Whether it’s the pitter-patter of tiny feet in the attic or rusty stains on your bedsheets that tip you off, you’ll know when it’s time to call an exterminator. But how much should you expect to spend? The national average exterminator cost for a one-time visit is about $390, but prices range from $250 to $525.
Some pests — termites and bed bugs, for example — may require ongoing treatments to eliminate the problem fully and keep it from coming back. The more frequent the service, the less each visit will cost if you sign up for a regular service contract.
For example:
- Monthly pest control treatments typically cost $40 to $70 per visit.
- Quarterly pest control treatments are about $110 to $250 per visit
- Annual pest control treatments are closer to the one-time treatment exterminator cost at about $250 to $475 per visit.
The type of pest, the severity of the infestation, and the method of extermination are the biggest factors in how much it will cost to get rid of the pests plaguing your home. We’ll cover all the varying costs of pest control in this guide.
*Note: The size of your home might indirectly affect the cost of pest control, but it isn’t a major factor. The size of the infestation itself is far more important when pricing extermination.
How Much Does an Exterminator Cost?
- National average cost for one-time visit: $390
- Typical price range for one-time visit: $250 – $525
- Extreme low end cost for one-time visit: $100
- Extreme high end cost for one-time visit: $5,250
The typical price range of $250 to $525 for a one-time exterminator visit is only accurate for some pest problems. Some pests are much easier to get rid of than others, so the treatments to exterminate them will cost less. Other pests are more challenging, and those treatments will cost more.
On the low end, you might only pay $100 for a one-time visit if you’re dealing with a small, easy to locate infestation of pests such as ants, cockroaches, fleas, spiders, bees, or wasps. Treatment for these could be as simple as spraying pesticides in a few key areas in and around the home.
On the high end, you might spend as much as $5,250 if you have an out-of-control problem with troublesome pests like termites or bed bugs. Severe pest problems like these might require fumigation or another full-home extermination treatment that goes beyond a simple spray.
Cost of Pest Control for Recurring Treatments
Most exterminators offer regular service contracts for homeowners with serious pest problems. Service plans can include options for monthly, quarterly, or annual treatments.
After the initial visit and inspection, subsequent visits will cost less. The more often the exterminator comes to your home, the less you’ll spend on each individual visit.
FREQUENCY OF PEST CONTROL VISITS | TYPICAL COST PER TREATMENT |
Initial visit | $85 – $190 |
Monthly | $40 – $70 |
Quarterly | $110 – $250 |
Annual | $250 – $475 |
Initial Pest Control Visit
The first time an exterminator visits your home, he or she will conduct an inspection to figure out what type of pest you’re dealing with and the size and location of the infestation. Because of the extra work that goes into this initial visit, it will cost more than subsequent treatments, even if you’ve already chosen a recurring service plan.
Initial visits usually cost between $85 and $190 depending on the treatment the exterminator decides to use after their inspection.
Pro Tip: An initial visit for a recurring service plan is not the same as a one-time visit. One-time visits cost significantly more. The exterminator may come out for a one-time visit and realize upon inspection that your home needs regular service. In this case, your exterminator will usually adjust the price from their one-time visit rate to their initial visit rate once you sign a contract.
Monthly Pest Control Visits
A serious infestation of pests that reproduce quickly and in high volume might require monthly treatments to get the problem under control and prevent it from coming back in the future. Monthly treatments usually last only until the exterminator is confident the infestation is gone for good.
How long you need monthly treatments will depend on the type of pest and the severity of the infestation. Most often, you’ll need monthly treatments for no more than 6 months.
Many exterminators offer bi-annual contracts for monthly service, which means you only commit to 6 months at a time instead of a full year.
Under a monthly service contract, you can expect to pay $40 to $70 per treatment (after the initial visit).
Quarterly Pest Control Visits
Most pest control specialists will recommend quarterly visits for pest prevention in a typical home. The pesticides that exterminators use last for a few months, so getting a new treatment every three months (every quarter of the year) should eliminate any current pest problem and prevent other infestations from happening in the first place.
