This is the first question almost every Islamabad household asks, and the answer people usually get back is a single number, which is the least useful form the answer can take. A cook for two people in a G-11 apartment and a cook for a family of nine in F-7 who entertains twice a month are not the same job at different prices. They are different jobs.
What follows is the whole cost, broken into the parts that actually move.
The wage, and what moves it
The monthly wage is the largest line and the one people quote. In Islamabad it sits in a band rather than at a point, and four things decide where in that band a particular role lands.
Hours. A cook producing one evening meal for four people is doing perhaps three hours of real work including preparation and cleaning. A cook covering breakfast, a hot lunch for people who come home, and dinner at staggered times is doing a full day. The gap between those two is the single biggest driver of the figure.
Household size. Cooking for four and cooking for ten are different in kind, not just quantity — the shopping is heavier, the pots are bigger, the timing is harder, and the cleaning afterwards is substantial.
Live-in or live-out. A live-in arrangement usually carries a lower cash wage because accommodation and food form part of the package. That is fair when the quarter is genuinely habitable and not when it is a store room.
Entertaining. A household that has guests most weeks is buying a bigger job than one that does not, and pretending otherwise is how good cooks are lost.
Our cook salary guide carries the current band. Treat it as the anchor and adjust for the four factors above rather than expecting your household to sit at the midpoint.
The placement fee, which is separate
If you hire through an agency there is a placement fee, and it is a different kind of cost from the wage: charged once, at the point you confirm a hire, rather than monthly.
The distinction matters because the two get conflated in conversation and then in budgets. The wage is an ongoing obligation to a person. The fee is a one-time charge for finding and verifying them.
What you should not be paying is a monthly commission deducted from the cook's wage. If an agency is paid the full salary by you and passes on less, the person working in your kitchen is receiving below what you believe you are paying, and they will leave when they discover the market rate. We set out why in our comparison of placement fees and monthly commission models.
Groceries: the line nobody forecasts
A cook changes what your household spends on food, and it moves in both directions.
Upward, because a household with a cook eats more home-cooked meals. Meals that used to be skipped or scratched together now get cooked properly, which is the point, but it shows up in the grocery bill.
Downward, and usually by more, because the delivery apps stop. This is the number that surprises people most when they actually measure it. Households that track a month before and a month after routinely find the food-delivery line collapses to a fraction of what it was, and for many families that reduction alone covers a meaningful share of the wage.
Downward again once a cook is settled, because an experienced one wastes less, uses what is in the fridge, and buys sensibly. That only happens if there is a clear grocery budget and a receipt habit from the start — introduced later, it reads as suspicion; introduced on day one, it is simply how the kitchen runs.
The costs people forget
Eid payment. Near-universal in Islamabad and expected. Deciding a standing practice — one month's wage, say — and applying it consistently is better than deciding fresh each year, because an amount given once and not repeated is remembered as a reduction.
Extra hours. Guest evenings, Ramzan, wedding season. Agree a rate in advance rather than relying on goodwill, because goodwill runs out somewhere in the third week of a busy month.
Paid leave. A cook is entitled to time off and will take it. Budget for it as normal rather than as a disruption.
Transport, for live-out roles. A properly calculated allowance, reviewed annually as fares rise. An allowance set two years ago is now being subsidised out of the person's wage, which is a resignation waiting for a better offer.
Utilities and the quarter, for live-in roles. Real monthly amounts, small individually and worth counting.
Where you live changes the figure
Islamabad's geography affects this more than household size does in some cases.
In the central sectors — F-6 through F-11, E-7, the G-sectors — the candidate pool is deep and live-out is easy. Staff live nearby or in Rawalpindi, transport runs, and a cook can reach you by seven without difficulty. Competition among employers is real, so wages sit toward the upper part of the band, but you will fill the role quickly.
Past the airport, in the newer societies toward the motorway, the calculation changes. The local pool is thinner and the commute from the city is long enough that live-out arrangements requiring early starts do not survive their first winter. Households there either provide accommodation, hire locally, or pay a premium for somebody willing to make the journey — and the third option is the one that fails.
