prices, read on 6 September 2026. It is a fixed-price operation working at volume, so it sits at the cheap end of the published ranges above. The shape of it is the useful part: a base covering the meter and the first appliance, then a flat rate for each one after that.

Nobody credible publishes a price per bedroom, so treat a table of costs by property size with care. Bedrooms matter only to the extent they come with appliances. A four-bed house heated by one combi is a cheaper visit than a two-bed flat with a boiler, a hob, an oven and a fire, and every published list here prices the appliances rather than the floor area.

How much for gas and electrical certificates together?

Roughly £110 to £340 for the pair, depending on whether you are reading fixed list prices or survey ranges, and the electrical report is the expensive half. An EICR takes far longer than a gas check, because every circuit is tested: Checkatrade prices it at £100 to £250 against £60 to £90 for the gas. The two also run on different clocks, which is the part that catches people out. The gas check is annual under regulation 36. In England the electrical inspection runs at intervals of no more than five years under regulation 3 of the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, unless the last report asks for it sooner. They coincide once every fifth year, so a bundle saves you a call-out rather than half the testing time.

What does the price include, and what is extra?

The engineer's time on the appliances named in the quote, and the record at the end of it. Nearly everything else is a separate line. The table below splits the two and gives you the question to ask before the visit is booked rather than after it.

Why do two quotes for the same job differ so much?

Because the published averages flatten five things that all move the price, and the property in front of the engineer sits somewhere different on each of them.

• Appliance count. Every publisher agrees this is the biggest factor. Each appliance is examined and recorded separately, so a boiler, hob and fire is roughly three times the work of a combi on its own.
• Region and local demand. Checkatrade notes prices are generally higher in London and the South East, and MyBuilder puts them higher in major cities. Remote properties can cost more too, because somebody has to drive there.
• Access. A visit that needs two attempts before anyone is in has cost the engineer a morning, and that shows up either as a no-access charge or in a higher price next time.
• Bundling. A check on its own carries the whole travel and admin cost. The same check while the engineer is already there servicing the boiler carries far less of it, which is why a bundled price beats two separate visits.
• Booked in against called out. A routine check slotted into a quiet week is priced differently from one squeezed between breakdowns in January, and a certificate needed by Friday is priced differently again.

What does the law actually require?

An annual check by a Gas Safe registered engineer, a record of it, and a copy to the tenant. Regulation 36(3)(a) of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 requires each relevant appliance and flue to be checked within 12 months of installation and at intervals of not more than 12 months since it was last checked. Regulation 36(4) requires the work to be done by a member of a class of persons approved by HSE, which in practice means Gas Safe registration. Regulation 36(6) requires a copy of the record to reach each existing tenant within 28 days of the check, and any new tenant before they occupy the premises. HSE says to keep the record for two years; regulation 36(3)(c) puts it as until there have been two further checks.

Regulation 36(3)(c) also lists what the record must contain, which is worth knowing because a scrappy record is not a valid one:

• The date the appliance or flue was checked.
• The address of the premises where it is installed.
• The name and address of the landlord, or the agent where appropriate.
• A description and the location of each appliance or flue checked.
• Any safety defect identified.
• Any remedial action taken.
• Confirmation that the check complies with regulation 36(9), which points at the regulation 26(9) examinations above.
• The name and signature of the individual who carried out the check.
• The registration number of that individual, or of their employer.

Two further points decide who pays and when. Regulation 36A, added in 2018, says a check completed within the two months ending on the deadline date is treated as having been made on the deadline date, so booking early does not cost you the rest of the year you have paid for. And regulation 36(10) says nothing done or agreed by the tenant counts towards the landlord discharging this duty, except as it relates to access. The duty, and so the bill, sits with the landlord. What the tenant owes is a way in.

How can you pay less without cutting corners?

By buying the engineer's travel once instead of twice, and by booking when the diary is open. None of the savings below involve a shorter check.

• Bundle with the annual service. Landlord Certificates Ltd lists the two-appliance check at £58 and the service at £75, and advertises both on one visit at £85. HSE's warning applies in the other direction too, so ask for both by name: buying a service does not get you a safety check.
• Book off-season. Winter is when engineers are working through no-heat calls, and a routine check competes with them for diary space. Spring and late summer are easier to fill and cheaper to book.
• Group several properties. Engineers and letting agents both do this. One run through four flats in the same postcode carries one lot of travel, and most firms will price it that way if you ask.
• Use the two-month window. Regulation 36A lets you have the check done up to two months early and keep the original deadline date, so you can take the appointment that suits rather than the only one left.
• Get three quotes, which is HSE's own advice, and compare what each one covers appliance by appliance rather than comparing headline numbers.

What does a suspiciously cheap check tell you?

Usually that fewer things are being checked than you think. The commonest reason a quote comes in far under the local norm is scope: a meter-only price against a three-appliance property, or a price that quietly excludes the fire nobody mentioned. Landlord Certificates Ltd's own list shows the gap plainly, at £40 for the meter alone and £68 with three appliances on it. So the first question is not why is this cheap, it is what exactly is in it. The second is whether the engineer is on the Gas Safe Register, which is free to check and takes a minute. A price that cannot carry registration, ACS reassessment every five years, insurance, a calibrated analyser and the van is either not the job you asked for or not being done properly, and a record for a check that did not really happen is worth nothing to you.

What does the engineer actually do, and how long does it take?

Around 30 to 60 minutes for a boiler and one or two other appliances, on Checkatrade's figure, with larger properties taking longer. In that time the engineer works the regulation 26(9) examinations on every appliance in scope: the effectiveness of the flue, the supply of combustion air, operating pressure or heat input, and safe operation, alongside the visible pipework, the ventilation and the safety devices, then writes all of it up. That is where the price goes, and it is why a ten-minute visit cannot produce the same document. Our companion guide on what is checked in a gas safety inspection walks the visit appliance by appliance.

One thing worth weighing when two quotes are level: how fast the record reaches you. Engineers who run their paperwork through Manifold complete the record on their phone at the property and send it while they are still parked outside, and a copy you have mislaid is findable in seconds rather than a fortnight of phone calls. The 28-day clock in regulation 36(6) runs whether or not anybody has typed the record up.