How much does HVAC replacement cost?

Estimate what replacing your furnace, air conditioner or whole system costs, using what US households actually paid. Then check whether a heat pump would really cut your heating bill, because at average energy prices it often does not.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

What you are replacing

Census median for that job, from households who hired a contractor. A heat pump counts as both: it heats and cools with one machine.

Your region

Census regional medians for HVAC jobs, divided by the national one.

The West runs about 22% above the national median and the Midwest about 17% below it, so the MEDIAN Western job is about 47% dearer than the MEDIAN Midwestern one. Read that carefully, because it is not the same claim as 'the same job costs 47% more', and we originally wrote it as though it were. A regional median compares whatever jobs those regions actually did, and it cannot separate a price difference from a scope difference: Western systems are more likely to include cooling, and Western houses are not the same size as Midwestern ones. Some of that 47% is price and some of it is that they bought a different thing, and the survey cannot tell you the split. The South comes out level with the national median, so they are one option here. These indices are measured on heating and cooling jobs pooled together, and we apply that one index to all three job types above: that application is our step, not Census's.

Heating system you would install

Sets the seasonal efficiency used for running cost. Gas figures are AFUE. Heat pump figures are seasonal COP, which is HSPF2 divided by 3.412.

What that system burns

Set automatically by the system above. Only change it if you are pricing something unusual.

Your electricity price (cents per kWh)

US city average over the 12 months to May 2026, from BLS average price data. Your own bill is the accurate number, and rates vary several-fold by state.

Your gas price (dollars per therm)

US city average, about $1.67 per therm over the 12 months to May 2026, from BLS average price data. Your bill may show therms or CCF, which are close to the same thing.

Heat your home needs per year, sized from your gas bill (million BTU)

Our assumption, not a statistic, and not a dollar figure. About right for a gas-heated home in a moderate climate. To get your real figure: take your winter therms, divide by 10, and multiply by your furnace's efficiency.

Estimated cost

$14,135

Typical range $9,786 – $19,294

Equipment and materials$4,592
Labor, overhead and profit$8,504
Work subcontracted out$1,039
Federal tax credit (expired)$0
Total$14,135

See next steps →

The $2,000 federal heat pump tax credit no longer exists. Public Law 119-21 terminated the energy efficient home improvement credit (section 25C). The IRS states it plainly: the credit "will not be allowed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025." The test is when the equipment is placed in service, so a 2025 deposit on a 2026 install does not save it.

Most HVAC quotes and cost calculators still show that $2,000. And the running-cost case is weaker than it is sold. At US average energy prices, a typical new heat pump costs about a third more per unit of heat than a modern condensing gas furnace. It has to reach a seasonal COP of about 3.2 (HSPF2 10.8) just to draw level. None of that makes a heat pump a bad buy: it is also your air conditioner, it beats electric resistance heat by well over half, and in cheap-electricity states it beats gas outright. But if someone tells you it will automatically cut your heating bill, ask them to show you the arithmetic.

§ 02 The return

US median, full system, hired out (Census)$14,135

Half of full system jobs land between$9,786 and $19,294

Your heating fuel, per year$1,174

Same heat from a 95% gas furnace$879

Costs are what US households told the Census they paid, restated in 2025 dollars. The survey records no scope, and its categories are 'added or replaced', so they cover every kind of job from a wall furnace swap to a first-time ducted system in a house that never had one. Your quote depends on tonnage, ductwork, fuel, access and your local market. Running costs use national average fuel prices; yours will differ, so put your own in.

Where the money goes

Equipment and materials$4,592

Labor, overhead and profit$8,504

Work subcontracted out$1,039

By the numbers

Census (American Housing Survey, 2023): among households who hired a contractor, half of central-AC jobs cost less than $7,611 and half of built-in heating jobs cost less than $5,481.
More
For the households who replaced both in the same year, the median was $14,135. Note that adding the first two medians gives $13,092, which is simply wrong: medians do not add.
Census: one full system replacement in ten cost more than $30,446, and a quarter cost less than $9,786. The spread is enormous, which is why a single 'average HVAC cost' tells you almost nothing.
Economic Census (2022): the plumbing, heating and AC trade, in aggregate, pays its construction workers $33.17 an hour and bills $102.62 an hour for labor and overhead.
More
That is a measured 3.09x markup, not the 'about 2 to 3x' the internet repeats. Overhead, insurance, trucks and profit all live inside that gap, so a contractor is not pocketing the difference.
IRS: the energy efficient home improvement credit (section 25C), worth up to $2,000 on a qualifying heat pump, was terminated by Public Law 119-21 for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025.
BLS: at the US average of 18.98 cents per kWh and $1.67 per therm, delivering a million BTU of heat costs $17.58 with a 95% gas furnace and $23.47 with a typical new heat pump.
More
Electric resistance heat costs $55.62, so a heat pump is a huge win against baseboards and a loss against modern gas.
EPA: only Section 608 certified technicians may buy refrigerant for stationary air conditioning, and there is no homeowner exemption. That is why genuinely replacing your own central AC is not really a legal option, and why the survey's do-it-yourself figures skew towards heating swaps.
1 more
- Census: 70% of households paid for their HVAC job out of savings. Only 6.3% used contractor-arranged financing, and those jobs had a higher median ($7,436) than cash-paid ones ($6,197).