Quarterly pest control treatments are also good because they take care of all seasonal pests. Some pests reproduce in spring, some in summer, some in fall, and some in winter. You can keep all the new waves of pests at bay each year with a fresh application of pesticides at the beginning of every season.
When you sign up for quarterly service, you usually sign a year-long contract that ensures at least four visits at $110 to $250 each. Some exterminators offer free visits if you find pests in your home in between the scheduled quarterly treatments.
Annual Pest Control Visits
Annual pest control visits from an exterminator are the bare minimum you can do if you want to prevent major pest infestations instead of dealing with them after they arise. Because these visits are so infrequent, they usually include an inspection to check for any new pest problems that developed over the past year.
Not all exterminators will offer service contracts for annual visits, and those that do will usually require you to sign a multi-year contract. Annual treatments for your home might cost the same as one-time treatments depending on the pest control company you hire. Typical costs for annual pest control visits range from $250 to $475.
Exterminator Cost by Type of Pest
As we mentioned earlier, some pests are more of a pain than others to get rid of, so an exterminator cost will vary significantly by type of pest.
We’ll go over pest control costs for some of the most common household pests in the United States. We’ll also talk a little about the methods for exterminating each pest and why they cost what they do.
PEST | TYPICAL EXTERMINATOR COST PER VISIT |
Ants | $110 – $345 |
Scorpions | $125 – $270 |
Cockroaches | $125 – $335 |
Fleas | $140 – $365 |
Spiders | $150 – $300 |
Silverfish | $150 – $450 |
Carpet beetles | $160 – $440 |
Bees | $160 – $750 |
Rodents | $170 – $500 |
Mosquitoes | $175 – $550 |
Wasps | $175 – $650 |
Wildlife | $255 – $600 |
Bed bugs | $400 – $2,180 |
Termites | $700 – $2,800 |
Cost to Exterminate Ants
Whatever kind of ants (sugar ants, fire ants, carpenter ants, etc.) get into your home, you should call an exterminator to eliminate the whole colony before the problem gets out of hand. You can kill every ant in sight yourself, but a new wave will replace them tomorrow if you don’t get rid of the ants in your home and yard. Exterminators have the tools to spray for ants even inside the walls of your home.
Depending on where the ants are and how large the colony is, an exterminator cost can be between $110 and $345. It may take two or more treatments to eradicate your ant problem completely.
Cost to Exterminate Scorpions
Scorpion infestations are most common in Southwestern states. While not all scorpions are poisonous, even the non-poisonous ones have painful stings, and you definitely want these pests out of your home ASAP.
In addition to eliminating current scorpion infestations, exterminators will track down their entry points into your home and seal them to prevent future problems. Sealing will usually cost extra.
Typical costs for exterminating and preventing scorpions range from $125 to $270. Your exterminator may recommend a second treatment to ensure your scorpion problem has been completely handled.
Cost to Exterminate Cockroaches
Cockroaches are common all across the country. One or two cockroaches a year probably isn’t cause for an exterminator, but if you’re seeing multiple roaches a week, you might have an infestation on your hands.
For cockroaches, pest control specialists will often set gel traps infused with insecticides. Dust chemicals, including boric acid, are other common tools for getting rid of roaches.
A one-time treatment for exterminating existing roaches may also include sealing entry points to prevent future problems. These services typically cost $125 to $335.
Cost to Exterminate Fleas
The first step in effective flea control is on you. How can you get rid of fleas on your cat? How can you keep fleas from biting your dog? Make sure you apply flea prevention medication once a month. You should also wash bedding, blankets, and pillow covers that may be hosting fleas after they leave your pet’s fur.
If you still see a lot of fleas in your yard or around your house a few weeks after starting flea medicine for your pet, that’s when you should consider calling an exterminator. Pest control professionals will usually apply long-lasting chemicals that kill adult fleas and limit growth for larvae. These chemical treatments with exterminator cost is about $140 to $365.
Cost to Exterminate Spiders
Spiders are another pest that shouldn’t worry you too much if you only see one or two, but some types of spiders are more dangerous than others.
