Do handymen have to be licensed in Texas?

No, and this is the single most important thing to understand before you hire one. The state licensing agency’s own index of regulated industries lists the specialty trades, air conditioning and refrigeration contractors, electricians, elevator and escalator safety, mold assessors and remediators, and more, and there is no handyman program on it, nor a general contractor program. That means there is no license number to look up, no registry to check, and no state board that will hear a complaint about a badly hung door. Some Austin companies still describe themselves as licensed, and what they generally mean is a city or trade registration, or licensed trade partners they bring in, or a business filing. It is a fair thing to say and a poor thing to rely on. In an unlicensed trade the things that actually protect you are an insurance claim in writing, a written scope and estimate, a warranty, and a named human being who answers the phone, which is why this page ranks on exactly those.

What does a handyman actually cost in Austin?

Almost nobody publishes it, which is why the two companies that do sit at the top of this page. Mr. Done Right prints a full rate card: $250 for the first hour, then $95 an hour for the first person, $65 an hour for a second worker, and $55 an hour for a third and each after that, with materials billed as a straight pass-through. Andyman Home Improvement sells time in blocks instead, a half day of four to five hours starting at $300 in labor and a full day of eight to nine hours starting at $400, materials not included. ATX Construction publishes project ranges rather than rates, including interior painting at $200 to $600 a room and luxury vinyl plank at $9 to $18 a square foot installed. Two more numbers exist in the vertical and neither is a labor rate: one cut listing prints TV mounting from $65 to $130, for that one task and nothing else, and a franchise operator sells home-care memberships from $19 to $150 a month while pricing its half-day and full-day packages nowhere. Everyone else quotes after a call or a walkthrough. A first-hour or trip minimum is normal in this trade, so ask what it is, ask whether the clock starts at your door or at the shop, and ask whether materials carry a markup.

How do I tell a real Austin handyman from a lead site or an abandoned listing?

Open the website before you call the number, and give it 30 seconds. The tells we found in real Austin listings while building this page: a services page written in Latin placeholder text under a different company’s name and a different trade; a site header still showing its builder’s demo login; a page source carrying an unfinished instruction to set the document title; a form asking for your zip code so it can find a professional near you, on a domain that has nothing to do with the business name; a domain that now redirects to an expired-domain marketplace; a domain with no DNS record; a bare 404; and one listing whose domain now serves an overseas gambling site. Seven of the 28 Austin handyman listings that publish a website fall into that group. Scroll to the footer as well as reading the top: one Austin listing’s website prints a street address in King George, Virginia, and a Northern Virginia phone number. A real shop survives three questions a template cannot: who by name is accountable for this work, which parts of town do you actually work, and what do you charge for the first hour.

Handyman or licensed trade: which one do I need?

Use the handyman for the list and the licensed trade for the system. A handyman is the right call for drywall patching and texture matching, doors that stick and hardware that rattles, trim and baseboards, rotted siding and window sills, TV and shelf mounting, blinds and curtain rods, furniture assembly, fence pickets and gate latches, fixture swaps, and the whole inspection-report punch list before a sale. Replacing a light fixture, a switch, an outlet, a faucet, a showerhead, or a garbage disposal is normal handyman work, and Active Austin Handyman’s site draws that boundary about where it should be. New circuits, panel work, gas lines, repiping, sewer work, and anything that involves your air conditioning system belong to a licensed electrician, plumber, or air conditioning contractor, which the state does license and which you can look up. The better Austin handymen say this themselves: Heritage brings in licensed trade partners when the work requires it, and Best Austin Handyman keeps plumbing, electrical, and carpentry under one roof for the same reason.

Which Austin handymen will tell you where they actually work?

Fewer than you would expect, and it is a useful filter. Heritage Handyman names neighborhoods rather than counties, listing West Lake Hills, downtown and the east side, Tarrytown, Travis Heights, Hyde Park, Zilker, and Circle C. My Uncle Gus publishes a page per area, naming central, north, south, east, and west Austin plus Hyde Park, Oak Hill, Jollyville, Mueller, and the Domain area. The Handyman Can ATX does the rarer thing and narrows its own map in writing, saying it focuses on South Austin and downtown and will look at anything further out on request. Andyman states Austin and all of Travis County plus Round Rock, Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville, Georgetown, and Hutto. ATX Construction runs a page per community out into the suburbs and says there are no travel fees to any of them, and OnCall draws its area as Travis, Williamson, Hays, and Bastrop counties. At the other end, one cut listing claims 40 or more cities. A shop with a route beats a shop with a map of Central Texas, because the route is why they show up on time.

What should I ask before I book a handyman?

Six questions, in this order. What is the first-hour or minimum charge, and does the clock start at my house. Are you insured, and what does the coverage actually cover if something breaks. Who is doing the work, you or a crew, and is that person an employee. Will I get the estimate in writing with the scope on it before anything starts. What happens if the repair does not hold, and is that a warranty or goodwill. And is this job inside what you do, or does part of it need a licensed trade. The last one saves the most grief. Note the guarantees the better shops volunteer: Best Austin Handyman publishes one full year warranty on all jobs, My Uncle Gus stands behind its work with what it calls a handshake guarantee, and R. Patrick Carroll commits to answering an inquiry inside 48 hours. Ask any company that offers none of that what recourse you have, because in the silence the answer is usually none.