What is sourced, and what is ours. The cost is sourced: the Census American Housing Survey asks households what a completed job actually cost, so these are real outlays, not a model. To prove we are reading the survey correctly, our extraction reproduces Census's own published HVAC table to the dollar (median $5,500, mean $6,835, 12.8m jobs, $82.4bn of spending).

One honest caveat on the $14,135: Census publishes heating and cooling jobs pooled, not a "full system" figure, so that number is their data and our cut of it, taking the households who hired a contractor for both in the same year and taking the median of each household's summed bill. It is a statistic, not an estimate, but Census does not print it. The split into equipment and labor is ours: the shares come from the 2022 Economic Census, which measures that 32.5% of a plumbing/heating/AC job's value is materials, but applying that trade average to your job is our step, and an equipment swap is probably a little more equipment-heavy than the average. The running-cost comparison is arithmetic on federal fuel prices, not a forecast. One thing we cannot do at all: the survey records one cost per job and no equipment detail, so there is no way to identify a heat pump in it, and no way to derive a price per ton. Anyone quoting you a national "cost per ton" made it up.

Where every number above comes from

US Census

US Census Bureau, American Housing Survey 2023 (what households actually paid)
census.gov
US Census

US Census Bureau, AHS 2023 PUF Estimates for User Verification (table C-16-OO, the HVAC row we reproduce: 12,803,000 projects, $5,500 median, $6,835 mean, $82.44bn total)
www2.census.gov
IRS

IRS Fact Sheet FS-2025-05, termination of section 25C under Public Law 119-21
irs.gov
IRS

IRS, Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit (section 25C)
irs.gov
US Census

US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census (the measured billed rate, NAICS 238220)
www2.census.gov
BLS, average price of electricity per kWh, US city average
fred.stlouisfed.org
BLS, average price of piped gas per therm, US city average
fred.stlouisfed.org
EPA

EPA, Section 608 refrigerant sales restriction
epa.gov
BEA, residential improvements price index (deflator)
fred.stlouisfed.org

What this assumes, and where it could be wrong

Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.

A NAICS CODE IS A BUCKET, NOT A JOB, AND THE RATE ON THIS PAGE IS THE BUCKET'S.

NAICS 238220 is titled 'Plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors', and only 40.9% of that class's receipts are heating, ventilation and air-conditioning contractor (hvac). The largest single slice, 40.9%, is heating, ventilation and air-conditioning contractor (hv. So the billed rate here is the CLASS's rate, measured from real firms doing real work, and it is the measured figure we have for this job. It is not a rate for specialists in this job specifically, and we have four times called a class rate something it was not. We would rather show you the composition than let you assume it away.

The headline cost is the Census American Housing Survey median for owner-occupied households who hired a contractor, restated in 2025 dollars using the BEA price index for residential improvements.

Each job is deflated from the year it was actually completed, not the survey year.

The survey's two categories are literally 'added or replaced central air conditioning' and 'added or replaced built-in heating equipment'.

So a first-time installation is pooled in with a like-for-like swap, and adding central air to a house that has no ductwork is a much bigger job than changing out a condenser. There is no field that separates the two. That pushes the medians here somewhat above what a pure swap costs, and we would rather say so than quietly present these as replacement-only figures.

The low and high figures are not a margin we invented. They are the real 25th and 75th percentiles of what households paid, so half of all jobs genuinely land inside that band.

The full system figure of $14,135 comes from households that hired a contractor for both a central-AC job and a heating job completed in the same year.

We sum each household's two costs and take the median of the sum. We do not add the two medians together, because medians are not additive and doing so would understate the job by about a thousand dollars.

The regional adjustment is the Census regional median for HVAC jobs, divided by the national one.

The index itself is measured, not a cost-of-living guess, but it is measured on heating and cooling jobs pooled together and we apply that single index to all three job types. That application is our step. Measured separately, the regional spread on an AC-only job is wider than the pooled index implies, but those regional sub-cuts carry standard errors of 8% and more, so the pooled index is the steadier number rather than the flattering one.

