Data checked August 13, 2026 · source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics

How much does it cost to replace a central air conditioner?

A 3-ton changeout on existing ductwork, priced from live supply-house listings — and a plain reading of the refrigerant rule that changed on 27 July 2026, quoted from the Federal Register rather than paraphrased from it.

Where the money actually goes

The low column takes the cheapest verified material at every line and the fastest labour figure our sources support. The high column takes the most expensive material and the slowest labour. Nobody's real quote is all-low or all-high, so treat the two columns as the edges of the plausible range rather than as quotes.

How we got the labour hours

Two technicians, and here is the sum. Trane and Carrier both say 4-8 hours, which doubled is 8-16 man-hours. CoolingLoadGuide says 6-12 hours and is the only one that names its crew — two technicians — which doubled is 12-24. The union of the two is 8 to 24, and that is what we publish, with 12 — two technicians for six hours — as the typical case the metro table below uses. Note the load-bearing assumption: none of the manufacturers say whether their 4-8 hours is elapsed time or man-hours. We read it as elapsed and doubled it. If they meant man-hours, our labour figure is twice what it should be.

Sources: Trane - how long does it take to install an AC unit (4-8 hours) · Carrier - AC installation (4-8 hours) · CoolingLoadGuide AC labor cost 2026 (6-12 hours, crew of 2). Where a source gives a crew size and a duration but not man-hours, we multiply the two ourselves and say so.

What the permit costs

A dataset of 40 US cities, each fee taken from the city's own published schedule, puts the mean at $142 and the median at $119, from $25 in Boston to $558 in Phoenix. We read three schedules ourselves and got $131.52 in San Diego, $125.40 in Riverside and $118.12 in Chesapeake, Virginia — tightly clustered around that median.

Source: PermitCalculator HVAC permit dataset, 40 cities from published fee schedules.

The refrigerant rule, quoted rather than paraphrased

On 26 May 2026 the EPA published a final rule, effective 27 July 2026, that changed the deadline homeowners had been told about. Here is the operative sentence, verbatim:

“Removes the installation deadline for systems in the residential and light commercial air conditioning and heat pumps (AC/HP) subsector, where all specified components of such systems were domestically manufactured or imported before January 1, 2025.”

The 1 January 2026 install ban is gone. Equipment built or imported before 2025 may keep being installed until the stock runs out.

Two more things worth knowing:

• New York did not adopt the relief. We want to be careful here, because the common phrasing is wrong. New York does not “override” the federal rule. Its Part 494 regulations are independent, they kept the 1 January 2026 date, and the state's own May 2026 guidance does not mention the federal reconsideration at all. The effect on you is the same either way, but if someone tells you New York struck down the federal rule, they have the story wrong.
• It barely matters any more, because the stock is gone. We went through a supply house's condenser catalogue sorted by price — the first 24 units from 1.5 to 3 tons. Zero were R-410A. Twelve R-454B, twelve R-32. The one R-410A central condenser we could find listed anywhere, an ACiQ at $2,147, is out of stock. Whatever the rule says, the choice of refrigerant is in practice no longer yours to make.

Federal Register 2026-10387, docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0005, RIN 2060-AW39, 40 CFR Part 84. New York position from NYSDEC's Part 494 FAQ. Stock check: HVACDirect condenser catalogue, read 2026-08-13.

Do you have to replace the copper? Usually not.

A new line set is $289–$469 of material plus two to four man-hours, and it is one of the easiest line items for a quote to carry without justification. The refrigerant chemistry says it is often unnecessary.

R-454B uses the same POE-32 oil as R-410A and does not react with copper, so the existing line set can generally be reused in a like-for-like changeout — subject to the manufacturer's line-sizing rules, a nitrogen purge, evacuation, and a pressure and leak test. What is not allowed is charging R-454B into existing R-410A equipment: you cannot change flammability class in a retrofit. Reusing the copper and retrofitting the machine are two different things, and they get conflated constantly.

What genuinely is new with A2L refrigerants: practices that used to be manufacturer recommendations are now code requirements, systems holding more than 4 lb of refrigerant need a refrigerant detection system that self-tests hourly, and maximum charge is limited by the volume of the space served.

Refrigerant compatibility from HVAC School, sourced from a Chemours technical trainer. Installation practice from ACCA and ACHR News / ESCO Institute. We could not open a single OEM installation manual — every manufacturer document server refused our requests — so check your specific unit's instructions before relying on this.

What the equipment costs

Note what the tonnage ladder does to the per-ton price: $742 a ton at 2 tons, $655 at 3 tons, $523 at 5 tons. The common claim that residential condensers run a flat $650–$700 per ton only holds near 3 tons. Bigger equipment is cheaper per ton, not the same per ton.

Source: HVACDirect condenser and coil listings, checked 2026-08-13.

Specific products, with the price we saw

Not a recommendation and not an affiliate link. These are the listings we checked on 2026-08-13, so you can see whether the equipment line on your quote is close to retail.

Retail prices move. If one of these is wrong now, tell us and we will fix it with the date.

Parts list

What this job costs in 49 US metro areas

Materials cost roughly the same everywhere. Labour does not. The wage column is US government data; the labour column is that wage run through our published multiplier; the total applies it to the job above. On the same work San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara comes out 19% higher than Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater at the top of the range and 8% higher at the bottom — the two differ because materials, permits and disposal do not move with the wage.

