Pest Control profit margin benchmarks
The IRS reports what one-owner businesses filing Schedule C earn, by sector. Pest Control falls under Administrative and support services. For tax year 2023, 3,118,914 returns reported $114.4 billion in receipts, $17.9 billion in cost of sales and $24.2 billion in net income less deficit (the table gives thousands of dollars):
| Benchmark | Value |
|---|---|
| Gross margin | 84.3% |
| Net margin, owner pay included | 21.2% |
| Average receipts per return | $36,687 |
| Average net income per return | $7,769 |
The owner's own draw is not an expense on a Schedule C, so that net margin is mostly the owner's wage, not profit on top of it.
Where the money goes in pest control
Pest control is labor, chemicals and the truck. Plans are profitable when call-backs stay low and routes are dense.
Where pest control margin leaks, and how to win it back
- Too many free call-backs between visits
- Scattered routes
- Chemical waste from poor mixing
- Plans priced below the visit cost
- Specialty work quoted without an inspection
Ways pest control companies raise margin: sell plans, not one-time visits; build dense routes; limit free call-backs in the plan terms; inspect before quoting specialty work.
Check your pest control prices against the costs
The typical national prices from our sourced calculators are a check on whether your prices leave room for margin:
| Service | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Initial service | $225 | $150 to $300 a visit |
| Quarterly service | $200 | $100 to $300 a visit |
| Monthly service | $55 | $40 to $70 a visit |
| One-time general pest | $350 | $158 to $550 a job |
| Ants | $300 | $100 to $500 a job |
| Cockroaches | $338 | $100 to $550 a job |
Work out the margin on each line of your menu, not just the big jobs. The usual pest control menu: initial service; quarterly service; monthly service; one-time general pest; ants; cockroaches; mice or rats; bed bugs, whole home; termites; mosquitoes, season; rodent exclusion.
Overhead comes out of the margin before profit. In pest control it includes general liability insurance, which Insureon's customers who are pest control businesses pay an average of $117 a month for; commercial auto at $163 a month on the same figures.
Work out your own margin
Put one recent pest control job into the calculator above, or switch it to "My margin for the year" to set your year next to the IRS benchmark. A 50% markup is a 33% margin; the markup calculator shows the rest.
Sources
- IRS Statistics of Income: Nonfarm sole proprietorships, Table 2, income statements by industrial sector, tax year 2023, checked October 9, 2026
- IRS: SOI tax stats, nonfarm sole proprietorship statistics, checked October 9, 2026
- Insureon: Insurance cost for pest control businesses, checked October 9, 2026
- Today's Homeowner, pest control cost, checked October 8, 2026
- Fixr, cost to hire an exterminator, checked October 8, 2026
- HomeAdvisor, pest control cost, checked October 8, 2026
- This Old House, pest control cost, checked October 8, 2026
- Bob Vila, pest control cost, checked October 8, 2026
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (state and national files), checked October 8, 2026
- US Census Bureau, 2020 ZIP Code Tabulation Area to county relationship file, checked October 8, 2026
Last checked October 9, 2026. This page is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and differ by state and city, so confirm with the agency named before you act.