Dishwasher Repair Cost: Real Prices from 2,114 Jobs

💲 What a Dishwasher Repair Costs

Here is the shape of the whole dataset. The median is the middle invoice; the range covers the middle half of jobs, so a quarter of repairs came in under the low figure and a quarter went above the high one. Full pricing from real invoices: Bosch dishwasher repair.

Median and interquartile range from completed dishwasher repairs where a part was installed. Every figure includes parts, labor and the service call. Full pricing from real invoices: KitchenAid appliance repair. You can match your own dishwasher and fault code against these medians in the appliance repair cost calculator.

What that means in practice: if a technician quotes you $340 to fix a dishwasher that will not drain, that quote sits almost exactly on the median of two thousand real repairs. If someone quotes $700 for the same symptom, the number is worth a second question — not because it is impossible, but because it lands in the top few percent of everything we have on record. Full pricing from real invoices: Bosch dishwasher error codes.

🔍 What the $99 Diagnostic Buys

The visit starts at $99, and that amount comes straight off the repair when you approve the work. What you get for it is a technician with a meter on your machine rather than a guess over the phone.

A dishwasher that will not drain has at least four plausible causes: a blocked filter, a failed drain pump, a clogged air gap and a stuck check valve. Three of those are cheap. One is not. The only way to know which one you have is to open the unit, and that is what the diagnostic covers — the technician isolates the actual fault, then quotes a firm number before touching anything.

You approve the price before the repair starts. No open-ended hourly meter, no surprise line items at the end.

🧾 Dishwasher Repair Prices by Part

This is where the money actually goes. Each figure is the median full invoice for that repair, with the number of jobs behind it so you can see how solid the figure is.

Median full invoice per repair type. Cells with fewer than ten completed jobs are not published.

Will Not Drain — Drain Pump, $335

Standing water at the bottom of the tub after a cycle is the single most common dishwasher complaint we see. The drain pump is the usual culprit once the filter and air gap are ruled out, and at 99 completed jobs this is one of the better-supported figures on the page.

The pump itself is not an expensive component. What drives the invoice is access: on most models the dishwasher has to come out from under the counter, the water line and drain hose disconnect, and the unit goes back in level and resealed. That is where the labor sits. Related reading if this is your symptom: dishwasher not draining.

Will Not Clean — Wash Pump, $367

Dishes coming out gritty, with food still baked on, usually points at circulation rather than drainage. Water is not reaching the spray arms with enough force. With 118 jobs behind it, the wash pump is the largest single repair category in the dishwasher dataset.

Before it gets to the pump, a technician checks the spray arms for blocked jets and the filter for buildup, because those cost nothing to fix and account for a real share of the complaint. If water pressure is fine and the arms spin freely, the pump is next. More on the symptom: dishwasher not cleaning dishes.

Will Not Start — Control Board, $369

A panel that lights up and then does nothing, a cycle that starts and stops, buttons that respond intermittently — these point at the control board. At $369 median across 57 jobs, this is the most expensive standard dishwasher repair, and the reason is the part rather than the labor.

The board is worth confirming carefully before replacing, because a failed door latch produces very similar behavior at a fraction of the price. A machine that will not start because it does not believe the door is shut is a different repair entirely. See also: dishwasher will not start.

Leaking — Door Seal, $292

At $292 the door gasket is the cheapest repair in the table, and it is also the one homeowners most often postpone. Water on the floor after every cycle is easy to mop and easy to ignore, but a dishwasher that leaks under the door is wetting the subfloor and the cabinet edge on each run.

The seal is a wear part. Detergent residue hardens it, the door closes a fraction less tightly each year, and eventually the bead of water starts escaping at the bottom corners. If your leak is coming from underneath rather than the door line, the cause is different: dishwasher leaking from the bottom.

Will Not Fill — Water Inlet Valve, $330

A cycle that runs dry, or a tub that fills far too slowly, usually means the inlet valve is not opening properly. The valve is a small electrically operated gate on the water supply, and hard water shortens its life considerably by leaving deposits on the seat.

In hard-water areas this repair shows up years earlier than it should. If your area runs hard, the same mineral load is also working on the heating element and the spray jets: hard water and your dishwasher.

Will Not Dry — Heating Element, $355

Dishes that come out clean but soaking wet point at the heating element, which both raises the wash temperature and drives the drying phase. At $355 across 24 jobs this is a mid-range repair.

Worth ruling out first: many modern dishwashers rely on condensation drying rather than a hot element, and plastic items simply do not dry well in them by design. A technician confirms the element is actually dead rather than working as intended.

🏷️ Dishwasher Repair Cost by Brand

Brand moves the number less than most people expect, but it moves it. Across eight brands with enough completed jobs to publish, the spread runs from $310 to $375 — about 20 percent from bottom to top.

Median full invoice by brand, published only where at least 25 completed jobs support the figure.

The tight middle of that table is worth noticing. Whirlpool, LG, GE and Samsung land within two dollars of each other across more than 900 combined jobs. For the four highest-volume brands in American kitchens, brand is effectively not a pricing factor — what you have broken matters far more than whose badge is on the door.

KitchenAid sits highest at $375, driven by parts pricing rather than harder labor. Frigidaire and Bosch sit at the bottom of the range. If you want the same comparison across every appliance type rather than just dishwashers, we publish it here: appliance repair cost by brand.

📍 Does Location Change the Price?

Less than you would guess. Across four states with enough jobs to publish, dishwasher repair medians sit within 40 dollars of each other.

Median full invoice by state, published only where at least 50 completed jobs support the figure.

Georgia, Florida and Texas land within three dollars of one another across nearly 1,900 jobs. That consistency is the useful finding here: a dishwasher repair quote in Atlanta and the same quote in Miami should look roughly alike, and if one is dramatically higher, geography is not the explanation.

North Carolina runs about 40 dollars lower on a smaller sample of 133 jobs. Local pricing pages, if you want the number for your metro rather than your state: Atlanta, Miami, Tampa and Charlotte.

⚖️ Repair or Replace: The Arithmetic

A new mid-range dishwasher runs roughly 500 to 900 dollars before installation and haul-away. Set the repair quote next to that number and the decision usually makes itself.

Dishwashers as a category last a long time. If you want the lifespan numbers before deciding: how long dishwashers last.

📊 Where These Numbers Come From

Most appliance pricing published online is an estimate: a range assembled from contractor surveys, or a calculator that multiplies a labor rate by a guessed number of hours. This page is neither.

Every figure is drawn from completed dishwasher repairs in our own service records — 2,114 of them, each one an invoice a customer actually paid. The method is deliberately boring, and we publish it so the numbers can be checked:

The same dataset, across all nine appliance types and 65,924 completed jobs: appliance repair cost, real prices from 65,924 jobs.