Wages: BLS OEWS May 2025, SOC 49-9021 — public domain. Metros where BLS suppressed the figure are left out rather than estimated. Totals are FieldPricing calculations from the parts and hours on this page — they are not quotes and no contractor has agreed to them.

What did you actually pay?

Everything above this line is arithmetic on public data. It is honest, and it is not the same thing as a real invoice. If you have had this work done, the number on your invoice is worth more to the next reader than anything we can calculate.

What did you pay in total? Just the number is fine. $1,850, or "about 2 grand". Where? City and state. We publish this; it is the whole point.

When? Month and year is enough. What did it cover? Materials included? Permit? Removal of the old work? Anything unusual? This is the part that makes your number useful to somebody else. Email — optional Only used if we need to ask you one question before publishing. Never shown, never sold, never mailed to.

Website

Send it in

No account, no login, no newsletter. A person reads every submission before it appears, so it will not show up instantly. If we cannot make sense of one, we leave it out rather than guess — and if you would rather just email it, that works too.

What actually moves the price

Tonnage, and the fact that per-ton price falls as size rises

$742 a ton at 2 tons, $655 at 3, $523 at 5. That is not a volume discount you negotiate; it is how the equipment is priced. It also means oversizing is cheaper per ton than it looks and worse for you than it looks — an oversized system short-cycles, dehumidifies badly and wears out faster.

Whether the coil is being replaced too

It should be. A new condenser matched to an old coil is a mismatched system: the rated efficiency does not apply, and under the EPA rule above the pre-2025 exemption requires all components to qualify. The coil is $681-$772, roughly a quarter of the equipment cost.

The line set

$289-$469 plus two to four man-hours if replaced, zero if reused. Often reusable. Ask why if the quote replaces it — there are good reasons (damage, wrong size, a burnout that contaminated the oil) and there is also inertia.

Where the indoor unit lives

An attic air handler is slower to work on than a closet, and every source lists accessibility as a driver of the 4-to-8-hour spread. None of them quantifies it, so neither will we.

Electrical

An older panel, undersized wiring or a dead disconnect turns a one-day changeout into a two-day job with a second trade involved. The disconnect box itself is only $44-$48; the panel behind it is not.

Your city's permit desk

$25 in Boston, $558 in Phoenix, median $119. A contractor who tells you the job does not need a permit is usually telling you they do not want to pull one.

Code requirements that cost money

These are the things an inspector will look for, and each one is a line on the invoice that a homeowner often reads as padding. Mostly it is not.

• EPA AIM Act technology transitions — the installation deadline — Removed for residential and light commercial AC and heat pumps where all specified components were manufactured domestically or imported before 1 January 2025. Published 26 May 2026, effective 27 July 2026. Source.
• A2L refrigerant detection systems — Systems with more than 4 lb of A2L refrigerant require a refrigerant detection system, factory or field installed, that self-tests every hour. Maximum charge is capped by the cubic volume of the conditioned space. Practices that used to be recommended — nitrogen purge, evacuation, leak and pressure test — are now mandatory. Source.
• Retrofitting existing equipment is prohibited — You may reuse a line set. You may not charge an A2L refrigerant into equipment designed for an A1 refrigerant — flammability class cannot change in a retrofit. Source.

Refrigerant rules cited here are federal and apply everywhere in the US, except that some states — New York in particular — impose stricter dates of their own. Your jurisdiction adopts its own version of the model code — check locally before relying on any of this.

What we could not verify

We publish this list because a cost page that never admits a gap is not telling you the truth.

• Any OEM installation manual. Every manufacturer document server we tried refused the request, as did AHRI's A2L best-practice PDFs. The line-set reuse guidance above rests on a refrigerant manufacturer's technical trainer, ACCA and ACHR News — good sources, but not the manual for your specific unit.
• Whether a chemical flush is ever mandatory going from R-410A to R-454B. Every source defers to the manufacturer's instructions, so we cannot answer it generally.
• Extra time for an attic air handler versus a closet, and for a crane on a rooftop unit. Listed as drivers everywhere, quantified nowhere.
• Crew size from Trane or Carrier. Neither states it, and neither says whether their 4-8 hours is elapsed time or man-hours. We assumed elapsed time with two technicians, which is what CoolingLoadGuide states explicitly. If they meant man-hours, our labour figure is roughly double what it should be, and we would rather flag that than hide it.
• Haul-away or scrap value of the old condenser.
• Whether the refrigerant detection system that A2L equipment above 4 lb of charge requires is factory-fitted or a field-installed extra on the units we priced. A 3-ton R-454B split system is over that threshold and there is no line for one in the bill of materials above. If yours is field-installed, our figure is short by whatever it costs.

How we got these numbers

• Wages — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC 49-9021 (Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers), pulled through the BLS public API. US federal data, public domain.
• Billed rate — wage × 1.3 labour burden × 1.70–2.454 overhead and profit, so 2.21×–3.19× the wage. Our assumption, published in full on the methodology page so you can disagree with it.
• Equipment and parts — retailer and supply-house listings, each linked above, checked 2026-08-13.
• Labour hours — Trane - how long does it take to install an AC unit (4-8 hours) · Carrier - AC installation (4-8 hours) · CoolingLoadGuide AC labor cost 2026 (6-12 hours, crew of 2).
• Permit fees — PermitCalculator HVAC permit dataset, 40 cities from published fee schedules.

We do not use RSMeans or Craftsman cost data. Their licences forbid building a database from them, so every number here traces to a public source or a public listing you can open yourself.

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