Near the diplomatic enclave and other controlled-access areas, add the access procedure to your thinking. A cook who cannot reliably get through the gate at seven is a cook whose breakfast is unreliable.
Working out your own number
Do this rather than asking what the going rate is.
Write out an ordinary week: every meal, who eats it, what time, and whether it is cooked or assembled. Add preparation, shopping and cleaning. Total the hours honestly.
Under about four hours a day, you are looking at a part-time arrangement and should price it as one — noting that short shifts carry a premium per hour, so it will not be a simple fraction of a full wage.
Four to eight hours, a standard full-time role at the band in the salary guide.
Above eight, either you need a second person for the non-cooking work, or you are describing a job nobody can sustain and the arrangement will end within the year.
Then add the fee, the Eid payment, an allowance for extra evenings, and transport or utilities depending on the arrangement. Subtract what your household currently spends on delivered food. The result is the honest figure, and it is usually lower than people fear and higher than the number they were quoting.
The most expensive option is underpaying
Worth saying plainly, because it is the decision that costs Islamabad households the most money.
Replacing a cook costs two to four months of wages once you count the search, the gap while the household eats badly or orders in, the weeks of training a new person on your family's food, and the accumulated knowledge that walks out — who does not eat rice, how much to make when the cousins come, what Friday looks like.
Paying ten or fifteen per cent above the band to keep somebody good is cheaper than that, and it is cheaper than it looks on a monthly view because it compounds in the other direction: a cook in their third year needs no supervision at all.
Two worked examples
Numbers in the abstract are hard to act on, so here are the two shapes most Islamabad enquiries actually take.
A couple in a G-11 apartment. One cooked meal in the evening, breakfast managed themselves, guests occasionally. The honest requirement is about three hours a day. A part-time cook arriving mid-afternoon, cooking the evening meal and enough for the next day's lunch, and leaving the kitchen clean, fits this exactly. The cash cost is well below a full salary, there is no accommodation question because the flat has none, and the household keeps its evenings to itself. Groceries rise modestly; the delivery spend largely disappears.
A family of eight in F-8 with a servant quarter. Breakfast in two waves, a hot lunch for whoever is home, dinner at eight, and guests two or three times a month. That is a full day and then some. This is a full-time role, realistically live-in given the early start, with a wage toward the upper part of the band because of the household size and the entertaining. Add food and utilities for the quarter. Add an agreed rate for guest evenings, or the arrangement will strain by the third month.
The gap between those two is not a small percentage. It is more than double, and it is entirely driven by hours and household size rather than by any difference in the cook's ability.
When a cook is not the right hire
Worth saying, because households sometimes buy the wrong thing.
If the requirement is genuinely one meal a day for two or three people, a tiffin subscription is cheaper and simpler, and there is no shame in that arithmetic — the break-even sits at around four or five eaters. We compare the two properly in our guide to hiring a cook against using a tiffin service.
If the requirement is cooking plus cleaning plus errands for a small household, you are describing a helper who cooks rather than a cook, and it should be scoped and paid as that combined role — above a plain helper rate, below a dedicated cook's.
And if what you actually want is somebody to produce impressive food for guests six times a year, that is per-occasion catering, not a salaried position.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a part-time cook cheaper per hour than full-time?
No, usually more expensive per hour, and reasonably so. A three-hour shift costs the cook travel time and limits what else he can take on, so the hourly rate carries a premium. The saving comes from buying fewer hours, not cheaper ones.
Should I pay a cook more if they also clean the kitchen?
Cleaning the kitchen after cooking is part of a cook's job and should not need extra payment. Cleaning the rest of the house is a different job, and adding it without removing something or raising the wage is how households lose good cooks.
How much do groceries go up with a cook?
Less than people expect once the delivery spending is netted off, and in many households the total food cost falls. Track a month before and a month after rather than estimating — the before figure is usually the surprising one.
Do I pay a cook during my holidays?
Yes. Discuss it before hiring and agree what happens — paid leave, reduced duties, or work at a relative's house. What does not work is stopping payment while expecting the person to still be available when you return.