Last updated: August 2026 · Reviewed against current national pest control pricing
Pest Price Guide is reader-supported. When you buy through links on this page we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Prices shown are typical ranges and change often — check the listing for the current price.
A one-time visit from an exterminator runs about $100 to $300 in most of the country, with a national average close to $171. Sign a quarterly contract and you are looking at $400 to $600 a year. For a lot of the problems people call about — a trail of ants on the counter, a mouse in the pantry, fruit flies over the banana bowl — that is a lot of money for something you can handle in an afternoon for under $40.
The catch is that most of what sits on the shelf at the hardware store does not work very well. Contact sprays kill the roaches you see and leave the nest alone. Ultrasonic plug-ins have never held up in controlled testing. So we narrowed the field to five products that use the same active ingredients and the same strategy professionals use, one for each of the five pests homeowners actually call about.
We also drew a hard line at the end of this guide: there are four situations where DIY is a waste of your money and you should just book the pro. Those are covered in When to stop and call an exterminator.
Quick comparison
| Product | Target pest | Active ingredient | Typical price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advion Cockroach Gel Bait | Cockroaches | Indoxacarb 0.6% | $30–$40 | The one product on this list a pro would also use |
| TERRO T300B Liquid Ant Baits | Ants | Borax | $8–$15 | Cheapest fix on the list, kills the colony |
| Ortho Home Defense Indoor & Perimeter | Ants, roaches, spiders | Bifenthrin | $20–$30 | Replacing a quarterly barrier service |
| Tomcat Kill & Contain Mouse Trap | Mice | None (mechanical) | $10–$15 | Never seeing or touching the mouse |
| Zevo Flying Insect Trap | Fruit flies, gnats | None (light) | $15–$25 | Kitchens where you do not want spray |
What the same job costs professionally
This is the number that matters. Below is what a licensed technician charges for each of these five problems in 2026, next to what the DIY product costs.
| Problem | Exterminator cost | DIY cost | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cockroaches | $100–$600+ | ~$35 | $65–$565 |
| Common household ants | $150–$300 | ~$12 | $138–$288 |
| General insect barrier | $100–$300 per visit | ~$25 | $75–$275 per visit |
| Mice | $150–$550 | ~$12 | $138–$538 |
| Fruit flies | $150–$300 | ~$20 | $130–$280 |
Treat those savings as a ceiling, not a promise. A pro is buying you diagnosis, application in wall voids and crawl spaces you cannot reach, and a re-treatment guarantee. What the numbers show is that for a problem you caught early and can see, the math is not close.
BEST OVERALL 1. Advion Cockroach Gel Bait
Best for: Any roach problem you catch before it spreads through the walls.
This is the product that most obviously punches above its price, because it is not really a consumer product. Advion is made by Syngenta and it is what a large number of technicians carry in the truck. The active ingredient is indoxacarb at 0.6%, and the important word is non-repellent: roaches cannot detect it, so they walk into it instead of scattering away from it the way they do with a contact spray.
It is a bait, not a poison you spray. A roach eats the gel, goes back to the harborage, and the compound moves through the population by contact and by other roaches feeding on the carcass and droppings. Syngenta puts the transfer figure at up to 40 additional roaches per treated insect. That is why it clears nests you never find, and it is the entire reason baits outperform sprays on roaches.
It also works on the species that defeat most store-bought bait: German, American, Oriental, brown-banded, smoky-brown and Asian roaches, including the German strains that have developed an aversion to the sugars in older bait formulas.
What we like
- Professional-grade ingredient at consumer price
- Activity drops noticeably within about 24 hours
- Four 30g tubes treat an entire house with plenty left over
- No odor, no fogging, no leaving the house for four hours
- Tubes reseal and store for later
What we don’t
- Highest upfront cost on this list
- Bait dries out roughly every 30 days and needs replacing
- You have to resist spraying anything nearby — residual insecticide contaminates the bait and roaches will stop eating it
- Placement matters; dabs in the open do nothing
Put the tip about half an inch into cracks, crevices and gaps rather than smearing it on open surfaces. For a light to moderate problem, place one to three pea-sized dabs every 10 linear feet; for a heavy one, three to five. Check the spots every 12 to 24 hours — if the gel is gone, that is good news, reapply. If it is untouched after several days, move it closer to where you actually see droppings.
Typically $30–$40 for the four-tube kit.
Check price on AmazonBEST VALUE 2. TERRO T300B Liquid Ant Baits
Best for: Sugar ants, odorous house ants, ghost ants and pavement ants marching across a counter.
Twelve plastic stations for the price of a sandwich, and they solve the problem that makes people call an exterminator about ants in the first place: killing the ants you can see does nothing, because the colony that sent them is still producing more.