Are Austin’s handyman brands actually local?

The names you have heard of mostly are not, and the structure is worth knowing. Mr. Handyman’s own local page calls the business Mr. Handyman, a Neighborly company, and its franchisees, Neighborly being the national home-services group. Monty’s is the more interesting case, because it presents as an Austin shop, publishes real membership pricing, and describes its own ambition as building the most trusted home service brand in America through a nationwide network of elite franchise owners, with city pages for San Antonio, Houston, Plano, Frisco, Nashville, Jacksonville, Salt Lake City, and Boise in its sitemap. Foster’s Art Installation is Austin-based and serves Dallas and other states. None of that makes them bad choices, and a franchise crew can do excellent work. It does mean the thing you are hiring is a system with a territory rather than a shop with an owner, and this page ranks the second kind, which is why every company on the list above answers to somebody whose name we could find in Austin.

Who are Austin’s longest-running handyman companies?

By each company’s own published claims, and treating a duration claim as exactly that: OnCall Home and Commercial Services says since 1998, the earliest start date anyone on this page puts in print. Mr. Done Right says it has served Austin since 2004 and names Nathaniel Peterson as the owner who has done the work since then. Best Austin Handyman publishes 20 or more years serving Austin and R. Patrick Carroll writes about over two decades of it, both without printing a founding year. Heritage Handyman claims more than 18 years and Austin Emergency Handyman over 15, again with no year attached. ATX Construction dates itself to 2014, and The Handyman Can ATX to 2020, the youngest shop on the page and the one with the most original service model. We have not computed a founding year for any company that publishes only a duration, because a rolling claim quietly ages itself and the arithmetic would be ours, not theirs.

The Austin Shortlist · Updated September 2026 · 12 picks

The best handyman services in Austin.

The best handyman services in Austin are Mr. Done Right Handyman, an East Austin company working the city since 2004 under the only full labor rate card published in the vertical, Andyman Home Improvement, which prices handyman work as half-day and full-day blocks starting at $300 and $400 in labor, and ATX Construction, locally owned since 2014, insured with general liability and workers compensation in its own words, and running its own crews rather than subcontracting. Texas does not license handymen, so this page ranks on what a company will state in public before you call it: a rate or a package price, a written scope, a service area, an insurance claim in its own words, and a named person answerable for the work. Where a listing publishes none of that, or publishes a website that cannot answer a single question, the page says so instead of ranking it.

Carissa.

Writer, The Austin Newsletter · Updated September 2026

A handyman is the trade you call when the job is too small for a specialist and too real to keep ignoring, and it sits in a licensing gap wide enough to drive a truck through. Texas licenses the trades a handyman calls in when a job outgrows him. The state licensing agency’s own index of regulated industries opens with air conditioning and refrigeration contractors and runs through electricians, elevator and escalator safety, and mold assessors, and there is no handyman program on it, and no general contractor program either. There is no registry to check, no license number to look up, and no state body that will hear a complaint about a poorly hung door.

So this page ranks on the only thing that can be verified from outside: what each company is willing to put in public. Five things, in order of how much they change your decision. A published labor rate or package price, because a number in public is a promise a company has to keep. A written scope, so you know before you call whether they hang a TV, patch drywall, rebuild a rotted sill, or all three. A stated service area, because a shop that will name the neighborhoods it works is a shop with a route rather than a call center with a map of Texas. An insurance claim in the company’s own words. And a named human being, because in a trade with no license, the person is the credential.

The census made the second half of this page unavoidable. Of the 42 Austin-proper handyman listings we hold, 14 publish no website at all, and among the 28 that do, seven lead somewhere that cannot answer a single question a homeowner would ask: a domain that redirects to an expired-domain marketplace, a dead 404, a domain with no DNS record left, an unfinished site-builder shell, a zip-code lead form on an unrelated domain, a services page of Latin placeholder text describing a heating and cooling company, and a template still displaying its own builder’s filler login. One 78704 listing now resolves to a foreign online-lottery site. Every one of those is a real Austin business row with a real phone number, and the cut and bench lists below name them and say what we found.

Prices, where published, are quoted exactly. Most of this trade will not put a number in public at all, and the two companies that publish real labor rates sit at the top of this page substantially because of it.

