Is it cheaper to rekey locks or replace them?

In short if your looking to rekey more than two locks YES!

The cost of quality lock hardware has gone up significantly in the last few years and the quality has gone down, so re-keying is a great alternative. Although they may have self re-keyable locks now they simply don’t hold up. Just as a precaution before I start offering a new product I always use it. The new Kwikset smart key locks that I installed on my home only lasted 18 months.

The average cost to rekey locks is somewhere around $15 per keyhole. Secondly locksmiths normally charge a service call of either $65 to $85 depending on how much traffic is in the area and time of day. So little quick math might be an order, but most of the time it’s cheaper to rekey versus replace.

Just to give you an example if you have a house with 10 cylinders that need to be re-keyed. You should expect to pay somewhere around $225.00

Now if you were to replace 10 locks of decent quality. You’re easily looking 4 or $500 and that’s if you do the removal of the old hardware and installation of the new hardware yourself.

beginning to rekey a commercial lock which is far cheaper and just as effective as replacement.