What should a kid charge for tech help?

Tech help is the business where a kid is most likely to undercharge, because the work feels easy to them and looks like magic to the customer.

What they are really buying

Not a fixed printer. They are buying the end of a week of quiet frustration, and the relief of not having to admit to a stranger that they do not understand their own television.

That last part matters more than it looks. Plenty of adults find asking for technology help embarrassing, and they would far rather ask the teenager from down the street than book a stranger and be made to feel stupid for an hour.

What adults pay proves it

Residential tech support runs about $50 to $150 an hour in 2026, with common repairs and troubleshooting visits often quoted flat at $75 to $150. The national chains charge roughly $100 to $150 for an in-home visit. Independent technicians typically sit lower, around $50 to $100 an hour.

Remote sessions cost meaningfully less than someone coming to the house.

Where to start, and why

For setting up a device, sorting out wifi, moving photos off a phone, or showing somebody how something works, somewhere between $15 and $25 an hour is a sensible opening price. Small jobs are better quoted flat: twenty dollars to set up the new tablet, rather than an hourly meter running.

The gap under the adult rate is for being unproven. A company carries insurance and takes responsibility if something goes badly wrong, and on your first job you do not.

The discount should not last

Five households where the wifi still works two months later is proof, and in a neighborhood that news travels quickly. Older customers in particular tell each other about the kid who was patient.

By then you are not an untested teenager, you are the person they call before they call anyone else, and that is worth considerably more than fifteen dollars an hour.

Where you should not discount at all

Almost nobody will come out for a twenty minute job. A company charging a hundred dollars minimum will not drive across town to connect a printer, and the neighbor with the disconnected printer knows it.

Patience is the other one, and it is the real product. A professional bills by the hour and is quietly impatient. A kid who will explain the same thing three times without sighing is delivering something the hundred dollar option often does not.

Consider a standing arrangement

For an older neighbor, an hour a month at a set price is often better for both sides than being called in a panic. They stop worrying about bothering you, and you get predictable work.

That is the same recurring revenue idea that makes a lawn route work, applied to something quieter.

Two rules worth having

Never take payment for something you could not fix. Say so, and charge nothing. That single habit is why people will recommend you.

And do not touch anything to do with somebody's money. Banking logins, payment details, and account passwords are not a young founder's business, and the right answer is to point them at their bank.