Before anything else: is anyone inside the car?
This is the branch that changes the answer completely, and it is the only part of this page that is urgent.
A child, a pet, or a vulnerable adult is inside → call 911 and say exactly that. Do not call a locksmith. Do not go back into the house for a spare. Stay with the car and stay on the line — the dispatcher will tell you whether to break a window, and a broken window is the cheap outcome here.
The National Weather Service does not hedge on this one: children “can die in 10 minutes”, a reported 31 children died in hot cars in 2025, and it is never safe to leave a child, a disabled person, or a pet locked in a car — even in the winter. A mild, overcast morning is not a safe morning. The car is not a shaded room.
Nobody is inside and nothing is at risk → nothing about this is an emergency, which is good news, because the free options below take longer than the paid one and are worth the wait.
Free options first, in this order
Most drivers already have roadside cover and have forgotten. Four routes, any one of which makes this call cost nothing:
- Your car insurance app. Roadside is a standard add-on and lockouts are a standard covered service. GEICO’s costs from $14 per car per year and covers up to $100 toward a locksmith; State Farm’s is around $30 per year. Open the app, tap roadside, done. If you have to think about whether you bought it, check — that is exactly the situation this list exists for.
- The manufacturer’s app. If the car is app-connected, remote unlock is the fastest fix there is: no one drives out, nothing costs anything, the doors just open. This is worth a look even if you have never opened the app, because the feature is usually free for a period after purchase.
- The number on the back of your credit card. A lot of cards include roadside dispatch or reimburse a lockout up to a limit. Nobody remembers this benefit; it costs one phone call to find out.
- A motoring club membership. AAA and equivalents cover lockouts within the membership.
Only when all four come back empty do you pay someone. And if you do pay because you were in a hurry, keep the itemised receipt — GEICO, State Farm and most other insurers reimburse a service you paid for yourself, up to the coverage limit, if you submit the original bill.
Automotive locksmith, not a house locksmith
These are two different trades, and the distinction matters more on a car than on a house.
A residential locksmith works on pin-tumbler locks in a wooden door. A car door is a sealed metal cavity containing side-airbag wiring, the lock actuator, the window regulator and its cables, and speaker wire — none of it visible, all of it in the path of anything pushed down past the glass. Opening a modern car means an air wedge to create a controlled gap at the top of the door frame, and a long-reach tool through that gap to hit the interior handle or lock button.
Ask one question on the phone: “Do you do automotive?” A clear yes, with a follow-up question about your year, make and model, is what you want. Vagueness is the answer to act on.
Never let anyone put a slim jim in your door. On any car built since roughly 2000 it is a blind tool in a cavity full of things that cost more to fix than the lockout did. Severed airbag wiring turns a $120 call into a dashboard warning light, a diagnostic fee, and a wiring repair. A technician who reaches for one is telling you they do houses.
When it’s a dealer job instead
The line is not “modern car versus old car”. It is lost key versus locked-in key, and people get sold the wrong side of it constantly.
- The key is inside the car — on the seat, in the footwell, in the trunk. You need a door opened. Nothing needs programming. The moment the fob is back inside the cabin, the car behaves exactly as it did this morning. Anyone quoting “key replacement and programming” while your key is visible through the glass is selling you a service the situation does not contain.
- The key is genuinely lost or destroyed, and it’s a transponder, proximity, or push-button-start car. Now something has to be cut and paired to the car’s immobilizer. Many automotive locksmiths do this at the curb for less than the dealer charges. Some makes lock key generation behind dealer-only systems, and some proximity fobs must be paired in the service bay. Expect to prove ownership with the title or registration and photo ID, plus the VIN.
Call one automotive locksmith and one dealer with your year, make and model before you commit. The answer is specific to your car, not to cars in general, and the two quotes are frequently hundreds of dollars apart in either direction.
What it should cost, and how to check the number
Local quotes vary, so treat these as a band to argue from and get a firm total on the phone before anyone is dispatched.
Fixr’s published figures:
- Unlocking a car: $80 to $150.
- After hours, weekends, or holidays: an additional $150 to $250.
- Trip fee: $25 to $100, charged on top by some and included by others. Ask which.
- Car key replacement: $70 to $250. Programming a key or fob: $50 to $200. These apply to a lost key.
- Key extraction, if it snapped off in the door or ignition: $50 to $200.
- A duplicate key cut in advance: $10 to $50 — which is the whole point of the last section on this page.
Add up the worst realistic case — a late-night call, a holiday, a trip fee — and you are still in the low hundreds. That arithmetic is the defense. A four-figure car lockout bill is not an expensive night; it is the bait-and-switch completing. The same is true of an advertised “$19 service call”, which is the identical scam approaching from the other direction. A real posted $1,018 lockout is taken apart in is this quote a scam, alongside honest ranges for eleven other emergencies.
The bait-and-switch, in its car version
Lockouts are among the most scam-saturated services in local search, and the pattern is stable enough to recognize from the first phone call. A national call center listing a fake local address advertises a very low “service call” price. It dispatches an unbranded subcontractor with no ID. On arrival the price becomes several hundred dollars, some part of the job is declared unexpectedly difficult, and payment is demanded in cash.
The car version adds two moves the house version doesn’t have:
- “Your lock is damaged and needs replacing.” A door lock that worked when you shut it works now. You watched it work.
- “We’ll have to cut and program a new key.” Only true if the key is lost. If it is on the seat, this is invented work.
Four questions, asked before anyone is dispatched:
- “What is the total price, including the service call, labour, and any after-hours fee?” Not a range. A number.
- “What is your legal business name and street address?” Vagueness here is the strongest single signal.
- “Will the technician arrive in a marked vehicle, and will they show ID?”
- “How will you open the door?” You want “air wedge and long-reach tool”. You do not want “slim jim”.
Expect to show your own ID and proof the car is yours — registration, insurance card, title. That requirement marks a legitimate operator, not an obstacle. The same licence-and-insurance checks that catch this work on any trade and take about five minutes: the checklist.
If the number changes at your door, stop before any tool touches the car. Say you are not authorising work at that price, ask for the quote in writing by text, and if they won’t, send them away — you have consented to nothing. If work goes ahead anyway: pay by card, never cash, so you keep chargeback rights. Get a written invoice with the legal business name and street address. Photograph the vehicle and plate. Then report it to your state’s locksmith or contractor licensing board, your attorney general’s consumer division, and the FTC. Cash with no paperwork is precisely what makes an inflated bill stick.
The house version of the same script, including how it plays out at 1am on a doorstep, is at locked out of my house.
Afterwards, so it doesn’t happen twice
If it has happened once on your own driveway, it will happen again, and the fix is preparation rather than vigilance.
- Cut a spare. Fixr puts a duplicate car key at $10 to $50 — less than a tenth of one lockout, and the single highest-return thing on this page. Keep it in the house, not in a magnetic box under the bumper where it will be found or shaken loose.
- Install the manufacturer’s app and log into it now, while you are indoors and calm. Remote unlock is useless as a feature you have never set up.
- Confirm your roadside cover in writing — insurer, card, or club — and note the phone number somewhere that is not the phone locked in the car.
- If you drive a keyless car, learn the mechanical override: most proximity fobs hide a physical blade, and most cars hide a keyhole under a cap on the driver’s door handle. That combination opens the door with no phone and no locksmith, and almost nobody finds out it exists until the fob battery dies.
Two other things go wrong on a driveway often enough to be worth reading before they do: the car won’t start and a flat tire.