Locked out in Paris? We speak English — and we publish our prices.

You are standing on the landing. Here is what to do next.

It usually happens the same way. You step out to take the rubbish down, to sign for a parcel, to answer the intercom — and the door closes behind you with a sound you will remember for a while. Your keys, your phone charger and your French vocabulary are all on the other side. If you are new to Paris, the situation feels worse than it is, because you do not yet know what things should cost or who is safe to call.

Take ninety seconds before you dial anything. First, check whether anyone or anything is at risk inside: a small child, a pet in distress, a hob left on, water running. If yes, that is not a locksmith problem, that is 18 or 112 — the fire brigade. Second, ask a neighbour or the building caretaker, the gardien, whether they hold a spare key; in older buildings of the 15th they often do. Third, remember what you did with your key. Did you turn it in the lock, or did the door simply shut? That single question decides whether you are looking at €100 or €180, and it is the first thing we will ask you on the phone.

Then call. In English. The number is 01 76 50 20 10, and from a foreign phone, +33 1 76 50 20 10. You will be given a category, a price in euros including tax, and a realistic arrival window — in that order, before anyone gets in a van.

Slammed shut or locked with a key: the difference that costs €80

Almost every flat door in Paris has a spring latch, the pêne demi-tour, that shoots out on its own the moment the door closes. Nothing was locked; the door is simply held. This is a slammed door, the most common call we take in the 15th, and it is opened without breaking anything — the technique the trade calls « the radio », a thin flexible shim slipped past the latch. That is why it sits at the bottom of the grid: €100 daytime, €165 evening, €230 night.

If a key was turned, the deadbolt — the pêne dormant — is engaged, and no shim on earth will move it. The obstacle is now the cylinder itself, and neutralising it usually means drilling it: a precise, controlled act that destroys a €30 part in order to spare the door, the frame and the rest of the lock. That is a locked door: €180 daytime, €250 evening, €280 night, with the replacement cylinder quoted in writing, on the spot, before it is fitted. A jammed door — key spinning uselessly, key snapped in the cylinder, mechanism seized — sits on the same line, because the difficulty and the time are comparable. Our French pages go deeper into the methods on ouverture de porte.

How French locksmith pricing actually works

Foreign visitors are often told that French emergency pricing is a lottery. It is not — or at least, it does not have to be. A serious Paris locksmith prices on exactly two variables, and everything else is noise.

The first variable is what the door is really doing: latched, deadlocked, or broken. The second is the time band. Ours are published, they are the same on every page of this site, and there is no third column hiding anywhere: daytime 8 am–6 pm · evening 6 pm–10 pm · night 10 pm–8 am. That is it. Sunday is priced like Tuesday. The 14th of July is priced like the 14th of March. August, when half of Paris is away and the other half is locked out, is priced like November.

Why does the same slammed door go from €100 to €230 after 10 pm? Because at 3 am it is no longer a craftsman working through a queue of jobs from his shop; it is a craftsman on call, woken up, crossing a sleeping 15th for one single job. The gap pays for that availability. It does not pay for an « emergency surcharge » invented on your doorstep, which is a different thing entirely.

What « tout compris » means — and what it does not

Every figure on this page is TTC, the French abbreviation for toutes taxes comprises: all taxes included, VAT already in the number. There is no separate call-out fee, no administrative charge, no distance supplement inside Paris and the inner suburbs. What you are quoted is what you pay.

One thing, and only one, can legitimately be added: a part. Typically a new cylinder after a locked door had to be drilled. That part is quoted in writing, on the spot, before it is fitted — you approve it or you refuse it, and if you refuse, the door is still open and you owe only the opening. Anything else that appears on a French locksmith’s invoice without having been agreed beforehand is a red flag, not a custom.

The Paris locksmith scam, explained by a Paris locksmith

We may as well be blunt, because you will meet this before you meet us. Search « locksmith Paris » in English at midnight and you will find adverts promising an opening « from €39 », stickers in your building’s hall, magnets on the letterboxes, and slick pages with a Paris skyline and no address on them.

Do the arithmetic with us. A declared craftsman pays for a van, professional liability insurance, social charges, tooling, a shop, and spends between thirty minutes and an hour on your job including the journey. At €39 the job is sold at a loss — and nobody works at a loss, which means the recovery is planned in advance.

The script is well rehearsed. On the phone, the magic price. On the landing, the door suddenly « presents a complication »: drilling is announced on a door that was merely slammed, a lock is declared « irreparable », a night surcharge appears that was mentioned nowhere, travel fees multiply. The final bill lands somewhere between €500 and €1,500, signed under pressure, on a landing, at midnight, often by someone who does not read French well enough to argue. French consumer associations have documented this mechanism for years. We see the victims in our shop on rue de Vaugirard most months, and they are disproportionately expats, students and tourists — not because they are naive, but because they cannot check anything at speed.

The defence fits in one sentence: demand the total price, all taxes included, in writing, before the locksmith leaves his base — and hang up if the answer is « it depends, we’ll see on site ». A professional who knows the trade can price a slammed, locked or jammed door before starting the engine. That is precisely what a published grid is for.

Why a SIRET matters more than a five-star logo on a website

France gives every registered business establishment a 14-digit number called a SIRET: nine digits identifying the company, five identifying that specific premises. Ours is 809 949 977 00023, for the shop at 135 rue de Vaugirard, Paris 15, part of SERRUREYES SAS.

It is not decoration. Type that number into the French government’s free company register, annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr, and within seconds you see the legal name, the registered activity, the address and whether the establishment is active. No login, no French required beyond reading a name. It is the single fastest way for a foreigner to separate a real Paris artisan from a switchboard operating under a rented brand name.

