Four figures that look like a disagreement
| What | Source | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| HVAC maintenance visit | This Old House, June 2026 | $75 to $200 |
| HVAC maintenance | Fixr, January 2026 | $150 to $350, average $275 |
| AC tune-up alone | This Old House, March 2026 | $65 to $200, average $133 |
| Furnace tune-up alone | Bob Vila, January 2023 | $100 to $200 |
Fixr's average of $275 is above the top of all three other figures. Three sources say a tune-up tops out at $200 and one says the average is $275. Read quickly, that looks like one source being wrong.
It is not a disagreement. It is one system against two.
Our arithmetic, marked as ours, and it is the point of this page.
An air conditioner tune-up and a furnace tune-up are two separate services on two separate machines, usually done in spring and autumn. Add the two single-system figures together:
- This Old House's AC tune-up average: $133
- Bob Vila's furnace tune-up, midpoint of $100 to $200: $150
- Together: $283
Fixr's HVAC maintenance average is $275. That is $8 apart from the sum of the other two.
Do the same with the ranges. $65 plus $100 is $165 at the bottom, $200 plus $200 is $400 at the top. Fixr's $150 to $350 sits almost entirely inside that.
Our conclusion: Fixr's figure describes servicing the whole system, heating and cooling, and the other three describe one machine at a time. Once you know that, all four agree. None of the four pages says this, and none references the others.
What you should actually expect to pay
| If you are buying | Expect |
|---|---|
| One tune-up, AC only | $65 to $200 |
| One tune-up, furnace only | $100 to $200 |
| Both, over a year | roughly $165 to $400, our addition |
| A service contract instead | $150 to $500 a year (Fixr) |
This Old House prices AC tune-ups by unit type as well: a portable AC at $65 to $85 with an average of $75, a window unit at $65 to $150 averaging $108.
Is a contract worth it
Fixr is the only source that prices contracts: $150 to $500 a year. They note you pay more upfront than for a single visit, but contracts usually include discounts on repairs and priority service, and can work out cheaper over time, particularly on an older system.
Our arithmetic, marked as ours. Two separate tune-ups cost roughly $165 to $400 a year by the addition above. A contract at $150 to $500 overlaps that almost exactly. So the contract is not obviously cheaper or dearer than buying the visits: what you are buying with the extra is the repair discount and the priority, not the maintenance itself.
That makes the question concrete. Ask what percentage the repair discount is and what priority service actually guarantees in July. If the answers are vague, the contract is a pre-payment plan.
Why bother at all
This Old House puts the case in the sharpest available terms: an annual visit at $75 to $200 is a small investment against the thousands a major repair or a replacement costs. Their own repair figures on the same page run to $2,000, and the whole-system figures on our furnace and central air pages are several thousand each.
Neither source quantifies how much maintenance actually reduces the chance of those, and we are not going to invent a figure for it. What we can say is that the arithmetic has a lot of room in it: one skipped $133 tune-up against a $1,000 to $3,000 compressor, as our AC repair page sets out.
Air ducts are priced separately again, and much higher: see our air duct cleaning page. Boilers are serviced on their own schedule and the published averages mix service with repair, which our boiler repair page untangles. The cheapest thing that reduces summer load is not maintenance at all but ventilation, on our attic fan page. The single cheapest thing on any of these lists is the filter, and our AC not cooling page shows how often it is the whole answer. The cheapest habit, rather than the cheapest part, is on our furnace will not turn on page: running the heat once in September, before everyone else needs a technician. What the annual visit actually buys you, in years, is on our lifespan page: the gap between the two publishers' ranges is largely the maintained case against the un-maintained one.
Sources
- This Old House, What Does HVAC Maintenance Cost?, updated June 5, 2026 (the $75 to $200 flat fee per visit, repair figures)
- Fixr, HVAC Maintenance Cost, updated January 30, 2026 (the $150 to $350 range, $275 average, service contracts at $150 to $500 a year)
- This Old House, How Much Does an AC Tune-Up Cost? (2026 Guide), updated March 27, 2026 (the $65 to $200 range with a $133 average, prices by unit type)
- Bob Vila, How Much Does a Furnace Tune-Up Cost?, updated January 27, 2023 (the $100 to $200 range via HomeAdvisor, what a tune-up covers)
Price figures are national US ranges from the sources above as of the date shown. Your local price depends on labor rates, permits and site conditions. Read how we get our numbers.