01 · East Austin
Mr. Done Right Handyman
The only company in the vertical that publishes a full rate card, and it is not close. Their pricing page prints the whole structure: $250 for the first hour of work, then $95 an hour for the first person, $65 an hour for a second worker, and $55 an hour for a third and each one after that, with two worked examples doing the arithmetic for a four-hour two-person job and an eight-hour three-person job. Materials are billed as a straight pass-through cost, their words, with volume discounts passed along. Verbal estimates are free; a written estimate for an insurance claim is billed hourly, which is an unusually honest thing to admit in advance. Nathaniel Peterson is named as owner on the about page, working Austin since 2004 with an engineering background, and the company says plainly it works in two or three-person teams depending on the job. If your first question is what will this cost, this is the only Austin handyman whose site answers it before you dial.
Austin independent since 2004, owner named. Published labor rates: $250 first hour, then $95/hr first person, $65/hr second, $55/hr third and each additional. Materials at pass-through cost. Free verbal estimates; written estimates billed hourly. Teams of two or three.
Owner: Nathaniel Peterson
Visit their site
02 · Milwood
Andyman Home Improvement
The other company that prints numbers, and it prices the thing homeowners actually buy: a day of somebody competent working through a list. A half day runs four to five hours starting at $300 in labor, a full day runs eight to nine hours starting at $400 in labor, and the page says materials are not included and that final pricing depends on scope and complexity, which is the caveat a company writes when it intends to honor the headline. The service list is built around the multi-task visit rather than the single call, and it names the situations it is for: rental property repairs, move-in and move-out fixes, home sale preparation, failed inspection corrections, and honey-do lists. Family owned and operated, fully insured by its own description, with a service area stated as the Austin area covering all of Travis County plus Round Rock, Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville, Georgetown, and Hutto, and a promise of a free online quote inside 24 hours from a form that takes project photos.
Family owned and operated. Published labor blocks: half day 4 to 5 hours from $300, full day 8 to 9 hours from $400, materials not included. Free online quote within 24 hours. Service area: Austin and all Travis County, plus Round Rock, Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville, Georgetown, and Hutto.
Visit their site
03 · Greater South River City
ATX Construction
The pick for the job that starts as a repair and turns out to be a project. Locally owned and working Austin since 2014, and the two claims that matter most in an unlicensed trade are both in the company’s own words: it carries general liability insurance and workers compensation coverage at all times, and when ATX shows up, our own crew does the work, we don’t outsource your project to unknown subcontractors. Estimates are written, line-itemized, and free, permit applications for permitted work are handled rather than handed back to you, and there are no travel fees anywhere in the service area. It also runs the deepest published cost library in the vertical, with real ranges from its own Austin jobs: interior painting at $200 to $600 a room, luxury vinyl plank flooring at $9 to $18 a square foot installed, a pressure-treated wood deck at $8,000 to $20,000, kitchens from a $1,500 cabinet refresh to a $92,000 gut renovation. A note for the census-minded: this company holds two of our Austin rows and is one operator on one domain.
Austin-owned since 2014. General liability insurance and workers compensation claimed in writing; own crews, no subcontracting; free written line-itemized estimates; permits handled; no travel fees in the service area. Published cost guides rather than an hourly rate.
Visit their site
04 · Greater South River City
Heritage Handyman
The best-organized handyman site on this page, and the one that draws its map tightest. Heritage describes itself as an artist-owned, homeowner-focused company serving Austin, doing everyday repairs, upgrades, inspection lists, and finished details for more than 18 years. Its homepage names the neighborhoods it works, West Lake Hills, downtown and the east side, Tarrytown, Travis Heights, Hyde Park, Zilker, and Circle C, which tells you more about how a shop actually operates than a county list ever does. The service catalog is broken into fifteen named categories, ten primary and five more below them, from drywall and doors through electrical and lighting, plumbing and fixtures, caulking and sealants, masonry, irrigation and drainage, framing and access work, and a category simply called task lists and maintenance, which is the honest name for what most people want. It calls itself an insured Austin handyman company, promises “clear estimates before work begins” and “owner-led accountability”, and says “licensed trade partners” are brought in when the work requires it, which is the only sense in which the word licensed means anything in this trade.
Insured by its own claim; “licensed trade partners” brought in when the work requires it; clear estimates before work begins. Duration claim of more than 18 years, no founding year published. Named neighborhoods across central, west, and south Austin. Rates by quote.
Visit their site
05 · Windsor Hills
My Uncle Gus