If you suspect you might have an infestation, an exterminator will likely use a general perimeter pesticide to keep the spider population in your house from growing any more. Professional spider extermination can cost between $150 and $300.
Cost to Exterminate Silverfish
Silverfish don’t bite or sting, but they can ruin your food if they get into your kitchen.
If DIY methods fail to get rid of your silverfish, exterminators will spray chemicals into cracks, crevices, along baseboards, and other places where silverfish might enter your home to prevent more from getting in. Preventative silverfish treatments like these cost $150 to $450 most of the time.
However, they can’t spray those toxic chemicals directly into your kitchen drawers and cabinets where silverfish may be living. You may have to kill those leftover silverfish one-by-one yourself.
Cost to Exterminate Carpet Beetles
Carpet beetles look like tiny black or brown ladybugs. If you suspect you have these unwanted guests in your home, you’ll want to get rid of carpet beetles right away before they cause too much damage. Carpet beetles will eat clothing, upholstery, wood, food, and more.
To rid your home of carpet beetles, exterminators will use common pesticides or chemicals such as boric acid. Depending on the extent of your home’s carpet beetle problem, exterminating them permanently could cost from $160 to $440.
Cost to Exterminate Bees
You usually won’t find bees inside your home, but they will often build hives on porches or along the outside wall of your home. If you call an exterminator to get rid of a bee colony attached to your house, expect to spend between $160 and $750 depending on the size of the hive and where it’s located.
But remember: Bees are important pollinators, and they’re dying across the globe at alarming rates. Avoid killing bees if at all possible. Instead, you can have the hive relocated to solve your pest problem. Many beekeepers will remove and relocate beehives for free.
Cost to Exterminate Rodents
The most common method for getting rid of mice or rats in a home is laying traps. You can do this yourself or pay an exterminator to set the traps and remove the dead or live rodents for you for about $170 to $500.
You’ll usually pay more for humane catch-and-release methods than you would for traditional rat traps or glue traps, which kill the animals.
Cost to Exterminate Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes are typically more of an outdoor pest, but if they start reproducing in your walls or another hidden area in your home, they can plague you when you go inside, too.
Exterminators might use mosquito traps, chemical repellents, or mosquito fogs to solve your indoor mosquito problem. Depending on the method they decide to use, exterminating mosquitoes can cost from $175 to $380. Outdoor mosquito control costs range from $350 to $550 for several visits.
Cost to Exterminate Wasps
Like bees, wasps don’t usually build their nests inside. But we’ve all walked out onto the porch to find an active wasp’s nest once or twice, and the situation can be quite stressful.
If you don’t want to try to get rid of the wasps yourself, you can call an exterminator to help. Professional chemical treatments to kill wasps will usually cost between $175 and $650, depending on the type of treatment and the size of the nest.
Cost to Remove Wildlife
Pests aren’t always tiny bugs or rodents. Wild animals such as raccoons, bats, snakes, opossums, birds, and squirrels find their way into homes (especially dark, secluded attics) all the time.
Pest Gnome has several articles on how to get rid of wildlife pests (raccoons, snakes, bats, and squirrels, for instance), but when those DIY methods fail, many pest control pros offer wildlife removal services for these situations.
Trapping and relocating wild animals costs anywhere from $255 to $600. You can expect the removal of larger animals or multiple animals to cost more.
Cost to Exterminate Bed Bugs
Bed bugs are one of the worst infestations your home can have. They can quickly and easily spread throughout your entire home if you don’t catch them fast enough. Worst of all, they’ll lay eggs to ensure you have bed bugs for a long, long time if you don’t do anything about them.
Because they spread like wildfire, getting rid of bed bugs is extremely difficult. They’re also immune to some pesticides, which complicates things further. A bed bug infestation isn’t a death sentence for your home, though. Exterminators can use methods such as heat treatments or insecticides to get rid of them. It’s not easy, but it’s doable.
Bed bug treatment costs can range anywhere from $400 to $2,180 depending on how many rooms the pests have infested. You’ll need at least one follow-up visit after the initial treatment to make sure your bed bugs are gone for good — you don’t want to start this whole process over again in a few weeks when more eggs hatch.