The split into equipment, labor and subcontracting applies the 2022 Economic Census composition of a NAICS 238220 job (32.5% materials, 7.4% subcontracted, 60.2% labor, overhead and profit).

Those shares are measured, but they are the average across all plumbing, heating and AC work, so treat the split as indicative. As a check: it implies about $4,600 of equipment inside a full system, while DOE's product catalogue prices a 3-ton central AC plus a gas furnace at about $5,500 in 2023 dollars, which is roughly $6,000 restated in the 2025 dollars used everywhere else here. Two independent methods landing within about a quarter of each other. The catalogue figure is the higher of the two, so treat our equipment line as a floor rather than a ceiling.

Running cost is the price of delivering one million BTU of heat into the house, which needs no assumption about the size of your home.

Gas uses AFUE; heat pumps use seasonal COP, which is HSPF2 divided by 3.412. It ignores the gas standing charge you would save by going all-electric, and it ignores the fact that a heat pump's efficiency falls in very cold weather (seasonal ratings already average that in).

The annual heat requirement of 50 million BTU is our assumption and not a statistic. It is roughly a gas-heated home in a moderate climate. Your own gas bill will give you a far better number.

No federal tax credit is applied, because none exists for equipment placed in service after December 31, 2025. State and utility rebates are separate, often still available, and vary too much to publish a number for. Check your own utility.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to replace an HVAC system?

For households who hired a contractor and replaced both heating and cooling in the same year, the Census puts the median at $14,135 in 2025 dollars. A quarter paid less than $9,786 and a quarter paid more than $19,294. If you are replacing just one half, the median central-AC job is $7,611 and the median heating job is $5,481. These are what people actually paid, from a federal survey, not an average quoted by a company that sells the work.

How much does a new furnace cost?

The median household who hired a contractor to add or replace built-in heating equipment paid $5,481, with half of all jobs between $3,289 and $8,481. That category covers everything from swapping a wall furnace to installing a full ducted system, because the survey records no scope, so treat it as the middle of a very wide distribution rather than a quote.

How much does it cost to replace an AC unit?

The median contractor-hired central air conditioning job was $7,611, with half of jobs between $4,462 and $10,873. Bear in mind you cannot legally buy the refrigerant to do this yourself: the EPA restricts refrigerant sales for stationary air conditioning to Section 608 certified technicians, with no homeowner exemption.

Is there still a $2,000 tax credit for a heat pump in 2026?

No. The energy efficient home improvement credit under section 25C was terminated by Public Law 119-21. The IRS says the credit will not be allowed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. What matters is when the equipment is placed in service, not when you sign or pay, so a deposit paid in 2025 on a 2026 installation does not qualify. Many HVAC quotes and cost calculators still show this credit. Ask your installer to point you at the current IRS page before you believe it.

Will a heat pump save me money over a gas furnace?

Often not, on running cost alone. At the US average of 18.98 cents per kWh and $1.67 per therm, a million BTU of delivered heat costs $17.58 from a 95% gas furnace and $23.47 from a typical new heat pump, so the heat pump is about a third more expensive to run. It needs a seasonal COP of roughly 3.2, meaning HSPF2 near 10.8, just to break even. The answer flips entirely if your electricity is cheap or your gas is expensive, so put your own two prices into the calculator. What is not in doubt: a heat pump beats electric resistance heat by well over half, usually beats oil and propane, and does your cooling as well, which is a real saving if the alternative is buying an air conditioner too.

Should I replace my furnace and AC at the same time?

If both are near the end of their life, doing them together saves one call-out, one set of permits and often one shared indoor coil and air handler. The data hints at this: households who did both in the same year had a median of $14,135, while the two jobs done separately have medians summing to $13,092. That is not a like-for-like comparison, and the bundle is not free, but a full-system job is not two full-price jobs bolted together either. If only one unit has failed and the other is young, there is no strong cost reason to replace both.

Why are the averages I see online so much higher?

Most HVAC cost pages are run by contractor lead-generation companies, which are paid when you request a quote. A bigger number makes for a better funnel. There is also a real statistical trap: means run above medians here (the mean central-AC job is $8,901 against a $7,611 median) because a handful of very large jobs drag the average up. We publish the median, which is the typical job, and show you the quartiles so you can see the spread instead of hiding it.

How do people pay for this?

Mostly out of savings. In the Census data, 70% of contractor-hired HVAC jobs were paid from cash savings. Only 6.3% used contractor-arranged financing, and those jobs carried a noticeably higher median cost ($7,436 versus $6,197 for cash-paid jobs). That does not prove financing causes a higher price, but it is worth knowing which pocket the salesperson is reaching for.

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