The most useful site in the vertical if you are trying to work out whether your job is even a handyman job. Twenty services are each written up on their own page, from drywall patching and texture matching through ceiling fans, small electrical, fixture swaps and under-sink plumbing, gutter repair, floor repair, fence and gate fixes, junk removal, and rental make-ready punch lists, and there is a separate page for Austin naming central, north, south, east, and west Austin plus Hyde Park, Oak Hill, Jollyville, Mueller, and the Domain area. It is written for homeowners, landlords, real estate agents, and property managers, and it says small jobs welcome, which is the sentence most of this trade will not commit to. Fully insured by its own claim, free estimates by call or text with photos, and it handles the same-day question honestly, answering that same-day availability may be possible depending on the schedule and the type of repair rather than promising it flatly.
Fully insured by its own claim; small jobs welcome; free estimate by call, text, or photo upload; online booking. Same-day availability answered as conditional, not guaranteed. Austin named as the main service area with neighborhoods listed. Rates by quote.
Visit their site
06 · South Brodie
The Handyman Can ATX
The most interesting service model on the page, and the shop that narrows its own map in writing rather than widening it. Started in 2020 by a Texas native and longtime Austinite, run by Jon, who describes himself on the about page as owner, music lover, and main handyman, and it says outright that it focuses on South Austin and downtown, then adds that a project outside that area is worth a call anyway. The retainer service is the part nobody else offers: a monthly arrangement that secures both the work and regular checkups, with a property report and a quarterly list of what the house needs next, and discounted rates for retainer clients. There is an Empty Nest service for travel, checking the property, bringing in mail, watering plants, and sending a weekly report. There is even mobile notary work, priced by documentation and distance, on the theory that fixing up a house sometimes means cleaning up the paperwork too. Make-ready work with your realtor and lawn care round it out, and the hours are published: weekdays, 7 in the morning to 6 at night.
Founded 2020, owner named. Stated focus on South Austin and downtown, wider work by request. Monthly retainer with property reports and discounted rates; travel-check service with weekly reports; mobile notary priced by documents and distance. Published hours, weekdays 7am to 6pm. Rates by consultation.
Owner: Jon
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07 · University Hills and Windsor Park
Best Austin Handyman & Remodeling
The clearest written commitments on the page after the two that publish rates. A family-operated Austin business whose banner reads “Licensed & Insured • Serving Austin 20+ Years”, it puts its promises in a list, and four of them are the ones a homeowner can hold it to: up-front pricing with zero surprise fees, one full year warranty on all jobs, plumbing, electrical, and carpentry under one roof, and small, local, and LGBTQ+ friendly. The process is spelled out: a free consultation first, then a detailed estimate broken down by line items with a step-by-step schedule, and when you call you speak with a knowledgeable member of our staff, not a call center. Its own positioning line is the most candid sentence we read all day: more expensive than a guy with a truck, but much less expensive than most large companies, you get insurance and warranties without the corporate markup. A one-year warranty on all work is the single strongest guarantee published in this vertical.
Family-operated; “Licensed & Insured” by its own banner, in a trade Texas does not license; duration claim of 20 or more years with no founding year published. One full year warranty on all jobs; up-front pricing with no surprise fees; free consultation then a line-item estimate and schedule. Plumbing, electrical, and carpentry in house.
Visit their site
08 · Circle C Ranch
R. Patrick Carroll III Handyman Services
A one-person shop with a scope list organized the way a homeowner actually thinks: install and replace, repair and maintain, build and remove. Under those headings it gets specific enough to answer your question without a phone call, naming dishwashers, washers, dryers, refrigerators, ovens and stoves, microwaves and garbage disposals, chandeliers and ceiling fans, faucets, showerheads, sinks and toilets, door hardware, hinges, window latches, blinds and curtain rods, security cameras, doorbells and smoke detectors, then leaky faucets and clogged drains, outlets and switches, tile, floors, drywall patching and painting, roof, gutter, and exterior repairs, bookshelves and closet systems, patios and pergolas, and demolition of sheds and playsets. Patrick writes in the first person about serving Austin as a handyman for over two decades and about trust, reliability, and communication being what the work runs on. Competitive pricing with discounts for senior citizens, military veterans, and first responders, larger projects by quote, and a stated 48-hour turnaround on inquiries.
Solo operator, owner named, duration claim of over two decades in Austin with no founding year published. Discounts stated for senior citizens, military veterans, and first responders; larger or custom projects by quote. Replies to inquiries within 48 hours by its own commitment.
Owner: R. Patrick Carroll III
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09 · Barton Hills
Papasan Home Services
