Is it cheaper to rekey or replace locks?

There will always be that little curious look of wonder that faces homeowners when they learn that there’s something like rekeying a lock. Most often, the homeowners opt to change the locks entirely instead of rekeying. Homeowners have the option of rekeying their door locks, and in certain situations, it could be a much safer alternative than changing the door lock entirely.

If you rekey your locks, you adjust the lock mechanism to prevent the old key from opening it any more. Instead, it will need a new key. In many circumstances, it makes more sense to rekey your locks than to change your locks. For instance, if most of your locks are from the same brand or have the same keyhole style but use different keys, you can have your locks rekeyed from the same key to function. 

 Why rekeying is cheaper that key replacement? 

Rekeying is almost always much cheaper than changing the keys, because of the incredibly low price of the key pins in the keys. You are only paid for the labor when you rekey your locks, while when you have your locks changed; you pay for both labor and pieces.

If you change a lock, you or a locksmith remove the old hardware for locking doors and replace it with new hardware. You’ll have all the new locks and all the new keys but it can be costly and not always possible to change your locks. Unlike the rekeying procedure, it tends to rack up a much higher cost of replacing your locks. This is mainly because in addition to the expense of the lockset you want you would have to pay for the labor costs. The lockset alone costs much more than the typical key pins. It isn’t much of a drawback to homeowners who have a very big budget. If you don’t want to shell out the money to replace your lock, though, that would be a con.