Heat pump installation cost in Michigan: what we can and cannot source

Why we print no installed price

A heat pump quote bundles equipment, labor, electrical work, a permit and sometimes ductwork changes, and we have no Michigan source that breaks those apart. The prices Michigan heating and cooling companies publish on their own sites are still being collected. When we have enough of them, they will appear in the table below with the number of companies and the date we read them.

Until then, any single dollar figure for a Michigan heat pump install, from a competitor or from us, would be a guess presented as a fact. Our heat pump page will carry the same evidence and will be updated first when published prices arrive.

The evidence we can source

The table holds three kinds of rows: what technicians are paid, what a few cities charge for the permit, and what the federal government estimates a heat pump costs to run. None of it is a price to you.

Row	Figure	What it measures
Michigan, heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers (BLS, May 2025)	$31.01 mean hourly wage	What technicians are paid, not what you are charged
Detroit-Warren-Dearborn (BLS)	$32.06 mean hourly wage	Same series, metro area
Grand Rapids-Kentwood (BLS)	$30.86 mean hourly wage	Same series, metro area
United States (BLS)	$31.14 mean hourly wage	Same series, national
Grand Rapids permit, fees effective July 1, 2026	$52 application plus $21 for a replacement heat pump	City fee schedule
Westland permit, form revised 7-1-2026	$100 administration fee, residential A/C 5 ton maximum $83, air handler $77	City fee schedule
LARA state permit, form BCC-9	$75 application, split-system heat pump $30	Applies only where LARA, not the city, enforces
DOE FEMP annual heating and cooling energy cost, northern states	$1,271 (federal minimum, 14.3 SEER2 and 7.5 HSPF2), $1,210 (ENERGY STAR), $814 (best available)	A federal estimate, see the caution below

Permit fees are the part you can verify yourself. Our reading of Grand Rapids is that a like-for-like replacement is the $52 application plus the $21 line, which is our arithmetic and not a total the city prints. The Westland form notes that its $100 minimum may lift a single $83 item to $100, so ask the city. Our permit guide explains who pulls it.

How to read the energy figures

The federal estimates come from the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program, for northern states. They run from $1,271 a year for a minimum-efficiency heat pump to $1,210 for an ENERGY STAR model to $814 for the best available unit, and the same page says an ENERGY STAR model saves money if it costs no more than $707 more than the less efficient one.

Two cautions travel with those numbers. The electricity price behind them is a federal-facility average, not a Michigan residential rate, so your own bill will differ. The page also does not state whether the baseline is electric resistance heat or gas, and the best-available comparison is against a baseline heat pump, not against your furnace and air conditioner. We therefore print no Michigan operating cost and no payback period.

The sourced efficiency point is ENERGY STAR’s: an air-source heat pump can deliver up to three times more heat energy to a home than the electrical energy it consumes. That says how efficiently it moves heat, and it does not say what a winter will cost you. For how these units behave when it gets cold, read heat pumps in Michigan winters.

Rebates in play as of Oct 19, 2026

Rebates change the net cost more than any other line, and they change without much warning. Every figure below is what the program’s own page or chart showed when we read it on Oct 19, 2026. Amounts can change without notice, and funds are limited.

DTE lists cold climate air-source heat pump rebates for electric customers: $1,200 for 16 or more SEER2 with 9.1 or more HSPF2 and an EER2 of at least 10.0, $1,000 for 16 or more SEER2 with 8.4 or more HSPF2, and $900 for 15.2 to 15.99 SEER2 with 8.4 or more HSPF2. The page limits heat pump rebates to electric customers replacing electric heating, in single-family homes, with no new construction or first-time installs, and it shows a “Limited Funds Available” banner.

Consumers Energy’s 2026 chart pays $300 for an air-source heat pump at 15.2 or more SEER2, but only as a replacement for an existing heat pump. Its mini-split rebate is $350, and the chart is valid for installs from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2026.

Lansing Board of Water & Light lists $4,000 for a central heat pump replacing a gas furnace and central air conditioner and $5,000 for one replacing a gas furnace only, and it requires a Manual J load calculation for the central rebate. Ann Arbor’s A2ZERO program lists up to $5,500 for cold-climate heat pumps, with $4,000 shown for market-rate households, capped at 90 percent of cost. The full status of each program is in our DTE and Consumers rebate guide.

MiHER, the state’s income-qualified program, has temporarily suspended new applications in the Detroit, Warren, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Kalamazoo districts, and its page shows no per-heat-pump amount. Its caps are $14,000 per household for HEAR and $20,000 for HOMES.

The federal credit, and the page that disagrees

For installs this year there is no federal heat pump credit that we can source. The IRS says the 25C credit applies to improvements made through December 31, 2025, and the 25D credit, which covers geothermal heat pumps, is not available for property placed in service after December 31, 2025.

ENERGY STAR’s air-source heat pump page still says a credit up to $2,000 runs through 2032. The two government sources contradict each other, and we follow the IRS because it administers the credit. If a contractor quotes you a net price that assumes a federal credit for 2026 work, ask for the IRS rule in writing before you accept it.

What to ask before you compare quotes

Ask each company for the model’s SEER2 and HSPF2 ratings, because DTE’s tiers and Consumers’ chart are set by those numbers. Ask whether the quote includes the permit, whether a Manual J load calculation was done (Lansing and Ann Arbor require one), and who files the rebate paperwork, since both DTE and Consumers pay through participating contractors.

Ask for the contractor’s mechanical license number and check it on the LARA lookup. The 2016 PA 407 licensing rules sit in Article 8, and which class covers a heat pump install is our reading, and LARA has no sentence on it.

If you are weighing a ductless system instead, the same wage, permit and rebate evidence applies, and a broken furnace may favor a furnace replacement quote alongside it.

How we estimate costs: the figures in this table are wages, published city permit fees and federal energy-cost evidence, and none is a quote; the statewide estimate on the heat pump page is built differently, as the editorial policy page explains. We are collecting the prices Michigan heating and cooling companies publish; we have not yet collected quotes from them, and we will say how many and from when once we do. The method is on our editorial policy page.