The specialist for the handyman work that has a closing date attached to it. Jay and Wendy Papasan and Papasan Properties built this after helping more than 1,800 families with their real estate needs in Central Texas, wanting a way for clients to protect the investment without the hassle, and the service list reads exactly like that origin. It offers to help you prioritize and complete tasks from your home inspection report, which is the job with a closing date behind it, alongside make-ready remodels before a sale, updates after a purchase, and boots on the ground for non-local landlords, their phrase for the out-of-state owner problem. The trade work behind it is the real thing: appliance installations including venting and utility hook-ups, carpentry from door installation and trim to rot damage repair and siding, floor installs and repairs, sheetrock repair, texturing, and painting. It also works with landlords who need to clean up and remodel between tenants, its own line for the turnover. Free quote, and no rate published.
Austin-based, founders named, tied to a Central Texas real estate practice. Built around inspection-report lists, make-ready before a sale, post-purchase updates, tenant turnovers, and remote landlords. Free quote; no published rate.
Visit their site
10 · North Burnet-Gateway
OnCall Home and Commercial Services
The longest tenure claim we could verify in the vertical, and the widest span of work. Since 1998, by its own line, OnCall has offered Austin and the surrounding areas a range running from general handyman and construction maintenance all the way to complete remodels, additions, kitchens, bathrooms, outdoor living, and home exteriors, and it states plainly that it is “fully insured, licensed and professionally trained”, in a trade for which Texas issues no license. The service area is drawn in counties rather than neighborhoods, Travis, Williamson, Hays, and Bastrop, and there is a named six-step process from a free in-home consult to final touches, plus a free phone consultation whose pitch is that one company for everything saves money. It also invites realtors to ask about getting to closing faster. Rank it here rather than higher because the published detail is about renovation, not repair pricing: the small-job end of the range is real but the site does not put a number or a scope boundary on it.
Since 1998 by its own claim. “Fully insured, licensed and professionally trained” in its own words, and Texas licenses no handyman. Service area given as Travis, Williamson, Hays, and Bastrop counties. Free phone consultation and free in-home consult; six-step process published. No rate published.
Visit their site
11 · Four Points
Active Austin Handyman
A one-person shop whose service list goes item by item, which matters more than it sounds: that granularity is how a solo handyman tells you what he will not do. Casey Jinks introduces himself by name as the owner and says he specializes in large repairs and small remodels, and the categories underneath are specific enough to answer most of your question. Carpentry covers wood fence and gate repair, custom shelving, cabinetry, trim, baseboards, and siding. Door repair includes break-in repair, which nobody else names. Plumbing runs to hose bibs and outdoor faucets, shutoff valves, under-sink leaks, and water heater work. Electrical stops honestly at replacing fixtures, switches, outlets, and ceiling fans, which is the right boundary for an unlicensed trade. Wall mounting covers TVs, blinds and curtains, art, whiteboards, shelving, and mirrors. Call or text is the front door. One honest gap, and one thing worth scrolling for: no price of any kind appears on the site, and the service area is buried in a block of generic marketing copy under the list, where it names Austin plus Cedar Park, Leander, and Lakeway.
Solo operator, owner named. Itemized scope with an honest electrical boundary at fixture, switch, outlet, and fan replacement. Call or text to book. Service area stated only in the generic block at the foot of the page: Austin plus Cedar Park, Leander, and Lakeway. No pricing published, so ask.
Owner: Casey Jinks
Visit their site
12 · North Austin
Austin Emergency Handyman & Carpentry
The one shop on the page built around the repair that cannot wait until Tuesday. It describes itself as founded on providing reliable, high-quality repair work when you need it most, claims over 15 years of hands-on experience, states that “we are a fully licensed and insured business”, and frames the whole offer as 24/7 home repair. The service grid is the widest at the small-job end: gutter cleaning, window screens, rotten wood repair, wire concealment, shelf mounting, hanging mirrors and art, stucco repairs, LED light installation, wall slat installation, demolition, door lock and knob installation, fencing, decking, tile, flooring, drywall, junk removal, and furniture assembly. Its own FAQ does something useful and rare, explaining what a handyman is and what a handyman does before it tries to sell you anything, and it answers the licensing question against itself: a handyman does not need a license in the Austin area, its words, on the same site that calls itself fully licensed. Both are true at once, which is the whole shape of this trade. One thing to hold it to: it says its reputation is built on transparent pricing, and no price of any kind appears on the site, so make the estimate specific before the work starts.
Duration claim of over 15 years with no founding year published; “a fully licensed and insured business” in its own words, on a site whose own FAQ says a handyman needs no license here. Around-the-clock repair positioning; service area given only as the Austin, Texas area. Claims transparent pricing while publishing no rate, so get the estimate in writing.
Visit their site

