How Much Does Junk Removal
Cost in Austin?

The short answer

Most Austin jobs land between the $75 minimum and a $732 full truckload. A single sofa is $126, a queen mattress $103, a refrigerator $164. A packed garage or a whole apartment is priced by volume — 1/4 truck $241, 1/2 $431, full $732. Every number is quoted from a photo before we roll, so there's no in-person estimate and no surprise at the door.

A note on the numbers you'll find elsewhere: the national brands operating in Austin don't publish one. 1-800-GOT-JUNK, College Hunks Hauling Junk and Junk King all require an on-site or phone estimate before they'll say a figure, which is why "how much does junk removal cost in Austin" is such a frustrating search. Everything below is our actual rate card, the same list our quoting engine uses.

How the quote gets to you — three steps

The two ways junk removal is priced in Austin

1. Per item — best for a few specific things (a couch, a mattress, an old fridge). You pay the flat rate per piece; see the tables below. 2. By volume (truck-fill) — best for garage cleanouts, estate clears, and mixed loads, priced by how much space it fills in the truck. Whichever is cheaper for your job is what you pay, and the photo quote tells you up front.

Truck-load pricing (cleanouts & mixed loads)

Loading, the drive, and disposal are included. Hauled from the garage; broom-clean finish.

What drives the price in Austin

• Volume & weight — how much space it fills, and heavy loads (appliances, construction debris) cost more to dump.
• Disposal fees, specifically. Austin isn't a cheap tipping market. Texas Disposal Systems' Creedmoor landfill (3016 FM 1327, Creedmoor, TX 78610) published a 2025 gate rate of about $60 per ton of MSW with a two-ton minimum, and WM's Austin Community Landfill in northeast Travis County covers the north-belt routes. That per-ton reality is baked into every flat price below, so you never see a separate dump fee — and it's why a load of construction debris prices above the same volume of pillows.
• No basements = garage & attic — Austin homes are slab-on-grade, so the clutter is in the garage and the attic, and clearing the garage as truck-fill is the most common job here. Attic loads take longer to bring down than a curb pile ever would.
• Stairs, without a stair fee — West Campus walk-ups and the Riverside garden apartments have no elevators at all. It's in the flat price.
• Freight elevators and COIs — downtown, Rainey Street and Domain towers need a Certificate of Insurance naming the association and management ($1M general liability is typical) plus a reserved elevator and dock window. Handled, and not an add-on.
• Drive time to the edges — Georgetown, Leander, Hutto, Buda and Kyle are real miles from the core. The drive is inside the quote; there's no fuel or distance surcharge.
• Refrigerant recovery — fridges, freezers, window and portable AC units require EPA-certified refrigerant recovery before disposal. That's a genuine line cost, which is why appliance prices sit above furniture of the same size.
• No surcharges — no stairs fee, no HOA-safe garage-haul upcharge, no same-day surcharge.

Price list — sofas & seating

Bedroom & tables

Appliances

Refrigerant recovered and documented on fridges, freezers, and AC units — included in the price, not billed separately.

Electronics & fitness

TVs, monitors and computers are routed to Austin e-waste recyclers rather than the landfill.

Yard, patio & outdoor

Specialty & heavy items

Bags, boxes, piles & debris

Storage units

A rented unit you've stopped opening is one of the most common calls we get in the north belt, where the self-storage build-out followed the subdivisions. Priced by unit size when it's packed:

$75 minimum on any pickup. Disposal included, and the photo quote is the final number. Partially full units price down the truck-fill ladder instead — send a photo and we quote whichever is cheaper.

Six ways to clear it in Austin, and what each really costs

Competitor and municipal figures are third-party, published by those organizations; our own prices are the flat rates listed on this page.

Is Austin bulk pickup free instead?

For some addresses, yes — and this is the first thing worth checking before you pay anyone. Austin Resource Recovery runs residential bulk as an on-demand request system: you request the collection, you get a limited number of free pickups per year, there's a cap on how much you can set out, and it is curbside only. The request form and the current terms live at austintexas.gov/service/ondemand.