The liquid inside is a borax solution sweet enough that foragers drink it and carry it home. It kills slowly on purpose, which gives the workers time to make several round trips and share it through the colony, including with the queen. The stations stay sealed so the liquid does not dry out, which is the usual failure mode of cheap ant bait.
For the first day or two you will see far more ants than you did before, swarming the bait. That is the product working, not failing. Do not wipe them up and do not spray them — you are watching the delivery service run. Activity usually falls off within a few days.
What we like
- Under $15 against a $150–$300 service call
- Kills the colony, not just the trail
- Small enough to hide along baseboards, behind appliances and on windowsills
- Snap-off tab, no measuring or mixing
What we don’t
- Indoor use only — you need the outdoor stakes for the nest itself
- Sweet bait, so it does very little against protein-feeding or carpenter ants
- Open liquid stations are worth keeping away from curious pets
Typically $8–$15 for the 12-pack.
Check price on AmazonBEST BARRIER 3. Ortho Home Defense Insect Killer for Indoor & Perimeter
Best for: Doing yourself what a quarterly service plan does four times a year.
When a technician comes out for “general pest control,” most of the visit is a perimeter spray: a treated band around the foundation and around doors, windows and utility penetrations, so insects die crossing it instead of getting inside. That service runs $100 to $150 per visit on a quarterly plan.
This gallon-and-a-third jug with the wand is the same idea in a form you can do in about 30 minutes. It arrives ready to use — no diluting — and the wand means no pumping and no crouching. It is rated for ants, roaches and spiders, indoors in kitchens and bathrooms and outdoors around the perimeter.
The honest framing: this is prevention, not a cure. If you already have an infestation, a barrier spray is the wrong tool and you want the bait products above. Where it earns its place is keeping the next one from starting, and that is exactly the job you are otherwise paying $400 to $600 a year for.
What we like
- Replaces the most commonly sold recurring service
- Wand applicator makes the perimeter pass genuinely quick
- One jug covers a typical house with product to spare
- Safe indoors once dry, per label directions
What we don’t
- Prevents rather than eliminates
- Rain shortens outdoor residual; reapply seasonally
- Do not spray it near your roach or ant bait — it will drive them off the bait
- Heavy jug to carry around the house
Typically $20–$30 for the 1.33 gallon wand jug.
Check price on AmazonBEST FOR MICE 4. Tomcat Kill & Contain Mouse Trap
Best for: Anyone whose real objection to trapping is having to look at the result.
Rodent work is where exterminator invoices climb fastest: mice run $150 to $550 and rats $150 to $600, and a large share of that is a technician placing traps and driving back out to empty them. Two of these cost about as much as lunch.
It is a snap trap with the entire mechanism sealed inside a plastic shell. The mouse goes in after the bait, the trap does its job out of sight, and an indicator window on the outside flips over to tell you there has been a catch. You pick it up by the grab tab and drop the whole thing in the trash. You never see the mouse and you never touch it.
That containment is also what makes it the safest mechanical option in a house with a dog or a toddler. There is no exposed bar, so it physically cannot snap a finger or a paw the way a bare wooden trap can. It sets with one push rather than the arm-the-spring-and-hope routine, and the slim profile fits the places mice actually run: behind the fridge, under the stove, in the gap between the washer and dryer.
Open the bait door on the back, put in a small amount of peanut butter, and set the trap flush against a wall. Mice travel along walls and edges, not across open floors, so a trap in the middle of the room catches nothing. Set two traps 5 to 10 feet apart, and if nothing has happened in two or three days, move them rather than adding more bait.
This is the trade-off, and it is the most common complaint in the reviews: the trap is disposable by design, so you throw it away with the mouse still inside. That is exactly the point for most buyers, but if you have an ongoing problem and would rather empty and reset, buy a covered tunnel-style snap trap instead — same enclosed safety, reusable, and washable.
What we like
- Genuinely no-see, no-touch — the whole reason people buy it
- Enclosed mechanism cannot catch fingers or paws
- One-touch set, with an indicator window so you are not opening it to check
- No poison, so nothing dies inside a wall cavity
- Slim enough for the gaps where mice actually travel
What we don’t
- Single use — cost per mouse stays at roughly $5
- A lot of plastic for one rodent
- Mice only; rats need a full-size trap
- Bait sold separately unless you use peanut butter
Typically $10–$15 for two traps.
Check price on AmazonBEST CHEMICAL-FREE 5. Zevo Flying Insect Trap
Best for: Fruit flies and fungus gnats in a kitchen where you do not want to spray anything.
Hiring someone for fruit flies costs $150 to $300, which is an absurd amount of money for an insect that lives eight days. This is a plug-in that uses blue and UV light to pull flying insects onto a sticky cartridge behind the housing. No spray, no odor, and it is designed to be used around kids and pets.