Every Thursday

Independent Austin picks like these, three a week, in a free email from Carissa.

Considered and cut

Places that came up in the research and did not make the list, and why.

Mr. Handyman of South Austin/LakewayThe most recognizable name in the trade and the clearest franchise cut on the page. Its own local page describes the business as “Mr. Handyman, a Neighborly company, and its franchisees”, and the page’s legal and trademark text vests the content in Neighborly, the national home-services group. This page ranks independent, Austin-run operators, and a national franchise system is a different thing, whatever the local crew is like.
Monty’s HandymanThe hardest cut here, because Monty’s comes closest to the pricing this page rewards. It sells four memberships, at $19, $49, $109, and $150 a month, carrying labor discounts of 5 to 15 percent, yearly service credits, priority scheduling, and 30-point maintenance visits. Worth knowing before you get excited: its half-day and full-day service packages carry no price at all, so the membership is the only number it publishes. It reads as an Austin shop, and it is not one. Its own franchise page describes building the most trusted home service brand in America through a nationwide network of elite franchise owners, and its sitemap carries city pages for San Antonio, Houston, Plano, Frisco, Nashville, Jacksonville, Salt Lake City, Boise, and more. That is a franchise system with an Austin territory, not an independent Austin operator, and the membership model is worth a look on exactly those terms.
Foster’s Art InstallationA genuine specialist that argues its own way off this page. Its FAQ answers the question why not just hire a handyman by explaining that art installation is a specialized trade requiring museum-quality precision, and its service list is art hanging, mirror hanging, TV mounting, and drapes and shelves rather than home repair. It also answers where do you serve with Austin, Dallas and surrounding areas, as well as locations in various other states, which is a multi-city operator by this page’s standard. If your job is a heavy piece on a stucco or plaster wall, call them anyway; it is not the category.
Austin Installation ProsThe listing whose homepage promises the most and whose site delivers the least. The about page claims upfront, flat rate pricing with no overtime charges, a fixed right promise of done right or it is free, and 24-hour availability for emergencies, all of which would rank well here. Then the services page opens by describing a heating and cooling service company serving residential and commercial customers in North America, under a different company’s name, and every service description below it is untranslated Latin placeholder text. Unedited template copy from another trade is disqualifying on a page whose whole method is reading what companies publish.
Greater Austin HandymanThe site that looks most like a local shop and reads most like a funnel. Its banner awards itself a top ranking across Central Texas and names no rating, no reviewer, and no source for it, so there is nothing there to check. The footprint is stated as 40 or more local cities, with a list running from Austin out through Georgetown, Jarrell, Taylor, San Marcos, Elgin, and Bastrop. The service menu includes moving services for pianos and aquariums and porter services described as commercial cleaning and waste disposal, which is a dispatch business rather than a repair shop. A self-awarded ranking plus a 40-city radius is the opposite of what this page is looking for.
3 Guys HandymanThe census row’s own published website is not a company site. It resolves to a page on an unrelated domain, home-article.com, whose headline invites you to easily find a professional near you, whose form asks for a zip code, and whose service menu sprawls from chimney sweeping and grease traps to dryer vents and popcorn ceiling removal, the signature of a lead-generation network rather than a crew. It does carry the listing’s own Austin phone number, so this is their page rather than a hijacked one. There may well be three guys; the page names no person, no entity, and no address, and gives its coverage as Austin and nearby areas.
Consider it Done, Greater Austin Residential Service CompanyThe cautionary entry, and the reason to check a domain before you trust a listing. This is a real Bouldin Creek census row with a South Congress address, and the domain on that listing now serves a foreign online-lottery site in Indonesian, complete with deposit minimums and payment methods, with no trace of a handyman business left on it. We are not linking the domain anywhere, sources included. Whether the company still operates under another address is unknown from anything we can read; the web property has been lost.
Mighty Handy IncA real Franklin Park census row whose website no longer belongs to it. The domain redirects off itself to an expired-domain marketplace listing for the name, and that listing then refuses to load for us, so there is not even a sales page to read. An expired domain is not proof a business has closed, but it is proof there is nothing left to verify a claim against, and this page cannot rank a company on a redirect.
Austin Roofing Company & HandymanA roofing company with handyman in the name, and its own copy makes the case: the page cycles through roofer near me, innovative roofing solutions Austin, roofing services near me Austin, and sustainable roofing materials with top Austin TX roofing contractors, in prose written for a search engine rather than a homeowner. The handyman half is two sentences promising everything from minor fixes to larger tasks, with no itemized scope, no rate, and no named operator, and roofing has its own page in this program.
Real Handyman ServicesThe strangest thing we found. An Anderson Mill census row whose published website is, by its own footer, a business in King George, Virginia, printing a Virginia street address, a 703 area code phone number, and a 2023 copyright. The page also renders its site builder’s own demo session in the header, showing a visitor signed in as a filler address at godaddy.com, and its promises of transparent pricing and upfront estimates sit in stock copy with no rate, no service area, and no named person. Something may well operate at the Austin address; this website cannot tell you anything about it.
CallfasthandymanA Highland listing whose site is a stock handyman theme carrying three blog posts and a handful of one-line service pages: assembly, cabinet handles, cameras and security, curtains and shades, and TV mounting. The TV mounting post publishes a real number, from $65 to $130 in under an hour, which is more than most of this trade will do, and it is the only price anywhere on the site. What is missing is everything a homeowner needs next: no scope beyond those five headings, no company or owner information, no service area anywhere except inside that one post, which offers TV mounting in Austin and Pflugerville, and before this year’s single August post the site had been quiet since December 2024. Publish the shop behind the posts and this becomes a contender for the small-job end of the page.
Austin HandymanA Mesa Village listing on a generic domain whose copy claims craftsmen with over 30 years of experience in home and commercial maintenance and free written no-obligation estimates, and attaches those claims to nobody. There is no company entity named, no owner, no address beyond Austin, TX, and the site’s own promoted service is pressure washing. In a trade with no license, the named human being is the credential, and this page has none.
Home Source ConstructionAn Anderson Arbor listing whose published website returns a bare 404 from the web server with no site behind it. Nothing about the business is verifiable from its own pages because there are no pages, and a listing we cannot read is a listing we cannot rank.

On the bench

Real places we did not rank this time, and what we would need to.

Cap City HandymanHeld, not cut. The Wooten listing publishes a real-looking site, and what actually loads is a 1,962-byte shell that renders nothing without JavaScript: a title, a description promising repairs, painting, plumbing, electrical, and remodeling, and a free estimate. The page source still carries the builder’s instruction to set the document title, and its social preview image sits on an AI site-builder’s preview host, so the site looks unfinished rather than abandoned. Nothing here failed a standard. We simply could not read a page.
Ruff HandymanHeld on a technical failure, not a judgment. The Copperfield listing’s domain has no DNS record at all, so the site cannot be reached to be assessed, in either direction. That is different from a 404 and different from a company closing. If the domain comes back, this row gets read properly.
L7 Clean Green Home RepairHeld for a thin site rather than a thin business. The Mueller listing describes a reliable and honest handyman offering home services for residential and commercial properties in the Austin area, run by a duo aiming to be as environmentally friendly as we can, which is a real proposition nobody else on this page makes. But what loads is a single Wix screen carrying a 2022 copyright, and it holds no service list, no service area, and no pricing, so there is nothing to rank it on. An about page and a scope list would put it in contention.
Yellow Thistle Home ServicesHeld one criterion short. The Cherry Creek listing publishes a genuinely detailed scope in five groups, minor construction, build and install, refresh, repair, and outdoor, covering cabinets, shelving, curtains, blinds, mirrors, light fixtures, doorknobs, locks, doors and frames, outlets, switches, fans, plumbing fixtures, tile and flooring, paint, drywall, trim, fence and siding repair, and yard work, plus an Austin mailing address, a phone number, and an opening line about creating an inclusive environment for everyone. Custom installations are our specialty, it says, please reach out to us for a quote. What is missing is any stated service area or company history, and its site is a free-tier blog with no about page. Publish either and it belongs on the page.

