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How Much Do HVAC Business Owners Make? (2026 Data)

What HVAC business owners really take home: owner pay vs. net profit, how shop size changes it, and how to pay yourself, using IRS and Census data.

"How much does the owner make?" is the question every tech thinking about going out on their own asks, and most owners won't answer it straight. Part of the reason is that there isn't one clean answer. It depends on how big the shop is, how the owner pays themselves, and whether "profit" is counted before or after the owner's own paycheck. This guide lays out what the public data shows, then walks through how to set your own pay so the numbers actually mean something.

Where the numbers come from

There is no government survey that asks HVAC owners "what did you take home?" What does exist:

None of these sources tell you an HVAC owner's exact take-home pay. What they do show is how big shops are, how much revenue they bring in, and how much goes out as payroll. That's enough to see the pattern.

The yardstick: what an HVAC tech makes

Start with the number you're trying to beat. BLS puts the national median HVAC technician pay at $61,010 a year ($29.33/hour) and the mean (average) at $64,780, across 409,670 employed techs, as of May 2025. BLS annual figures are hourly pay times 2,080 hours. They include commissions and production pay but not overtime or benefits. Source: BLS OEWS, 49-9021, May 2025, via the BLS public data API

If you own the shop, run calls, sell the jobs, answer the phone at night, and do the books on Sunday, and you take home less than about $30 an hour for all of it, you have a job with extra risk, not a business. That's more common than people admit (more on why below).

Most HVAC shops are small, and small shops keep less of each dollar

Census counted 107,004 employer firms in plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning in 2022, with 1,176,759 employees, $82.2 billion in annual payroll, and $306.3 billion in revenue. Source: Census SUSB 2022

That works out to an "average" firm with about $2.9 million in revenue and 11 employees, but the average is pulled up by a few very large companies. The typical shop is much smaller:

Annual revenue (firm)FirmsShare of firmsAvg. employees per firmAvg. revenue per firmPayroll as % of revenue
Under $500K50,53647.2%1.6$177,72232.8%
$500K–$999K17,18516.1%4.2$729,69328.9%
$1M–$2.49M20,64019.3%7.9$1,577,93328.1%
$2.5M–$4.99M9,0528.5%15.7$3,492,75228.4%
$5M–$9.99M4,8294.5%28.2$6,955,04128.1%
$10M and up4,7624.5%121.9$39,266,10025.7%

Calculated by The Growth Room from Census SUSB 2022 (NAICS 238220, employer firms only, plumbing and HVAC combined). Averages are totals divided by firm counts. Source: Census SUSB 2022

What that means for owner pay:

  • Almost two-thirds of employer shops (63.3%) do under $1 million a year. Firms under $500K average fewer than two employees. At that size, the owner's income is basically what's left after one or two paychecks, the truck, insurance, and equipment.
  • Payroll eats a bigger share of revenue in small shops: about 33% under $500K, versus about 26% at $10M and up. Bigger shops spread office, dispatch, and management costs over more revenue.
  • Pay per employee rises with size. Census payroll divided by employees comes to about $40,400 per employee at firms doing $100K–$499K, about $55,900 at $1M–$2.49M, and about $68,400 at $5M–$7.49M. (That includes part-timers and office staff, and for corporations it includes any salary the owner pays themselves through payroll.) Bigger shops pay more, which helps them hire the techs smaller shops are fighting over.

What sole-proprietor contractors report to the IRS

For owners who file on Schedule C, the IRS publishes actual net income. For all specialty trade contractors combined in tax year 2023:

  • 2,521,516 returns, $257.8 billion in business receipts, and $40.5 billion in net income (after subtracting losses). That's an average of about $102,000 in receipts and $16,100 in net income per return, a net margin of about 15.7% of receipts.
  • 2,002,699 of those returns (79.4%) showed a profit. Among those, average net income was about $24,300.

