Pool Pro Pricing Guide: Are You Charging Enough?

Prices are shifting, chemicals are spiking, and margins get squeezed fastest when your billing model hides the true cost of service. We unpack the 2026 State of the Pool Service Report from Skimmer and turn its data into moves you can make this week—clear regional benchmarks, smarter billing, and a simple plan to stop giving away chemicals.

For the full Skimmer 2026 Report:  https://hubs.la/Q03_zvF80 

We start with the numbers: average monthly service near 225 dollars in key Sunbelt markets, plus common rates for openings, closings, filter cleaning, and salt cell maintenance. Then we dig into why 76 percent of companies still prefer monthly billing and how it quietly stabilizes revenue compared with per stop invoicing. From there, we map a practical transition to a hybrid chemical model: tablets and shock billed to the client, specialty chemicals as pass-throughs, and a small maintenance dose included so most invoices stay steady while heavy-use pools pay their way.

Cash flow gets a boost with deposits on repairs and installs. You’ll hear why a 50 percent deposit or set booking fee reduces cancellations, funds equipment purchases upfront, and shortens the money gap on bigger jobs. We also share where pros are sourcing—Pool Corp and Heritage remain dominant thanks to price and availability—and how brand ecosystems differ by region, with Pentair leading in many Sunbelt markets and Hayward stronger on the East Coast.

We close with easy, low-friction price adjustments customers rarely fight: inch filter cleanings toward triple digits, align salt cell service with market averages, and keep monthly rates competitive for your area. If you want a resilient pool business, use data to guide your pricing, make billing transparent, and remove the profit leaks hiding in chemicals. 

• Regional price benchmarks and what they mean
• Monthly billing versus per stop billing trade-offs
• When and how to charge for chemicals
• How to phase in tablet and shock billing
• Deposit policies that reduce risk
• Supplier and brand preferences

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Chapters

• 0:00 Why The Skimmer Report Matters
• 2:35 Regional Pricing And Key Averages
• 5:23 Monthly Billing vs Per Stop Billing
• 9:13 Charging For Chemicals Without Backlash
• 13:34 Deposits For Repairs And Installs
• 16:19 Where Pros Buy And Brand Preferences
• 18:29 Practical Price Adjustments And Wrap

