A steady drip is not just annoying. It feeds constant moisture into the cabinet base, and swollen particle board costs far more to put right than the tap ever did.
Age is the first question we ask. Most kitchen and bath faucets from the last fifteen years take a replaceable cartridge, so a new cartridge and fresh o rings usually wraps up inside an hour. If the body is solid and the finish still looks right, that is the honest answer, and we will say it even though it is the smaller invoice.
Replacement earns its keep in a few clear cases: a corroded base, a handle that wobbles at the deck, parts nobody makes anymore, or a fixture that has already been rebuilt once. Hunting down components for a discontinued tap burns more labour than the new unit costs.
Either way the process is the same. Shut off. Drain the line. Protect the cabinet. Then run it under pressure for several minutes before we pack up. One warning: if the shut off valve itself is seized, we tell you before we start, because that changes the job.