Source: IRS SOI, Nonfarm Sole Proprietorships, Table 1, Tax Year 2023

Read those carefully. They include every trade, not just HVAC, and a lot of part-time and side-work filers, which pulls the averages down. Most larger HVAC shops are S-corps or LLCs and aren't in this data at all. What it does show clearly is how much of the trades is one-person, part-time, or barely profitable work. The average Schedule C contractor clears less than a third of what a median HVAC tech earns on a W-2.

Owner pay vs. net profit: the mix-up that hides what you really make

Two owners can run identical shops and report very different "profit," depending on whether the owner's pay is counted as an expense:

  • Owner pay (salary or draw) is what you'd have to pay someone else to do the jobs you do: running calls, selling, managing, dispatching.
  • Net profit is what's left after that pay. It's your return for owning the business and taking the risk: the money to reinvest, save as a cash cushion, or take out as a distribution.

Illustrative example (made-up numbers to show the math, not industry benchmarks): A shop does $1,000,000 in revenue. Every cost except the owner comes to $920,000, which leaves $80,000.

  • If the owner pays themselves nothing and calls the $80,000 "profit," the P&L shows an 8% net margin. It looks healthy.
  • But if the owner worked about 2,600 hours that year (50 hours a week for 52 weeks), that $80,000 is about $30.77 an hour, barely above the BLS median tech rate of $29.33.
  • If the owner is paid a fair $70,000 salary for the work they do, true net profit is $10,000, a 1% margin. That's a business that barely makes money beyond paying its owner a tech-level wage.

Same shop, same cash. Once you count the owner's pay as a cost, you can see what the business really earns. This matters for pricing, and it matters a lot if you ever sell: buyers will re-cast your books to add a market-rate manager salary, and a business that only "profits" by not paying its owner is worth far less than the P&L suggests. The free HVAC business valuation calculator shows how that plays out.

How to pay yourself

A simple structure most owners can use (work out the tax details with your CPA; it depends on whether you're a sole proprietor, LLC, or S-corp):

  1. Pay yourself a set salary for the job you actually do. If you're still running calls, a fair starting point is what you'd pay a senior tech in your market. The BLS pay-by-state figures give you a baseline. If you mostly manage and sell, price it like a general manager's role. Put it on a fixed schedule, not "whatever's in the account."
  2. Build that salary into your prices. Your hourly rate has to cover your own pay the same way it covers a tech's. Put it into the HVAC break-even hourly rate calculator as a real overhead line.
  3. Treat what's left as profit, and split it on purpose. A common approach: set aside taxes first, keep a cash reserve for slow months and big equipment buys, then take the rest as distributions (quarterly works well, once you can see real numbers). If you're an S-corp, the IRS expects a "reasonable" salary before distributions, so don't set your salary to zero.
  4. Set a target, then work backward. Decide what you want to take home (salary plus profit), then work out the revenue and margin it takes. The HVAC revenue goal calculator does that math for you.

Why so many owners make less than their techs

The Census and IRS numbers explain a lot of it. Here's how it usually happens:

  • Prices set by copying the competition, not by the owner's cost. If your rate doesn't include your own salary, every job underpays you by that amount.
  • The owner is the unpaid everything. Techs clock out; the owner does estimates, callbacks, books, and the 9 p.m. phone call. Divide your take-home by all your hours, not just field hours, and the number often falls below tech pay.
  • Stuck at the smallest size. Nearly half of employer firms do under $500K (Census SUSB). At that size payroll takes about a third of revenue and there's little room left for an owner's salary and a profit.
  • Profit reinvested (or lost) in trucks and inventory. Cash that goes into equipment, slow-paying customers, or callbacks never makes it to the owner, even when the P&L says "profit."
  • No split between salary and profit. When everything is just "draw," there's no way to tell if the business is earning anything beyond the owner's own labor.

Keep going

What owners like you actually take home

Census and IRS totals can't show what owners of shops your size really pay themselves. That's a question worth putting to other owners directly in the Growth Room Discord.