Appliance Repair Cost by Brand: What 29,315 Repairs Show

Q: Which appliance costs the most to repair?

The refrigerator, for every brand measured without exception, from $480 on a KitchenAid down to $365 on a Maytag. Dishwashers are consistently the cheapest. The appliance moves the bill by more than a hundred dollars; the brand moves it by a few tens.

Q: Are LG refrigerators expensive to repair?

They are the most expensive mainstream brand and appliance combination in Bozmanfix records, at a $445 median against $404 for Samsung and $381 for Whirlpool. LG refrigerators appear consistently at the expensive end of refrigerator work, consistent with sealed-system repairs making up a larger share of what is seen on them.

Q: Does a higher repair cost mean a brand is less reliable?

No, and the two should not be read together. This measures what a repair costs when one is needed, driven by build complexity, part pricing and component accessibility. It says nothing about how often repairs are needed. The workload also reflects which brands are installed in the homes served, so a brand appearing often means it is common, not that it is fragile.

Written by Bozmanfix Team · Reviewed by Eugen, Appliance Repair Technician, 5+ years · Published August 2026

🔧 29,315 completed repairs 🏷️ 12 brands with usable samples 📊 First-party data 🔓 Free to cite

Choosing a mainstream appliance brand barely changes what a future repair will cost you. Across 29,315 completed repairs where a part was actually replaced, the five largest brands in American kitchens — Samsung, GE, Frigidaire, Whirlpool and Maytag — sit within $32 of each other at the median. The entire spread from the most expensive brand we service to the cheapest is 45%, and almost all of that gap is premium built-in equipment rather than anything a typical buyer is choosing between. This page reports what each brand actually costs to fix, and one finding about who declines the repair that runs opposite to what you would expect.

$32 separates the median repair cost of the five most common appliance brands in US homes Samsung $375, GE $355, Frigidaire $353, Whirlpool $348, Maytag $343 — across 10,559 completed repairs

Median repair cost by brand

Every figure is the full ticket — part, labour and the service call together — for jobs where a component was actually replaced. Brands are shown only where we have at least sixty such repairs.

Brand	Median repair	Middle half of jobs	Repairs
Thermador	$471	$330–787	83
KitchenAid	$427	$328–550	223
Electrolux	$400	$315–514	82
LG	$397	$305–502	653
Samsung	$375	$311–450	2,878
GE	$355	$293–443	2,432
Frigidaire	$353	$291–428	1,440
Kenmore	$349	$295–437	282
Whirlpool	$348	$290–413	2,767
Maytag	$343	$289–409	1,042
Bosch	$342	$265–454	296
Amana	$325	$280–376	232

The headline is the compression. Twelve brands, from a $2,000 built-in Thermador to an entry-level Amana, fit inside $325 to $471. That is a 45% spread across the entire market, and the top of it is a brand most households will never own. Strip out premium built-ins and the working range is $325 to $397 — a difference of seventy dollars between the cheapest and dearest brand a typical buyer is actually deciding between. Each premium brand now has its own page with the full breakdown: Sub-Zero, Wolf, Viking and Thermador.

💡 Why the numbers compress. A repair bill is mostly labour and the service call, not the component. A technician spends comparable time diagnosing and replacing a drain pump whether the badge says Maytag or LG, and travel costs the same either way. Parts prices do vary between brands, but they vary inside a total that is already dominated by time. This is the same pattern we see when we break costs down by component instead of by brand — a cheap part and an expensive part land within a hundred dollars of each other, as set out in our decline rate report.

🔶 Read this as cost, not quality. A higher median here does not mean a brand is worse, and a lower one does not mean it is better. It reflects what the machines cost to fix when they need fixing — driven by build complexity, part pricing and how accessible components are behind the panels. It says nothing about how often they need fixing. For reliability we point to published testing rather than our own workload, in our most reliable appliance brands ranking, and for how often each brand comes up in our calls, see most commonly repaired appliances — that is a frequency measure on a different denominator and should not be read together with the costs here.

Premium brands cost more, but not by as much as expected

Thermador leads at $471 and KitchenAid follows at $427 — 45% and 31% above Amana at the bottom. Real differences, but not the multiples people brace for when a built-in fails. The more telling number is the spread within those brands rather than between them: the middle half of Thermador jobs runs $330 to $787, a range more than twice as wide as Amana’s $280 to $376.