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:03

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to use the 2026 State of the Pool Service Report by Skimmer to talk to you about pricing. I found some of the results in this survey pretty interesting, and I think you will as well. And if you go to the description of this podcast, there'll be a link you can click to actually download and read the report yourself. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the Pool Guy Coaching Program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. I believe this is the third year that Skimmer has done this report, and they put a lot of resources into doing this report. It's pretty comprehensive, and that's why I like using it. They I'll just go back to the first page where you can see where they gather their data. Because I think it's really important to you know see where the source comes from. And the respondents were in, of course, the states that you think would respond to the survey in greater numbers. So Texas led with 20% of the respondents in California, Florida, Arizona, and then you have smaller percentages for all the other states. So all the Sunbelt area states, of course, were the big part of this report. So a lot of the pricing falls into those categories from those states. So keep that in mind that if you're like in New York, the pricing won't be as similar as your pricing. So this is more for those areas that do year-round pool service. So let me give you some of the pricing here, and I'll just read this off to you because I I found it very interesting that these are kind of the average pricing. For pool opening,$250. For routine cleaning, which is weekly pool service,$225 was the average. And I think it's skewed higher because of the respondents from Texas. Texas kind of is one of the leaders in the nation in pricing in some areas, so that's that's a good thing for that state. Pool closing is 205. And by the way, here in California, we don't do any pool opening or pool closing. So those numbers don't really mean a lot to the California guys or Florida, but parts of Texas, and of course, a big part of the United States, you know, the East Coast and up, do a lot of closing and opening. Filter cleaning, I found this number surprising. The average filter cleaning price is$111, and we're a little bit lower here in California. We're in the 80s and 90s in a lot of areas, and then the UV uh heater preventive maintenance is$85. And this one here was really surprising. Salt cell cleaning, the average was$67. And again, I think a lot of us here in Southern California are priced lower than that, so we could probably raise our prices as far as maintenance of the salt cell goes. And again, I want to thank Skimmer for doing this comprehensive report. If you haven't tried the software, you can go to my website, swingingpoollearning.com. There's a banner icon there. Click on that, and then you can try the software for free. And I definitely recommend trying it, giving it a run. It's an awesome routing software. So that was the average pricing. Your area may differ. A lot of you know parts of California are lower, Florida are lower than that, maybe parts of Texas are higher than that. Of course, the East Coast is higher. So the route cleaning, the average price per month, is really area specific. You can't go here in my area to someone's backyard and say you're charging uh$250 a month. In most cases, that's not going to be the rate that the competitors around you charge, and so you have to kind of adjust your rate. Typically, here the rate is anywhere from 160 to 180. And I think this is interesting that most pool servers, 76% of them do monthly billing versus per stop billing, which is 19%, and then five do other. I'm not sure what the other is, but 76% of the pool companies do monthly billing, which is what I do and what a lot of people do here. And I think it's pretty interesting that the monthly billing is still holding a lot of ground because to be honest with you, it's simple and you know, monthly billing basically in a nutshell, it doesn't matter if you have five Tuesdays that month or you know, five Thursdays, you just bill the customer monthly, and then you cash in those four extra service days that you do for quote free, basically, because some some months there's five Tuesdays, five Fridays, five Wednesdays, and technically you're doing an extra stop without charging. That's monthly billing. The per per weekly billing, per stop billing, I should say, is when you're billing every week, and so if there's five Tuesdays, the customer gets a higher bill that month than the month before. So this may work to your advantage because you're we you're capturing all the money, and then when you take time off, you don't bill the customer for it. I think it's much more difficult because there's a lot of randomness to it, and customers are gonna get a larger bill some months and kind of question it. So I would say that it's easier to do monthly billing. It's also easier to land the service account with monthly billing, in my opinion, because your rate looks lower because you're giving in those days quote unquote free, but you're actually gonna cash those in for vacation and time off. So the monthly billing does have a lot of advantage, advantages over weekly billing or per stop billing. And I'm not sure what the other 5% do out there as far as billing, maybe a combination of both of those. So if you're doing monthly billing, there's no reason to change your monthly billing for sure. Now, the other part of this uh survey regarding billing is chemical billing. This little box is pretty telling, and it doesn't surprise me that a lot of companies are billing for these chemicals. So chlorine tablets, 73% of the companies charge for them. I would hope that'd be a little higher, but you know, some people still absorb the cost of the trichlor tablets, which can be really crippling in the summertime. Chlorine shock, and I always recommend charging for shocking in the pool or leaving a bucket of calhypo at a stop if they have heavy chemical use. You really can't absorb dumping four gallons of liquid chlorine in someone's pool because there's all your profit for that month gone. So 70% charge for shock. And then uh this one's interesting because I typically don't charge for uh baking soda and soda ash when I'm adjusting the pH in the pool, but 61% do charge for it, and then of course, muriatic acid and dry acid, uh 61% charge for that, and again, a lot of us in California do like a maintenance dose of muratic acid included in the weekly service charge or monthly service charge, I should say. But it looks like a lot of people are moving away from including that, and then of course, 77% for specialty chemicals like pool RX, phosphate remover, enzymes charge for those, and then the other chemicals 18%. The strategy for moving the chemical cost of the customer, in my opinion, is fairly easy to implement. What you want to do in cases where you're paying for the tablets and you want the customer to take over that particular chemical charge, 50-pound bucket of trichlor tablets. What I usually do is I'll look at the list of customers, the ones that can absorb this with no problem when you explain to them that the cost of operating your business has gotten to the point where the trichlor tablet costs is crippling to your bottom line because of the massive price increases of 160% over the last three years. You simply let them know that you're going to bill them for the next bucket of tablets and you're gonna leave it there, and they'll going forward that's what's gonna happen. And the ones that maybe push back on you and don't want to absorb that cost, you can go halfway with them and let them know that you're going to put a service charge of$100 towards their account for the tablets this season, and then the following year, the year and a half, when you buy the tablets again, they'll have to pay the full cost of it. So that's one way to kind of offset it if the customers you think aren't going to like having to go from you including them to them paying it, paying it straight out, like kind of cold turkey. You can kind of gradually do it with a surcharge that kind of helps you out, and it's not too crippling for you at that point for that season. So that's how you kind of want to do it. Same with if you're gonna charge for you know any kind of pH up or any if you want to move the asset out of your regular maintenance dose to