So ask for it. Ask us for it. A tradesman with premises gives you the number without hesitating, because it is painted on his shopfront and printed at the bottom of every page he publishes. A call centre changes the subject, insists there is no time, or promises to bring it later. That hesitation is your answer, and it costs nothing to trigger.

Daytime 8 am–6 pm · Evening 6 pm–10 pm · Night 10 pm–8 am — all prices TTC (VAT included), travel and labour included. Any part required is quoted in writing before fitting. Payment by card, Apple Pay, cheque, cash or bank transfer — no surcharge, invoice every time. The same grid is published in French on tarifs ouverture de porte.

Insurance, the facture, and why French paperwork is your friend

Newcomers underestimate the invoice. In France the facture is not a receipt for your wallet, it is the document that proves what was agreed. Ours states the business name, the SIRET, the date, the job performed, any part fitted line by line, and the total including VAT. It is issued every single time, at any hour, whatever you paid with.

You will need it in at least three situations. If your home insurance (assurance habitation) covers lockouts or a break-in — many French policies include an assistance serrurerie clause you may not know you have — the insurer reimburses on the invoice, never on a verbal account. If you rent, the invoice is what you send the landlord or the agency when the lock was worn out rather than misused. And if anything about the job turns out badly, the invoice is your recourse: without it, legally, the intervention never happened.

This is also why « pay cash, no invoice, I’ll knock something off » is never the bargain it sounds like. You lose the price proof, the claim document and the recourse in one go — and the person offering it has just told you exactly how they operate. We accept cash happily. With an invoice.

Come and see the shop: 135 rue de Vaugirard

This is the part that most distinguishes us from a search result. We have a door of our own, at 135 rue de Vaugirard in the 15th arrondissement, a few minutes’ walk from métro Falguière (line 12) and métro Pasteur (lines 6 and 12), on the long straight axis that runs down towards Vaugirard and Convention.

You can walk in. Bring the cylinder you unscrewed yourself and cannot identify. Bring the key that no longer turns and ask whether it is the key or the lock that is worn. Ask what an A2P star rating means before your landlord asks you for one. Look at the price grid pinned on the counter and compare it, line by line, with the table above — they are identical, and that is the whole point of publishing them.

Having a shop changes the economics in your favour. Cylinders and locks by Fichet, Vachette and Héraclès sit in stock behind the counter, so a job started at nine in the morning is usually finished the same morning rather than « when the part arrives ». It also changes the incentives: a business with a lease on rue de Vaugirard, an address printed on its invoices and 587 Google reviews attached to a five-star rating cannot afford to overcharge a tourist who will never come back. A number on a sticker can. Our neighbourhood page, in French, is serrurier Vaugirard Paris 15.

WhatsApp: two photos, one price, in English

When nothing is on fire and you simply want to know what something costs, use WhatsApp: +33 1 76 50 20 10. Send two photos — the lock seen from the landing side, and the edge of the door where the bolts come out — plus one line in English saying what happens when you turn the key. You get back a firm price in writing, in English, usually within the hour during opening times.

It works particularly well for the things expats worry about at leisure rather than in panic: a cylinder change after moving into a flat where you have no idea how many old keys exist (from €200 fitted, depending on the model and the time of day); a lock that is grinding and may only need repair (from €150 in the daytime) rather than replacement (from €220); a landlord or insurer demanding a three-point lock (€480 fitted). Photograph, send, decide with a number in front of you. The French version of this service lives on our devis gratuit page.

After the door opens: what usually happens next

Most stories end here. A slammed door opens without damage, you get your keys back, you pay €100 and you go and make a cup of tea. Nothing is replaced, because nothing was broken.

When there is a sequel, it is predictable and priced in advance. A locked door that had to be drilled needs a new cylinder — from €200 fitted, depending on the model and the time of day, and a good moment to move up to a high-security Fichet, Vachette or Héraclès cylinder from the shop stock; the French detail is on changement de cylindre. A jammed door often reveals a mechanism that is repairable from €150 rather than condemned — see réparation de serrure — and we do not replace what can be repaired, because you would find out and you would be right to be annoyed. If you have just been burgled, or if it is 1 am and you are weighing up whether this can wait until morning, our urgence serrurier page sets out what genuinely cannot wait.

One honest word about hours. We answer and intervene every day from 6:30 am to 2 am. If you are locked out at 3:30 am, we would rather tell you plainly than promise a van that will not come: wait somewhere warm, and call at 6:30, when the daytime band has not yet started but the shop has. A slammed door left shut on its latch is not an open flat; it is a closed door you cannot use for a few hours.

Which Paris are you locked out of?

The 15th is the largest arrondissement in Paris and one of the most international — Beaugrenelle and the Front de Seine towers, the streets around UNESCO and the business flats near Montparnasse, the student rooms behind rue de la Convention, the family buildings of Vaugirard and Commerce. Behind those doors sits every generation of French locksmithing at once: 1930s brick buildings with old single-point locks, 1970s towers with lightweight flush doors, Haussmann-era landings on rue du Commerce, and recent flats already fitted with A2P three-point locks.

It does not change your price. The grid works by situation, not by building or postcode: a slammed door in a Beaugrenelle tower and a slammed door in a 1900 building on rue Lecourbe both cost €100 in the daytime. What the building does change is the method, the parts we bring, and how quickly we get through the front hall — which is why a shop five minutes away with the right cylinders on the shelf beats a van dispatched from the other side of the périphérique. We serve the whole 15th and the neighbouring arrondissements, and the wider SERRUREYES network covers Paris 16, 17 and 18 and Boulogne-Billancourt.