That width is the actual financial risk of premium equipment. A Thermador repair is frequently ordinary and priced like any other; occasionally it involves a sealed system or a proprietary board, and then it is not. You are not paying a reliable premium, you are accepting a wider distribution — which is a different thing to plan for, and the reason a fixed warranty on high-end equipment behaves differently than one on a mainstream machine.

Bosch is worth separating out. At a $342 median it sits with the mainstream brands rather than with the premium ones, despite the price point of its dishwashers, and its p25 of $265 is the lowest of any brand in the table. The distribution is wide at the top — p75 of $454 — but the typical Bosch job is not an expensive one.

The finding that runs backwards: expensive brands get repaired more often

When we diagnose a fault and quote the repair, some households approve it and some replace the machine instead. If cost drove that decision, the expensive brands would be declined most. They are declined least.

Brand	Declined after quote	Median repair	Rank by cost
KitchenAid	26.6%	$427	2nd dearest
Electrolux	27.4%	$400	3rd dearest
Kenmore	29.9%	$349	8th
Bosch	30.5%	$342	11th
LG	32.3%	$397	4th dearest
Thermador	32.5%	$471	dearest
Samsung	34.5%	$375	5th
GE	34.4%	$355	6th
Frigidaire	34.6%	$353	7th
Whirlpool	36.2%	$348	9th
Amana	37.5%	$325	cheapest
Maytag	37.6%	$343	10th

Read the two ends of that table together. KitchenAid is the second most expensive brand to repair and the least likely to be declined, at 26.6%. Amana is the cheapest to repair and among the most likely to be declined, at 37.5%. The brand whose repairs cost a hundred dollars more gets approved eleven percentage points more often.

The explanation is not about the repair bill at all. It is about what the machine is worth replacing. A household with a built-in KitchenAid faces a replacement that costs thousands and may involve cabinetry; a $427 repair is obviously the cheaper path. A household with an entry-level Amana can buy a new one for a few hundred dollars, and at that point a $325 repair stops being clearly worthwhile. The decision is set by the replacement cost, not the repair cost — which is exactly the pattern we found across appliance categories, where price and refusal rate move independently. The full analysis is in our appliance repair decline rate report.

Cost by brand and appliance

Splitting each brand by appliance shows where the money actually goes. Only combinations with at least forty completed repairs are reported.

Brand	Refrigerator	Washer	Dryer	Dishwasher	Oven / range
KitchenAid	$480	—	—	$375	—
LG	$445	$383	$387	—	—
Samsung	$404	$381	$378	$345	$380
GE	$398	$377	$340	$335	$355
Whirlpool	$381	$358	$340	$325	$356
Kenmore	$378	$374	$347	—	—
Frigidaire	$367	$374	—	$320	$346
Maytag	$365	$355	$342	$370	—

Two things hold across every brand without exception. The refrigerator is the most expensive appliance to repair for all eight, and the dishwasher is the cheapest wherever we have enough jobs to say so. The brand you own shifts those numbers by a few tens of dollars; the appliance you are calling about shifts them by a hundred or more. If you want to predict a repair bill, the machine matters more than the badge.

The one row that stands out is the LG refrigerator at $445, sixty-four dollars above a Samsung and the highest figure in the table outside KitchenAid’s built-ins. LG refrigerators come up consistently at the expensive end of our refrigerator work, which is consistent with sealed-system repairs being a larger share of what we see on them. We cover that failure mode specifically in our page on the LG linear compressor.

Key figures, stated for citation

$32 separates the median repair cost of the five most common US appliance brands: Samsung $375, GE $355, Frigidaire $353, Whirlpool $348, Maytag $343.
$325 to $471 is the full range of median repair costs across twelve brands — a 45% spread from cheapest to dearest.
Thermador is the most expensive brand to repair at a $471 median, and Amana the cheapest at $325.
KitchenAid is the second most expensive to repair and the least often declined, at 26.6%; Amana is the cheapest to repair and among the most declined, at 37.5%. Repair cost and willingness to repair run in opposite directions.
The middle half of Thermador repairs spans $330 to $787, more than twice the width of Amana’s $280 to $376 — premium equipment carries a wider distribution rather than a fixed premium.
The refrigerator is the most expensive appliance to repair for every brand measured, and the dishwasher the cheapest.
The LG refrigerator is the most expensive mainstream brand-appliance combination at $445, against $404 for Samsung and $381 for Whirlpool.
Bosch sits with the mainstream brands at a $342 median despite its price positioning, with the lowest lower-quartile of any brand at $265.