What makes it work better than a vinegar jar is that it runs continuously. Fruit flies breed in cycles, and a trap that is catching at 3am on day six is what actually breaks the cycle. Put it low and near the source — the fruit bowl, the trash can, the sink drain, the overwatered houseplant — and leave it alone.
What we like
- Nothing sprayed near food prep surfaces
- Silent and odorless, works 24/7
- Catches the flies out of sight behind the housing
- Set it and forget it until the cartridge fills
What we don’t
- Refill cartridges are an ongoing cost
- Needs an outlet where you need the trap
- Does nothing about the breeding source — you still have to find and clean it
- Not effective on crawling insects
A trap catches adults. It does not touch the eggs. Pour boiling water down the drain, take the trash out, and get the soft fruit off the counter, or you will be replacing cartridges forever.
Typically $15–$25 for the starter kit with refills.
Check price on AmazonHow we chose these five
Three filters, applied in order.
It has to use the professional strategy, not the consumer one. That mostly means baits over sprays for social insects, because killing foragers does not touch the colony. Three of the five products here are the same class of product a technician would deploy for the same pest.
It has to save real money against a real quote. Every pick is measured against current 2026 service pricing for that specific pest, not against a vague notion that DIY is cheaper.
No ultrasonic repellents. Plug-in ultrasonic devices dominate the pest control bestseller lists and there is no credible evidence they drive out rodents or insects. They are the single most common way people waste money before calling a professional anyway.
When to stop and call an exterminator
Nothing on this page is worth buying if you are in one of these situations. Spending $40 first only delays the bill.
- Bed bugs. Consumer products have a success rate under 10%. This is not a close call, and DIY attempts usually spread the infestation to other rooms.
- Termites. If you see swarmers indoors, there is an established colony in the structure. Treatment runs $200 to $2,500, and the alternative is structural damage that costs considerably more.
- An established German cockroach population. Advion is genuinely excellent against German roaches, and it is what a pro would use. But German roaches reproduce faster than a homeowner applying bait on weekends can keep up with. If you are seeing them in daylight, in multiple rooms, or in more than one appliance, you are past the DIY window.
- Scratching in the walls or attic, or droppings in several rooms. That is a population, not a mouse. It needs exclusion work — finding and sealing the entry points — and traps alone will never finish it.
One more rule that saves people a lot of money: if a company quotes you full-home fumigation for ants, roaches or general pest control, get a second opinion. Tenting costs thousands and is genuinely necessary only for drywood termites and severe infestations that cannot be reached any other way.
Frequently asked questions
Is DIY pest control actually cheaper than an exterminator?
For a problem you caught early, yes, by a wide margin. Store-bought products in the $5 to $50 range handle simple issues, against $100 to $300 for a one-time professional visit. The economics reverse for termites, bed bugs, rodent populations and established German cockroach infestations, where professional treatment is both more effective and cheaper than a series of failed attempts.
How long does it take DIY products to work?
Baits show reduced activity within roughly 24 hours for roaches and a few days for ants, with full colony collapse taking one to two weeks. Traps work immediately but only on what walks into them. If you have seen no meaningful improvement after two weeks of correct application, that is the signal to call a professional.
Why am I seeing more bugs after I put bait down?
Because the bait is working. Ants and roaches are recruiting to a new food source, and the increase in visible activity is the delivery mechanism doing its job. Do not spray them and do not clean it up. Activity peaks and then drops.
Can I use bait and spray together?
Not in the same area, no. This is the most common DIY mistake. Residual insecticide contaminates the bait and makes it repellent, so insects avoid the thing that was going to kill the colony. Use baits indoors where the activity is, and keep barrier spray on the exterior perimeter and away from bait placements.
Do ultrasonic pest repellers work?
There is no credible evidence that they drive rodents or insects out of a home, despite how heavily they are marketed. Money spent on one is money not spent on a bait or trap that does work.
What is the cheapest time of year to hire a pro if I do need one?
November through February is the lowest-demand stretch for most services and some companies discount accordingly. Early fall, September and October, is the most cost-effective window specifically for rodent exclusion work, because sealing entry points before mice move indoors for winter prevents the problem instead of treating it.
The bottom line
If you buy one thing off this page, make it the Advion gel — it is the widest gap between what you pay and what you get, and it is the product most likely to cancel a $200 service call outright. If you are trying to spend as little as possible, the TERRO baits at under $15 solve the single most common pest complaint in America.
And if you are reading this because you already have a quote in hand, run it past our pest control cost guide before you sign anything. Roughly a third of the quotes people send us are above the regional average for the job.