Cost to Exterminate Termites
Termite infestation is one of a homeowner’s biggest fears. Once a termite colony forms in your walls or ceiling, the queen can lay up to a thousand eggs a year. Termite colonies can have more than a million members. And you may not realize you have them until the colony has grown significantly.
What makes termites so terrifying? They feed on wood, and with so many of them in a colony, they can easily destroy the guts of your home.
Like bed bugs, termites are a pain to get rid of, but they aren’t invincible. However, termite infestations are best left to the pros. Even if you see only a few termites outside the walls and think you can handle it, there could be thousands and thousands of them swarming inside your walls and ceiling. A professional exterminator will kill off every last one of them, so you can have complete peace of mind that you didn’t miss anything.
You may need to have your whole home tented and fumigated to eradicate termites fully. Getting rid of these pests is always going to be expensive, with the cost of termite treatments ranging from $700 to $2,800 or even more if you have a large home. But the extermination cost is worth the damage you’ll save your home.
Other Exterminator Cost Factors
Frequency of service and type of pest are the two easiest ways to determine a ballpark figure for how much your pest control will cost, but there are other factors, too. These factors aren’t as easy to quantify, but they can have significant impacts on your overall exterminator cost, and you should be aware of them.
Size and Level of Pest Infestation
Every pest infestation is different. Even if you’re dealing with pests like ants or roaches that aren’t super difficult or expensive to exterminate, there can be complications that drive up your price.
For instance, if the pests have infested deep inside your walls or ceiling, extermination might take longer and therefore cost more. The size of the infestation will also affect cost. The more pests there are, the more you should expect to spend to get rid of them.
You may end up spending even more than the initial quote your exterminator gives if they discover a deeper and larger problem while working. We can’t pinpoint an exact number for how much these factors will affect your cost, but keep them in mind so you aren’t shocked if your bill turns out larger than you expected.
Cost to Fumigate a Home or Apartment
In the worst cases, you might need full-home fumigation, and termites aren’t the only pests that might warrant fumigation. In case you find out you’ll have to fumigate to solve your pest problem, here’s how much you should expect to spend.
TYPE OF DWELLING | COST TO FUMIGATE |
House | $1,925 – $6,000 |
Apartment | $250 (studio) – $5,000 (large loft with several rooms) |
This is one case in which the size of your home will affect the cost of pest control since fumigation is for the whole home, not just the affected area.
If you live in an apartment, most of the time your landlord or property manager will take care of pest control, so you likely won’t have to worry about the cost. Your landlord often relies on property management software to keep track of when your apartment was last assessed and/or treated for pests.
Cost of Common Pest-Related Repairs
Termites, carpenter ants, carpenter beetles, rodents, and wild animals are examples of pests that will eat or bore through wood and other household materials.
Once the pests are gone, you’ll have to spend more money to repair the damage left in their wake.
Here are some common pest-related repair costs.
TYPE OF REPAIR | TYPICAL COST |
Wall repair | $100 – $500 |
Plumbing/wiring repair | $100 – $300 |
Hardwood flooring repair | $200 – $3,000 |
Carpet repair | $100 – $2,000 |
Attic repair | $100 – $400 |
Additional Pest Control Services
Many exterminators do more than just household pest control. Here, we’ll go over the costs of some additional services you might seek from an exterminator.
Pest Inspection
Thinking of selling your home soon? You’ll want to get a termite inspection and/or general pest inspection before you put your home on the market. Many real estate contracts require at least one of these inspections.
TYPE OF INSPECTION | TYPICAL COST |
General pest inspection | $65 – $135 |
Termite/wood destroying insect (WDI) inspection | $100 – $290 |
Lawn Pest Control
Your home isn’t the only piece of your property susceptible to pests. Many insects and wild animals can infest your lawn and garden, too. If left unchecked, these pests can kill your grass and plants. Hiring an exterminator to take care of those outdoor pests for you will cost around $50 to $200 per treatment.