Three conditions decide whether it saves you money:

• Are you a City of Austin residential curbside-trash customer? If your household isn't on city collection, the program doesn't apply to you at all.
• Do you live in an apartment or condo? Then it also doesn't apply. Multifamily buildings in Austin are served by private hauling contracts, which means a Riverside garden-apartment tenant and a Rainey Street condo owner both have zero access to on-demand bulk regardless of how many free pickups the house down the block gets.
• Are you outside the city limits? Round Rock, Cedar Park, Leander, Georgetown, Pflugerville, Hutto, Buda and Kyle each contract their own hauler and run their own scheduled bulk days, with their own excluded-item lists — and the HOA layer on top fines you for staging bulk outside the allowed window.

If you clear all three conditions, your volume is under the cap, and you can leave the pile at the curb until the scheduled date, the free program is genuinely the cheapest option and we'll tell you so. Where it breaks down — apartments, over-cap loads, a used-up allotment, an HOA that fines curb staging, a closing date next week, or anything you physically can't carry outside — the numbers on this page are what it costs to have it handled instead.

What happens to what you pay us to take

Part of what your flat price buys is the sorting. Usable furniture and household goods are routed to Goodwill Central Texas, Habitat for Humanity ReStore, the ARC Resale stores and the Austin Furniture Bank before anything else happens; during the summer student exodus the city's MoveOutATX donation stations absorb an enormous share of the same material (249 tons in a past season). Refrigerant appliances go through EPA-certified recovery. TVs, monitors and computers go to Austin e-waste recyclers. Metal is pulled for scrap. Mattresses are recycled where a facility will take them — Texas has no statewide mattress-recycling mandate, so this varies by load. Only the true remainder is tipped at TDS Creedmoor or WM Austin Community Landfill, at the per-ton rate already inside your quote. Ask on the day if you want a donation receipt.

When people ask us for a price

• Before a listing goes live — March through June is Texas's dominant home-sale season, and a staged house needs an empty garage.
• The July 31 lease wall — UT-Austin leases end on the same date, so West Campus and Riverside quote in bulk during the last week of July.
• Relocation, in both directions — the Tesla, Apple, Oracle and Samsung in-migration means a garage purge at one end and move-in debris at the other, all year.
• Appliance delivery day — the retailer will take the old fridge only sometimes, and never the second one in the garage.
• Estate and downsizing — Georgetown's Sun City, Tarrytown, Westlake; executors want the number before the family arrives.
• An HOA letter — the fastest quote requests we get, usually with a photo of the notice attached.

Why the flat-price model is cheaper in practice

• You compare before you commit. A photo quote costs nothing and takes seconds; an on-site estimate costs you an appointment window and puts a salesperson in your living room.
• The quote is the invoice. No volume re-measure at the truck, no "we found more than the photo showed" adjustment.
• Everything is bundled. Labor, drive, tipping fees, refrigerant recovery, donation runs and e-waste routing are all inside the number.
• Whichever measure is cheaper wins. If your load prices lower per item than by truck-fill, you pay per item — and vice versa.
• No access penalties. Stairs, freight elevators, gated communities, long Westlake drives and a Kyle address all cost the same as a driveway in Crestview.

Austin pricing questions, answered

What's the cheapest possible job?

$75 — the minimum, which covers the truck, the crew, the drive and disposal on a small load. A single moving box or trash bag prices under that, so the minimum is what you'd pay.

What's the most a normal house costs?

$732 for a full truckload, which covers most whole-home and estate clear-outs in one go. Genuinely enormous jobs run more than one load, and you'd see that in the quote before booking.

Is there a fee for stairs or a walk-up?

No. The Riverside garden apartments and the West Campus walk-ups have no elevators — carrying it down is the job, not a surcharge.

Why is a fridge more than a sofa?

Weight at the gate and the EPA-certified refrigerant recovery a fridge legally requires before disposal. A refrigerator is $164, a large one $246.

Could I just take it to the dump myself?

You can. The City of Austin resident drop-off runs about $4.33 per visit-cubic-yard, and commercial tipping at TDS Creedmoor is roughly $60 per ton with a two-ton minimum — so a single couch costs you two tons' worth of gate fee, plus a truck, a helper and the drive to Creedmoor and back.

Do you charge more for same-day?

No. Same-day is the same flat price, and it's usually available across the metro.

How does this compare to 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

They won't give you an Austin figure until an on-site or phone estimate, so the honest comparison is process, not price: our number arrives from a photo before a truck is dispatched, and it includes the carry-out that curbside services like Muvr (from $99) and Dropcurb ($79 advertised) leave to you.

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