charge the customer. That's also something you can start gradually, and this is something that you may need to do to save your bottom line because of all the costs of the chemicals going up every season, and if you haven't adjusted your prices accordingly, you may be losing a lot of your income for these chemical costs, especially in the summertime. And I think it's to a point where you can't really rely on the winter time to recover the summer chemical costs anymore. There's a point where you can recover some of your costs, but if it's getting to the point where you're not making any money in the summer and you're waiting for the winter to recover some of the chemical costs because you don't add as much chlorine or acid to the pool, I think that's the wrong strategy because you're banking on something that's not there, and it may not even be nearly the amount recovered as you think. So moving the chemicals out of your billing to some degree is important, and basically the statistics show that chemicals built separately, 30% are doing that, chemicals included 45%, and some chemicals included 25% are doing that. So a lot of companies are definitely moving away from the white glove all-inclusive pool service. I think the hybrid model is perfect for my area. So basically, the tablets and any kind of shock, specialty chemicals, anything you're adding to the pool beyond the maintenance dose of liquid chlorine and muetic acid are charged to the customer, and it's been really effective because most customers will get the standard billing without an adjustment during the month, you know, month over month. And others that are using a lot of chemicals or you're adding specialty chemicals, or you're selling them a bucket of tablets that month will pay a higher rate, and it makes your billing easier and it makes it more transparent for the customer because not every customer has to pay for shock. Some have salt water systems, and a lot of the customers don't really have anything in their bill that changes month to month. Interesting enough, I just did a podcast on collecting money owed, and I did talk about putting a deposit down or actually requiring a deposit from the customer when you're doing repairs and installations. It looks like 41% always charges deposit, and uh 16% usually, 21% sometimes, 13% rarely, and 10% never. And I believe the ones that do sometimes rarely and never are going to be affected by getting burned eventually by someone who doesn't pay the balance of or pay the whole amount of the repair install. And I think that 41% that are charging a deposit shows that there's not a lot of pushback, and that's kind of what it says here in the report that not a lot of people push back on a deposit to secure the repair job or green pool cleanup or whatever you're doing out there with the client. The deposit, I think, is really an important thing to help you offset any kind of problems, you know, with them canceling it or not paying the balance. So I really think that it's important to charge that deposit to protect yourself, and it also helps you with your business costs because you're using that deposit to actually purchase the equipment you're installing, like the pump and motor, and you're not just absorbing that cost either in your business, which sometimes could be very expensive and crippling if you have an account and you have an$8,000 balance due and you don't have the income coming in to do that because you haven't collected the money from all the repairs you're doing that month. That's because it's not unusual if you have regular service accounts and you put it in a filter or pump and motor that you wait to bill them, you know, in their regular monthly billing. You know, someone's been with you for five years, you put a filter in. Sometimes you'll just put that cost into their bill at the end of the month. And you if you installed it on the 10th, you have to wait quite a while for your money. And if you're getting deposits from customers that aren't regular customers, then definitely that's going to help offset some of that credit on the account. And the next part of the report on page 50 really goes hand in hand with your billing because where you get your supplies or how much you pay for them is also an important factor. Most pool pros will purchase supplies at a supplier based on price, 54%, and then 28% on availability. So the price point, of course, of getting your chemicals and your equipment is a driving factor still. And it makes logical sense that we're price sensitive. Pool guys are extremely price sensitive, in my opinion. Probably more price sensitive in this industry than any other industry, and we like to save money on the cost of the stuff we're buying because everything in the pool industry is pretty expensive. So, where do most pool pros shop? Pool Corp, of course, still leads with 36%. That's the SCP and superior outlets and around the country. So Pool Corp, I think they've lost some of that market share. It seems lower than I've seen it previously. I should check the past reports, but 36% is not an overwhelming amount. Pool Corp used to dominate the of course wholesale. Heritage has definitely caught up with 28%. So they're moving up. And I probably predict next year is going to be even closer between these two. Then you have 11% other, then you have 8% uh no preference, 5% Leslie's, 4% Gorman, uh 2% Leisure. So basically, the biggest supplier is still Pool Corp and Heritage, both those combined are well over half of the industry. And it makes sense that pool guys are are shopping there, wholesale pricing, and you know, quote unquote wholesale pricing, I should say. And basically, you're getting everything and they have a wide variety of inventory. I think Pool Corp has a hundred thousand SKUs, so of course, if you go there, you're gonna get what you want, or you can special order something. So having the inventory and having the availability to pick something up is really important as well. Because if you're doing a repair and you have to wait three or four days for the part, that's really not a good business model, and so it's great to have these outlets we can walk in and grab the part. And last, who are the preferred equipment for equipment brands for the Pool Service Pro? Pentare has 50% of the market, and I gather that the areas that I highlight are highlighted in the survey Texas, Florida, California, Pentair is dominant in those areas. Here in California, Pentare dominates like 90% of the backyard equipment is tan, so Pentair has that in California. Floridra, Jandy, Zodiac has 24%. Hayward has 23%, but I think Hayward would skew higher if a lot more East Coast people responded because Hayward is really big on the East Coast, so this number I think is more of a Sunbelt West Coast kind of thing, you know, mid uh Texas, things like that. So it's not entirely accurate as far as I'm concerned because Hayward is much bigger in the East Coast, and I think Jandy still hasn't really caught on compared to Pentair. Pentair still dominates our area. The bottom line is your pricing. If you if I go back to the page where the pricing chart was, I think it's important to match your competition in your area, but realize that the average price for pool service is$225, the average price for filter cleaning is$111, and then salt cell cleaning is$67. So if there's room to adjust your prices up, if you're charging$90 for filter cleaning, maybe you want to move it up to$100 or$105. If you're charging$85, definitely move it up to$95 or$100. There's room in a lot of areas to move your pricing, especially for these services where you're not doing them every month, like filter cleaning, salt cell cleaning. You can have more of a margin there by raising the prices in those areas without too much customer pushback. They won't even notice it in some cases, and you may be leaving some money on the table with those pricing. If those if those pricing models, if you're pricing your services too low. Again, if you want a copy of the report, it'll there'll be a link in the description here of the podcast. You can go through it yourself and read it. I think it's really interesting. And Skimmer did a really good, thorough job of with this report. And if you're looking for more podcasts, you go to my website, swimmingpoollearning.com, click on the podcast icon on the banner, and there'll be a drop down menu of over 1800 podcasts for you there. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your week and God bless.