Questions

Do handymen have to be licensed in Texas?: No, and this is the single most important thing to understand before you hire one. The state licensing agency’s own index of regulated industries lists the specialty trades, air conditioning and refrigeration contractors, electricians, elevator and escalator safety, mold assessors and remediators, and more, and there is no handyman program on it, nor a general contractor program. That means there is no license number to look up, no registry to check, and no state board that will hear a complaint about a badly hung door. Some Austin companies still describe themselves as licensed, and what they generally mean is a city or trade registration, or licensed trade partners they bring in, or a business filing. It is a fair thing to say and a poor thing to rely on. In an unlicensed trade the things that actually protect you are an insurance claim in writing, a written scope and estimate, a warranty, and a named human being who answers the phone, which is why this page ranks on exactly those.
What does a handyman actually cost in Austin?: Almost nobody publishes it, which is why the two companies that do sit at the top of this page. Mr. Done Right prints a full rate card: $250 for the first hour, then $95 an hour for the first person, $65 an hour for a second worker, and $55 an hour for a third and each after that, with materials billed as a straight pass-through. Andyman Home Improvement sells time in blocks instead, a half day of four to five hours starting at $300 in labor and a full day of eight to nine hours starting at $400, materials not included. ATX Construction publishes project ranges rather than rates, including interior painting at $200 to $600 a room and luxury vinyl plank at $9 to $18 a square foot installed. Two more numbers exist in the vertical and neither is a labor rate: one cut listing prints TV mounting from $65 to $130, for that one task and nothing else, and a franchise operator sells home-care memberships from $19 to $150 a month while pricing its half-day and full-day packages nowhere. Everyone else quotes after a call or a walkthrough. A first-hour or trip minimum is normal in this trade, so ask what it is, ask whether the clock starts at your door or at the shop, and ask whether materials carry a markup.
How do I tell a real Austin handyman from a lead site or an abandoned listing?: Open the website before you call the number, and give it 30 seconds. The tells we found in real Austin listings while building this page: a services page written in Latin placeholder text under a different company’s name and a different trade; a site header still showing its builder’s demo login; a page source carrying an unfinished instruction to set the document title; a form asking for your zip code so it can find a professional near you, on a domain that has nothing to do with the business name; a domain that now redirects to an expired-domain marketplace; a domain with no DNS record; a bare 404; and one listing whose domain now serves an overseas gambling site. Seven of the 28 Austin handyman listings that publish a website fall into that group. Scroll to the footer as well as reading the top: one Austin listing’s website prints a street address in King George, Virginia, and a Northern Virginia phone number. A real shop survives three questions a template cannot: who by name is accountable for this work, which parts of town do you actually work, and what do you charge for the first hour.
Handyman or licensed trade: which one do I need?: Use the handyman for the list and the licensed trade for the system. A handyman is the right call for drywall patching and texture matching, doors that stick and hardware that rattles, trim and baseboards, rotted siding and window sills, TV and shelf mounting, blinds and curtain rods, furniture assembly, fence pickets and gate latches, fixture swaps, and the whole inspection-report punch list before a sale. Replacing a light fixture, a switch, an outlet, a faucet, a showerhead, or a garbage disposal is normal handyman work, and Active Austin Handyman’s site draws that boundary about where it should be. New circuits, panel work, gas lines, repiping, sewer work, and anything that involves your air conditioning system belong to a licensed electrician, plumber, or air conditioning contractor, which the state does license and which you can look up. The better Austin handymen say this themselves: Heritage brings in licensed trade partners when the work requires it, and Best Austin Handyman keeps plumbing, electrical, and carpentry under one roof for the same reason.
Which Austin handymen will tell you where they actually work?: Fewer than you would expect, and it is a useful filter. Heritage Handyman names neighborhoods rather than counties, listing West Lake Hills, downtown and the east side, Tarrytown, Travis Heights, Hyde Park, Zilker, and Circle C. My Uncle Gus publishes a page per area, naming central, north, south, east, and west Austin plus Hyde Park, Oak Hill, Jollyville, Mueller, and the Domain area. The Handyman Can ATX does the rarer thing and narrows its own map in writing, saying it focuses on South Austin and downtown and will look at anything further out on request. Andyman states Austin and all of Travis County plus Round Rock, Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville, Georgetown, and Hutto. ATX Construction runs a page per community out into the suburbs and says there are no travel fees to any of them, and OnCall draws its area as Travis, Williamson, Hays, and Bastrop counties. At the other end, one cut listing claims 40 or more cities. A shop with a route beats a shop with a map of Central Texas, because the route is why they show up on time.
What should I ask before I book a handyman?: Six questions, in this order. What is the first-hour or minimum charge, and does the clock start at my house. Are you insured, and what does the coverage actually cover if something breaks. Who is doing the work, you or a crew, and is that person an employee. Will I get the estimate in writing with the scope on it before anything starts. What happens if the repair does not hold, and is that a warranty or goodwill. And is this job inside what you do, or does part of it need a licensed trade. The last one saves the most grief. Note the guarantees the better shops volunteer: Best Austin Handyman publishes one full year warranty on all jobs, My Uncle Gus stands behind its work with what it calls a handshake guarantee, and R. Patrick Carroll commits to answering an inquiry inside 48 hours. Ask any company that offers none of that what recourse you have, because in the silence the answer is usually none.
Are Austin’s handyman brands actually local?: The names you have heard of mostly are not, and the structure is worth knowing. Mr. Handyman’s own local page calls the business Mr. Handyman, a Neighborly company, and its franchisees, Neighborly being the national home-services group. Monty’s is the more interesting case, because it presents as an Austin shop, publishes real membership pricing, and describes its own ambition as building the most trusted home service brand in America through a nationwide network of elite franchise owners, with city pages for San Antonio, Houston, Plano, Frisco, Nashville, Jacksonville, Salt Lake City, and Boise in its sitemap. Foster’s Art Installation is Austin-based and serves Dallas and other states. None of that makes them bad choices, and a franchise crew can do excellent work. It does mean the thing you are hiring is a system with a territory rather than a shop with an owner, and this page ranks the second kind, which is why every company on the list above answers to somebody whose name we could find in Austin.
Who are Austin’s longest-running handyman companies?: By each company’s own published claims, and treating a duration claim as exactly that: OnCall Home and Commercial Services says since 1998, the earliest start date anyone on this page puts in print. Mr. Done Right says it has served Austin since 2004 and names Nathaniel Peterson as the owner who has done the work since then. Best Austin Handyman publishes 20 or more years serving Austin and R. Patrick Carroll writes about over two decades of it, both without printing a founding year. Heritage Handyman claims more than 18 years and Austin Emergency Handyman over 15, again with no year attached. ATX Construction dates itself to 2014, and The Handyman Can ATX to 2020, the youngest shop on the page and the one with the most original service model. We have not computed a founding year for any company that publishes only a duration, because a rolling claim quietly ages itself and the arithmetic would be ours, not theirs.