Citing this data These figures are ours to publish and yours to quote. No permission needed — a link back to this page is all we ask, so readers can see the methodology and the sample sizes. If you need a cut we have not published, such as a brand and appliance combination below our reporting threshold, write to us and we will run it.

Source: Bozmanfix, "Appliance Repair Cost by Brand: 29,315 Completed Repairs" — https://bozmanfix.com/appliance-repair-cost-by-brand/

Methodology The data set is 29,315 completed repairs from Bozmanfix’s own job records across Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, through August 2026. A job is counted only where a part was replaced and the finished ticket exceeded $200; visits where nothing was replaced are excluded from the medians and counted separately in the decline figures. Brand is taken from job tags by exact match, and a brand is reported only where at least sixty qualifying repairs support it; brand and appliance combinations require at least forty. Medians include the part, the labour and the service call together, which is why they run above published parts prices. A visit is counted as declined where the customer paid the diagnostic fee and no part was replaced, using the same definition as our decline rate report. These figures describe cost to repair, not frequency of repair and not reliability: our workload reflects which brands are installed in the homes we serve as much as how they perform, so a brand’s absence or a small sample here carries no meaning about its quality. Brand-level call frequency is reported separately on our most commonly repaired appliances page on a different denominator and should not be combined with these costs.

Frequently asked questions

Which appliance brand is most expensive to repair?

Thermador, at a $471 median across 83 completed repairs, followed by KitchenAid at $427 and Electrolux at $400. Among mainstream brands LG is highest at $397. The cheapest is Amana at $325. All figures include the part, the labour and the service call together.

Does the brand I buy change what repairs will cost me?

Far less than people assume. The five most common brands in US homes — Samsung, GE, Frigidaire, Whirlpool and Maytag — sit within $32 of each other at the median, from $375 down to $343. A repair bill is mostly labour and the service call, and a technician spends comparable time on the same job regardless of the badge. If you are choosing between mainstream brands, future repair cost is not a useful tiebreaker.

Are premium appliances much more expensive to fix?

More expensive, but the bigger difference is the spread rather than the average. Thermador’s median is $471 against Amana’s $325 — a 45% gap. But the middle half of Thermador jobs runs $330 to $787, more than twice as wide as Amana’s $280 to $376. Premium equipment does not carry a fixed premium so much as a wider range of outcomes, most of them ordinary and a few of them not.

Why do owners of expensive brands repair more often?

Because the decision is set by replacement cost, not repair cost. KitchenAid is the second most expensive brand to repair and the least likely to be declined at 26.6%; Amana is the cheapest to repair and among the most declined at 37.5%. A built-in that costs thousands to replace makes a $427 repair obviously worthwhile, while an entry-level machine that can be replaced for a few hundred dollars does not.

Which appliance costs the most to repair?

The refrigerator, for every brand we measured without exception — from $480 on a KitchenAid down to $365 on a Maytag. Dishwashers are consistently the cheapest. The appliance moves the bill by more than a hundred dollars; the brand moves it by a few tens. If you want to predict a repair cost, start with the machine rather than the badge.

Are LG refrigerators expensive to repair?

They are the most expensive mainstream brand-appliance combination in our records, at a $445 median against $404 for Samsung and $381 for Whirlpool. LG refrigerators appear consistently at the expensive end of our refrigerator work, consistent with sealed-system repairs making up a larger share of what we see on them.

Does a higher repair cost mean a brand is less reliable?

No, and the two should not be read together. This page measures what a repair costs when one is needed, driven by build complexity, part pricing and how accessible components are. It says nothing about how often repairs are needed. Our workload also reflects which brands are installed in the homes we serve, so a brand appearing often here means it is common, not that it is fragile.

Can I use these numbers in my own article or report?

Yes. Quote any figure with a link back so readers can check the methodology and the sample sizes. If you need a brand or appliance combination we have not published because it fell below our reporting threshold, write to us and we will tell you whether the sample supports an answer.

Whatever brand it is, the diagnosis is the same price

Our $99 diagnostic is applied to the repair when you approve it — and we service every brand in the table above. You get the specific component, the honest number, and a straight answer on whether the machine is worth it.

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