Before anything else: is anyone or anything inside?
This is the one branch that changes the answer completely.
A child, a pet, or a vulnerable adult is locked inside → call 911 and say exactly that. Do not wait for a locksmith. Emergency services will force entry, they will do it in minutes rather than the forty-five a locksmith quotes, and a broken door is the cheap outcome here.
Something is on the stove, water is running, or there’s smoke → 911, same reasoning.
Nobody is inside and nothing is at risk → police and fire will not open your door, and asking will only cost you time. Work down the free list below, then call a locksmith.
Free options first, in order
- Walk the whole perimeter. Back door, side door, garage service door, ground-floor windows, the sliding door people forget about. This works more often than anyone admits.
- If you rent — call the landlord or building manager. Many buildings hold a master key and treat lockouts as included. This is the single most-skipped free option.
- Anyone with a spare? Partner, parent, neighbour, the friend you gave one to two years ago and forgot.
- Garage keypad, if you have one, or a smart lock app on your phone.
Landlord before locksmith, and what the wrong order costs
If you rent, the building manager is the first call and not the last resort. It’s the free option, and skipping it costs more than the locksmith’s fee:
- You pay for something that was free, or nearly free. Most buildings that hold a master key treat a lockout as included or charge a small fee written into the lease. An after-hours locksmith does not.
- You may be breaching the lease. A lot of leases forbid changing, rekeying, or drilling the locks without written permission. If the locksmith drills, you now owe your landlord for the hardware as well.
- You lose the argument about who pays. A landlord who was never given the chance to send someone is under no obligation to reimburse a contractor you hired at 1am.
Call, leave a message on the emergency line if nobody answers, and note the time. Then give it a sensible window before you dispatch anyone yourself — and if you do, tell the locksmith you are a tenant so they don’t drill.
If you own the home, the order is: perimeter, spare-key holders, then a locksmith with a firm total agreed on the phone.
Calling a locksmith without getting taken
Lockouts are one of the most scam-saturated services in local search, and the scam has a consistent shape. A call centre — often listing a fake local address — advertises a very low “service call” price. They dispatch an unbranded subcontractor with no ID. On arrival, the price becomes several hundred dollars, the lock is declared “high security”, it’s drilled unnecessarily, and payment is demanded in cash.
Four questions that filter most of it out, 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 signal there is.
- “Will the technician arrive in a marked vehicle, and will they show ID?”
- “Do you pick or drill standard residential locks?” A competent locksmith picks a normal deadbolt. Drilling means a new lock at your cost.
Expect to show your own ID proving you belong there. That requirement is a mark of a legitimate operator, not an inconvenience.
What it should cost, and how to check the number
Local quotes vary a great deal, so treat these as a band to argue from rather than a price list, and get a firm total on the phone before anyone is dispatched.
Fixr’s published figures for locksmith work:
- Unlocking a house: $50 to $175.
- Locksmith services overall: $100 to $200, with a national average of $150.
- After hours, weekends, or holidays: an additional $150 to $250.
- Trip fee: $25 to $100, charged by some locksmiths on top and included by others. Ask which.
- Rekeying locks: $70 to $160. Changing house locks: $150 to $550. These are what a drilled lock turns into.
- Key extraction, if your key snapped off in the lock: $50 to $200.
Add those up for the worst realistic case — a late-night call, outside the normal service area, with a trip fee — and you are still in the low hundreds. That is the point of the arithmetic. A four-figure lockout bill is not an expensive night; it is the bait-and-switch completing. So is an advertised “$19 service call”, which is the same scam approaching from the other direction.
If the number changes at your door, the moment to stop is before any tool touches the lock. Once it’s drilled you are paying for the visit and a replacement lock. Say plainly that you are not authorising work at that price, ask for the quote in writing by text, and if they won’t, send them away and call someone else. You have consented to nothing yet.
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 on it. Photograph the vehicle and any plate. Then report it — your state’s locksmith or contractor licensing board, your state attorney general’s consumer division, and the FTC. Cash with no paperwork is precisely what makes an inflated bill stick.
Afterwards, so it doesn’t happen again
If you’ve been locked out twice, the fix is hardware, not vigilance. A keypad deadbolt costs less than two lockout calls and removes the failure mode entirely. Leave a spare with a neighbour rather than under a mat or in a fake rock — those are the first two places anyone checks. And if you’ve just moved into the home, rekey the locks anyway: you have no idea how many keys are in circulation.