How this list was made

Our census holds 42 Austin-proper businesses whose primary category is handyman, spread across 35 neighborhoods, plus a handful more that carry handyman work under a different primary category. We took every one of them to its own website on 2026-09-09, reading homepages, about pages, service pages, pricing pages, service-area pages, and FAQs, roughly 80 fetches in total, and every claim on this page comes from those first-party reads. Because Texas licenses no handymen, verification here means four things: the scope read off the company’s own service pages rather than its banner, price claims quoted exactly and never rounded or inferred, ownership and tenure taken only from what a company says in its own voice, and insurance or warranty language recorded verbatim and never upgraded. Customer reviews embedded on company sites were treated as third-party text and excluded, which is why one owner named only in his own customers’ reviews is not named here. Franchise systems and multi-city operators are cut with the reason stated. Listings we could not read, because a domain had expired, lost its DNS record, returned a 404, or rendered an unfinished shell, are held on a bench rather than cut, because being unreadable is not a failing on the business’s part and it is not our place to publish it as one.

Of the 42 Austin-proper handyman listings in our census, 14 publish no website at all. Among the 28 that do, seven lead somewhere that cannot answer a single question a homeowner would ask: a domain that redirects off itself to an expired-domain marketplace, a bare 404, a domain with no DNS record left, an unfinished site-builder shell whose page source still carries the instruction to set its own title, a zip-code lead form living on an unrelated domain, a services page of Latin placeholder text describing a heating and cooling company in North America, and a site header still displaying its builder’s demo login as a signed-in filler address. A further listing, a real South Congress row in our census, now resolves to a foreign online-lottery site with deposit minimums and no trace of the repair business it was. That leaves 21 readable Austin handyman sites, and exactly two of them publish a labor rate a homeowner could budget against before picking up the phone: one full hourly card with per-worker tiers, and one company selling half and full days from $300 and $400 in labor. Two others print a number without printing a rate, one for a single task, TV mounting, and one for a monthly membership. In the trade Austin homeowners call more often than any other on this program, the labor price is public twice.

The best handyman services in Austin.

Mr. Done Right Handyman

Andyman Home Improvement

ATX Construction

Heritage Handyman

My Uncle Gus

The Handyman Can ATX

Best Austin Handyman & Remodeling

R. Patrick Carroll III Handyman Services

Papasan Home Services

OnCall Home and Commercial Services

Active Austin Handyman

Austin Emergency Handyman & Carpentry

Considered and cut

On the bench

Questions

How this list was made

Related

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