A white upright freezer in a garage beside a workbench, clean and closed.

Start with what you own

Freezer
types,
told apart.

Two freezers can hold the same food and still work nothing alike. An upright freezer has shelves, a door and often an automatic defrost, a chest freezer keeps its cold under a lid and is defrosted by hand, a built-in freezer column is fitted flush with the cabinets and runs its own electronics, and an undercounter freezer or freezer drawer works hard in a small space with little air around it. Knowing which of the four stands in your home settles half of the repair question before the technician arrives.

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4 types
Serviced in place
What each one costs

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Four types,
each its own job.

Each one is built, reached and repaired differently. Open yours for what fails on it and what the work involves.

Upright freezer

A tall, freestanding freezer with one front door and shelves or baskets inside, the kind that stands in a garage, a basement or a pantry as the household's second place for frozen food.

Chest freezer

A low, wide box with a lid that lifts from the top, cooled by coils wrapped inside its walls, the long-term freezer of basements, garages and utility rooms.

Freezer column

A built-in, full-height freezer that stands alone in the cabinetry, often beside a matching fresh-food column, with a stainless or panel-ready door and an electronic control.

Undercounter freezer

A 15- to 24-inch freezer or a pair of freezer drawers built in under a counter, in a kitchen island, a home bar, a basement or a pool house, venting from the front.

Not sure which you have?

Start from what it is doing

If the freezer in your home does not obviously match one of these, work from the symptom instead. It reaches the same answer from the other end.

17 problemsIn order of costWhat to check first Go to the problems

Which one
is yours?

One look at the freezer usually settles it. The first sign of each type is on the right; its page has the rest, and what that type means for a repair.

Chest or upright

UprightUpright freezer

It stands on its own, taller than it is wide, with a single door hinged on one side and no fresh-food section anywhere in the cabinet.

ChestChest freezer

The freezer is a rectangular box about waist high, and the lid lifts upward on hinges at the back instead of swinging open like a door.

ColumnFreezer column

It is a tall, single-door freezer set into the cabinetry with no visible sides, often with a matching column beside it that holds fresh food instead.

UndercounterUndercounter freezer

The freezer sits entirely under a counter, about 34 inches tall, with a door or one or two pull-out drawers flush with the cabinet fronts.

What a repair
usually costs.

Most freezer repairs are small next to the food a freezer holds: a seal, a relay, a fan, a defrost part or a thermostat, all well below the cost of a new cabinet. A built-in column or undercounter freezer is nearly always worth repairing, even when the sealed system is involved, because a replacement has to fit its opening and match its neighbors. On an older garage upright or chest freezer the line is the compressor or a leak in the tubing, where the repair can come close to the price of a new one and the technician lays out both.

Freezer diagnostic visit: Your freezer is priced once the failed part is found.

Read the full cost guide

Repair	Relative cost	Notes
Start relay, overload or compressor	moderate to highest	A relay or an overload clipped to the compressor is a small part and a quick fix from behind the lower grille. A compressor that has truly failed brings sealed-system work with it and sits near the top of the scale.
Refrigerant leak, restriction and recharge	highest	Finding the leak, brazing it, fitting a new drier, pulling a vacuum and charging by weight is the most involved work a freezer can need. On a chest freezer with tubing buried in its walls, reaching the leak can cost more than the cabinet is worth.
Defrost heater, defrost thermostat or timer	low to moderate	The parts are modest, and most of the time goes into emptying the lower shelves, opening the back panel and thawing a packed coil. A defrost control built into the main board moves the job up a step.
Evaporator or condenser fan motor	low to moderate	A fan motor is a moderate part reached from the inside back panel or the lower grille. Variable-speed fans on built-in columns cost a little more than the plain motors in a garage upright.
Thermostat, temperature sensor or garage kit	low to moderate	A dial thermostat on a chest or a basic upright is inexpensive. A sensor on an electronic model, or a garage kit fitted to a freezer that lives in a cold room, adds a step for the part and the setup.
Door, lid or drawer gasket	low	A gasket is cut for one model and fitted without moving the freezer. Large column doors and drawer fronts that need realigning cost a little more than a chest lid or a small upright door.
Drain tube, drain pan or drain plug	lowest	Thawing and flushing a drain, reseating a pan or fitting a new chest drain plug is among the least costly freezer work. A drain heater or a pan that has to be reached from under a built-in unit adds some time.
Control board, display, door switch or alarm	moderate to highest	A door switch, a connector or a single sensor is a small repair. A main board or a display for a built-in column or an undercounter unit is one of the costliest parts on the list and can take time to arrive.
Hinge, lid springs, latch or drawer rails	low	Hinges, lid springs and latches are affordable parts fitted with hand tools. Drawer rails on an undercounter freezer, or a self-closing hinge carrying a wood panel, sit a little higher.

A parent and a child packing summer berries into bags beside an open upright freezer in a tidy garage — For the heart of your home.

Questions about
the types.

What kinds of freezers does this site cover?

Upright freezers with shelves and a door, chest freezers that open from the top, built-in freezer columns fitted flush into the cabinetry, and undercounter freezers and freezer drawers. The freezer section of a combined appliance, such as a bottom drawer or a top compartment, is covered by our sister site for that appliance.

Why does the kind of freezer change the repair?

It decides how the cold is made and moved and how frost is dealt with. Most chest freezers have their coils in the walls and are defrosted by hand, while a frost-free upright or a built-in column has a fan, a heater, a timer or board and a drain that a chest freezer usually does not.

Are chest freezers easier to fix than uprights?

They have fewer parts to go wrong, since most have no fan inside and no defrost heater. The flip side is that their coils sit inside the walls, so a leak there is rarely worth repairing. An upright has more parts, but most of them can be reached and replaced.

What should I tell you about my freezer when I book?

Whether it is an upright, a chest, a built-in column or an undercounter unit, the make, roughly how old it is, and where it stands, such as a garage, a basement or the kitchen. That tells us which parts to carry and how much time to allow.

Back to your everyday

Let’s get your freezer working again.

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Schedule a repair Call (844) 456-4651

Freezertypes,told apart.

Four types, each its own job.