Can a Locksmith Make One Key for All Doors? Yes, Here Is How

Updated September 2026. Written and checked by the technicians at Safe & Secure Locksmith, 4105 Macdonald St, Vancouver. Every figure below matches our published price list. Call 604-734-7233 for a quote before anyone is dispatched.

Yes, and it is called keying alike

A locksmith can rekey several cylinders to the same combination so one key opens all of them. Front deadbolt, front knob, back door, garage entry, side gate: one key. It is one of the most common requests we get, especially from people who have just moved and are carrying four keys for one house.

It is priced per cylinder, not per house: $25 to $45 per cylinder for standard Schlage, Kwikset, Weiser and Yale hardware, or $60 to $120 per cylinder for high-security platforms, on top of a $75 service call during standard hours. The sheet is on the prices page.

The one condition

Locks can only be keyed alike if they share a keyway, meaning the shape of the slot the key slides into. A Kwikset keyway and a Schlage keyway are different profiles, and a key cut for one will not physically enter the other.

When your doors have mixed brands, there are three routes. Swap the cylinders so everything runs on one keyway, which is often cheap because a cylinder is not a whole lockset. Replace the odd lock outright, which makes sense if it was due anyway. Or accept two keys, which is sometimes the sensible answer when the fifth door is a shed nobody uses daily.

What a technician checks first

Whether the cylinders are mechanically sound, because rekeying a worn lock gives you a worn lock with a new key. Whether they share a keyway or can be made to. Whether any of them are restricted, in which case the key must be cut to a registered code with authorisation. And whether any door is a rated fire door, where the hardware is part of the rating and cannot be casually swapped.

That check is why we quote a range on the phone and a number on site. See lock rekey Vancouver for the service itself.

Is one key less secure?

Practically, no, and this trips people up. A single key does not make any individual lock easier to pick or force. What changes is the consequence of losing it: one lost key now opens everything instead of one door.

The mitigation is the same either way. Rekey when a key goes missing, which is the whole argument in rekeying versus replacing. Against the realistic threat, which is force at the weakest point rather than an attack on the cylinder, keying alike changes nothing. That threat is covered in how burglars actually get in.

Where keyed alike stops and master keying starts

Keyed alike means every lock takes the same key and there is one level of access. That is right for a house.

A master key system is different: each door has its own key, and a separate master opens all of them. That is what a building with tenants, an office with departments, or a strata with common areas needs, because the cleaner should open the lobby and not the suites. It starts at $300 for the system plus $30 to $80 per cylinder on standard hardware. The detail is in master key systems explained.

Doors that will not join the system

Some doors genuinely cannot be brought onto one key, and it is better to know before booking. Electronic and smart locks with no cylinder have no pins to change, though many have a keyed override that can be included. Padlocks vary: some are rekeyable to your house key, some are sealed. Mailbox and communal locks in an apartment building belong to the building, not to you. And older mortise locks can usually be included, but they are a slower job: see how to rekey a mortise lock.

How many keys you get

The first two keys are included on a standard rekey and additional keys are $4 to $10 each. Two is rarely enough for a household, so decide the number before the technician packs up: cutting five while the machine is out costs less than a second visit. If you want to know why coded keys beat copies of copies, that is in what key cutting costs.

The typical job

A Vancouver house with a front deadbolt, a front knob, a back door and a garage entry is four cylinders. The technician checks compatibility, pins all four to one new combination in place, tests each door with the new key, confirms none of the old keys work, and cuts the number of copies you asked for. Roughly an hour on site.

Book it with 604-734-7233 or online, and tell us the brands on your doors if you can read them off the faceplate. It makes the phone quote much more accurate.

Article history

This is the rewritten version of Can A Locksmith Make One Key For All Doors, updated September 2026 with the shop's current per-cylinder pricing and links that resolve.