NYC's 5-Star Rat Exterminator

We book the earliest available appointment — often same day for active infestations — and start trapping and exclusion immediately. Most properties see the active population knocked down within the first one to two visits, with proofing to stop re-entry.

Killing the rats you can see is only half the job. We find and seal every entry point — gaps around pipes, vents, foundation cracks and door sweeps — so new rats can't get in. That exclusion work is what makes the result last.

Yes. We service restaurants, food-service and property-management accounts across all five boroughs, including discreet visits and the documentation you need for DOH compliance.

New York has one of the densest rat populations in the world — aging infrastructure, constant construction and food-rich blocks give rats shelter and highways between buildings. That's why one-off baiting rarely works unless you also seal how they're getting in.

Both — despite the name, Rat Exterminator Corporation treats mice as well as rats across all five boroughs. Mice can squeeze through a gap the width of a pencil (about 6mm), so a mouse job gets the same trap-and-remove-the-colony-then-seal-every-entry-point approach as a rat job. Same 5.0★ team, same guarantee.

In NYC a rat treatment typically runs $300–$1,200, averaging around $475. Broken down: one-time baiting is roughly $200–$500, exclusion — baiting plus sealing every entry point — is $400–$900, and ongoing monitoring is $100–$200 a month. The national per-visit average is lower, about $345, because most of the country isn't dealing with burrowing Norway rats under dense pre-war building stock. We quote after inspection, not over the phone, because the burrow count and the number of entry points decide the price.

Mice cost less than rats. An inspection runs $75–$125; a one-time treatment is $150–$550. If you'd rather cover the property continuously, yearly contracts are $200–$450, quarterly $450–$900, and monthly $800–$1,200. In a multi-unit building the honest answer is that treating one apartment is usually the expensive option, because mice travel the shared risers and repopulate it.

For a single mouse, DIY snap traps often work. For rats, rarely — because the rats you see are living in a burrow you haven't found, usually outside, and bait alone leaves it intact. The other half of the job is exclusion: sealing every gap down to about half an inch for rats and a quarter inch for mice. That's the part DIY almost always skips, and it's the part that decides whether they come back.

We confirm the species first — the NYC rat is almost always a burrowing Norway rat, not a climbing roof rat — then map the active burrows and the runways between them and the food source. Tamper-resistant stations go on those confirmed runs, not scattered as guesswork. Entry points get sealed with steel mesh, hydraulic cement and door sweeps sized to the actual gap. Then we re-check: a re-opened burrow means the colony is still active and the programme continues.

Permanently means removing the harborage, not just the rats. A colony persists because something sustains it — an unsealed trash area, a tree pit used as a feeding station, dense ground vegetation, or an open gap into the building. We treat the population, seal the entry points, and tell you plainly what has to change on your side. A programme that only kills rats is a subscription; one that closes the harborage is a fix.

New things. Norway rats are neophobic — they avoid an unfamiliar object in a familiar run for roughly two to three days before resuming normal movement around it. It's the single most misunderstood fact about rat control in NYC: it's why a fresh bait station looks like it's "not working" when checked after 48 hours, and why single-visit treatments so often fail. We build that delay into the monitoring schedule instead of declaring success early.

Autumn into winter, as temperatures drop and rats move from burrows and tree pits into heated buildings looking for food and shelter — which is why exclusion work is best done before the cold arrives, not during it. Construction and demolition nearby cause the other surge: excavation displaces an established colony outward into neighbouring properties, at any time of year.