Just like with indoor pests, the cost of outdoor pest control will depend on the type of pest and how many of them there are. You may need multiple visits from an exterminator to eradicate some problems.
Common lawn and garden pests of North America include:
- Bagworms
- Japanese beetles
- Mole crickets
- Chinch bugs
- Fire ants
- Sod webworms
- Grubs
- Aphids
- Weevils
- Slugs/snails
Commercial Pest Control
For businesses — especially those in the food service industry — regular preventive pest control is a must. Commercial pest control will typically cost about $35 to $150 per month depending on the type of business and the size of the property.
Even though exterminator costs for businesses are different from residential pest control costs, the same general principles apply:
- Frequency of pest control: The more frequent a property’s exterminator visits, the less each visit will cost.
- Type of pest: Costs will vary widely based on the type of pest you’re dealing with.
- Size, depth of infestation: How many pests there are and where they’re located will affect cost.
DIY Pest Control
Some pest problems are easy to handle on your own. You can eliminate small infestations of ants, roaches, spiders, and garden pests with over-the-counter chemicals. Trapping rodents and some larger wild animals can be DIY projects, too.
Here’s how much you’ll spend on supplies for DIY pest control, based on prices from Lowe’s and Home Depot.
SUPPLIES | TYPICAL COST |
Indoor pesticides | $12 per bottle |
Outdoor pesticides | $14 per bottle |
Lethal rodent traps | $4 per trap |
Humane catch-and-release rodent traps | $20 per trap |
Larger animal traps | $45 per trap |
Pest problems you SHOULD NOT try to handle without professional help include:
- Termites
- Bed bugs
- Dangerous or potentially poisonous animals
Exterminator Cost by Location
Different climates foster different types of pests. Hot, humid climates get a lot of termites, cockroaches, and silverfish. Cold climates see more rodents and wildlife trying to get into homes to escape from freezing temperatures in winter. Scorpions are common only in the Southwest because they thrive in arid deserts.
Because common pests vary so much by location, costs vary, too. For example, scorpion extermination might be an everyday job for an exterminator in Arizona, so the treatment might cost less than it would in Minnesota, where it would be an extremely rare specialty service.
The location of your home can affect how often you get pests, too, which will decide how much you spend on exterminators every year. Homes near woods or water typically have more problems with insects and wildlife than those in more urban areas.
FAQ About Exterminators
Technically, “exterminator” refers to someone who only uses pesticides to kill existing pests without addressing the root of the problem, while “pest control” is a more inclusive term. However, people often use the terms interchangeably, so there isn’t really a tangible difference.
Each pest has its own specific tells, but in general, some common signs to look out for include:
● 3 or 4 sightings of the same type of bug in one week
● Tiny holes in fabric around the house
● Damaged wiring or plumbing
● Droppings
● Shed wings and other litter
● Unexplained stains on bedding or other household surfaces
Here are some basic tips that will help keep most common pests out of your home:
● Clean regularly with a chemical solution
● Reduce clutter
● Throw food waste in the garbage immediately and keep the lid on the trash can at all times
● Seal any cracks or holes leading outside
● Keep basements and attics dry and well-ventilated
● Clean secondhand furniture thoroughly before bringing it inside
Most pesticides will irritate your pets or make them very sick if ingested. Talk to your exterminator beforehand about what exact products they use so you can do your research.
Ask your exterminator if they have any pet-safe options. In any case, do your best to keep your pets away from the area of application.
How to Choose an Exterminator
Now that you know how much an exterminator costs, you’re ready to get quotes from local pest control services. We recommend getting at least three quotes before you decide who to hire.
Note that low prices don’t always mean the best choice. At the very least, make sure the exterminator you choose has all the necessary licenses and certifications, and that they’re all up-to-date.
You should also look for positive customer reviews on Google or another third-party site (NOT the company’s own website). Several years of experience is usually a good sign, but there are high-quality new companies and low-quality old companies, too.
In the best-case scenario, you want an exterminator with expertise about the particular pest you’re struggling with. However, this might not always be available. General exterminators with licenses, good reviews, and years of experience should be able to handle any problem you have.
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