Guides & rules

What a Panel Upgrade Costs in Austin

We publish what the rules actually say about electrical work across the Austin metro — sourced, dated, and specific to your permit office and your utility. The work itself is carried out by electricians licensed by the state.

By Charles Kiptoo (Not a licensed electrician)·Published 23 August 2026·Updated 23 August 2026

Published Texas figures put most panel work in a roughly $2,200 to $4,500 range - the spread is not haggling room, it is three different jobs wearing one name. A same-size panel swap sits at the bottom, adding the meter base moves it up, and changing the service itself brings the utility into the job and the quote past the panel ranges entirely.

What is actually published, and by whom

Start with the market fact nobody says out loud: the contractors who rank for this question in Austin mostly publish no numbers at all. Malco Electric — an Austin firm licensed since 1983 — maintains a whole page on panel upgrade cost whose position is that no two jobs are identical and only an in-home assessment produces a reliable quote. That is a defensible position, and it is also why searching this question returns so little you can hold on to.

The most concrete figures we could verify at source come from Dr. Watts Electric, a licensed Texas electrical contractor an hour north of Austin (licence verifiable at the source link below), on a page dated 3 December 2025. Their published ranges for Texas panel work:

• Basic panel swap, same amperage: typically in the $2,200 to $2,800 range;
• Upgrade from 100A to 200A: typically $2,800 to $3,800;
• Heavy-up (service size increase): typically $3,200 to $4,500;
• Subpanel added for a garage or shop: typically $900 to $1,500.

Those are Central Texas figures from one contractor, not Austin averages — there is no published, dated, Austin-specific number this page could verify at source, and where we could not read a figure at its source it is not quoted here. What the ranges are for is calibration: if a quote lands far outside them, the difference should be explainable by something on this page.

Why the spread is that wide

Because "panel upgrade" is not one job. It is up to three jobs wearing one name, and the quote depends on which yours turns out to be.

The panel alone. Same service size, new equipment in the same place. The bottom of every published range assumes this.

The panel plus the utility-side hardware. A house old enough to need a panel is often old enough to need the meter base or the mast too, and on many Austin houses the conductors feeding the panel are part of the conversation — this is where aluminium-era wiring makes the job bigger than the panel.

The panel plus a service upgrade. If the amperage of the service itself is changing, Austin Energy's paperwork comes before the city's permit, and the sequencing is its own subject — the service upgrade process guide walks it end to end. This is the rung where quotes climb past the published panel ranges, and legitimately so.

One more mover that is specific to this city: the permit. Panel and service work sits squarely in permitted territory, and the main electric service is the one job Austin's homeowner permit route explicitly does not cover — so the contractor's licence and permit handling are part of what the price buys.

The EV charger wrinkle

A lot of panel questions in Austin are really EV charger questions arriving a sentence early: the charger needs a 240V circuit the panel cannot spare. Austin Energy's published Home Charging rebate covers 50% of the cost to buy and install a qualified Level 2 station, up to $1,200 for a Power Partner-compatible station and up to $900 for a non-compatible one — read at the utility's own page on the date below. The rebate attaches to the charging station, not to the panel; but if the charger is why the panel is changing, it is real money against the project.

How to read a quote against this page

Ask which of the three jobs the quote describes, in writing. Ask whether the meter base and mast are in or out. Ask who files the permit and who meets the utility. Then check the licence — the two-minute TDLR lookup — and put the rest of the questions to them before anyone touches the panel. A quote that cannot say which rung of the ladder it is pricing is not a low quote or a high quote. It is an unfinished one.