How much does it cost to build a deck?

Price your deck by the square foot, then see where it lands among what US households actually told the Census they paid. The famous $7,674 average is not a deck: it is a category that includes concrete patios, and that is why every quote you get looks high next to it.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

Deck size (square feet)

The deck surface, length times width. 300 sq ft is a common size, roughly 12 by 24 or 16 by 20. This is the number that drives everything else on the page, so measure it rather than guessing.

Decking material

Sets the rate below, which you can then edit.

THESE RATES ARE OUR MODEL, not a statistic. They are the number that carries most of the uncertainty on this page (the height multiplier and the quote-spread band are ours too, and both say so). We could not find a free source for a decking price per square foot, and we name where we looked: every sheet of both DOE measures workbooks (no decking line item in either), and the federal lumber series, which is an index and so can tell you decking got dearer but never what it costs. Each rate is all in, covering footings, framing, the boards, fasteners and the contractor's labor and profit.

All-in cost per square foot (dollars)

Set by the material above, and worth overriding with a real quote if you have one. This single number carries every unsourced assumption on the page, which is why we put it in a box rather than burying it.

How high off the ground

OUR MODEL. A ground-level deck needs shallow footings, no guardrail and no stairs. Get more than about 30 inches off the ground and code requires a guardrail, the posts and footings get serious, and you need stairs. That is real work, and it is the single biggest thing people forget when they price a deck from a per-square-foot number.

A quote you have been given (dollars, optional)

Leave at zero to skip. Enter a quote and we will show what it works out to per square foot of deck, and where it sits among what households actually paid.

Estimated cost

$10,500

Typical range $8,925 – $13,650

Materials: footings, framing, boards, fasteners$3,770
Labor, overhead and profit$4,651
Work subcontracted out (usually the concrete)$2,079
Total$10,500

See next steps →

The famous average is not a deck. Every deck page in the country quotes a figure near $7,674, and it is a real number: it is the Census median for what households paid a contractor. But look at what the survey actually asked.

The category is "added porch, deck, patio, or terrace", so a poured concrete patio, a screened porch, a stoop and a cedar deck all go in the same row. Its 5th percentile is $877, which does not buy a deck. It buys a small slab. So a real deck is an above-average job in that category, by construction. Price a plain 300 sq ft pressure-treated deck properly and you get about $10,500, which lands at the 63rd percentile of everything in the survey. Do it in composite and you are at the 75th. Nothing has gone wrong: you are simply being compared against a pile of concrete patios. That single fact explains why the quote in your hand looks so much worse than the number you read, and no amount of haggling will close a gap that is really a definition. And know who you are paying. A residential remodeller bills $104.30 per field hour and pays the person swinging the hammer $26.41: a measured 3.95x markup, the third-highest of the thirteen trades we have measured, sitting on the lowest field wage of any of them.

§ 02 The return

All in, per sq ft of deck$35.00

Where that lands among real jobs (percentile)63

The 'average' everyone quotes (Census, all structures)$7,674

Of the labor, what the crew is actually paid$1,188

Your quote, per sq ftn/a

Your quote lands at (percentile)n/a

The estimate is our cost per square foot applied to your deck. The figures beside it are what US households told the Census they actually paid to add a porch, deck, patio or terrace, in 2025 dollars. That category fuses four different structures, so treat its median as a reality check on your quote and never as the price of a deck.

Where the money goes

Materials: footings, framing, boards, fasteners$3,770

Labor, overhead and profit$4,651

Work subcontracted out (usually the concrete)$2,079

By the numbers

Census (American Housing Survey, 2023): the median household who hired a contractor to add a porch, deck, patio or terrace paid $7,674.
More
But a quarter paid under $3,508 and the 5th percentile is $877, which tells you plainly that a large part of this category is not decks at all.
The mean is $13,400, which is 75% above the median.
More
That gap is the long tail of big jobs, and it is why 'average deck cost' figures vary so wildly between sites: they are quoting different points on a badly skewed distribution and calling all of them the average.
A plain 300 sq ft pressure-treated deck, priced at our rate, comes to about $10,500 and lands at the 63rd percentile of the whole Census category.
More
In composite it is about $16,500, at the 75th. A real deck is an above-median job here by definition, because the category is diluted with concrete patios.
Economic Census (2022): a residential remodeller bills $104.30 per field hour in 2025 dollars and pays the person swinging the hammer $26.41.
More
That is a measured 3.95x markup, the third-highest of every construction trade we have measured, and it rests on the lowest field wage of any of them.
Economic Census: a remodeller's job splits 35.9% materials, 19.8% subcontracted and 44.3% labor, overhead and profit. That subcontract share is high compared with other trades, and on a deck it is usually the concrete for the footings going out to someone else.
Census: households who built their own porch, deck or patio reported a median of $2,193, against $7,674 for hiring a contractor.
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Note the wording: it is the same fused category and we are not going to slip and call it a deck. Do not read it as a saving of three to one on the same job either. Decking is one of the genuinely approachable DIY builds, but the survey cannot tell you whether they built the same thing, and the structural parts (footings, ledger, guardrail) are exactly the ones that hurt people when they are wrong.
1 more
- There is no free, authoritative price per square foot for decking.
  More
  The DOE measures database has none, and the federal lumber series is an index rather than a price level. Every confident per-square-foot figure you find online, including ours, is somebody's model. The difference is that ours is in a box you can change, and we show you where the result lands against what people really paid.

What is sourced, and what is ours. Nearly all of this page is sourced, and we can point at exactly the piece that is not. Sourced: what households actually paid, from the Census American Housing Survey, along with the full percentile ladder we use to place your job in that spread. Sourced and measured, not assumed: the billed rate and the way a job's dollar splits, both from the 2022 Economic Census for NAICS 236118, residential remodellers, the trade that builds most decks. They tell us a job is 35.9% materials, 19.8% subcontracted (on a deck that is usually the concrete for the footings) and 44.3% labor, overhead and profit.

Ours is the cost per square foot, and it is the one that matters. Two smaller things are ours as well, and they say so where they appear: the height multiplier, and the quote-to-quote spread band. But the rate is what drives the answer. There is no free source for it, and we looked in three places properly before saying so: we enumerated every sheet of both DOE measures workbooks, and the only RSMeans unit-cost tables in them are siding, roof insulation, duct insulation and pipe insulation. There is no decking line item anywhere. The federal lumber series is a price index, which can tell you decking got 12% dearer but never what it costs. And the Economic Census products file, which prices concrete and paint and windows for other pages on this site, does carry the lumber lines you would want, "softwood dressed 2-inch lumber" and "rough and dressed lumber, treated with preservatives", with every quantity cell suppressed, so no board price falls out of it either. We tell you that last one because we had been quoting a boilerplate refusal about that file without having actually run it against lumber, and an audit caught us. It turned out to be true. It was still not something we had earned the right to say. So we put our rate in an editable box rather than burying it in the arithmetic. How much comfort should you take from where it lands? Some, but less than we first claimed. A plain pressure-treated deck at our rate lands at the 63rd percentile of the survey, which is a sensible place for a real deck to sit in a category watered down by patios and stoops. But we went and checked how sharp that test actually is, and it is blunt: our rate would have to fall below about $3 a square foot, or climb above about $205, before the placement looked wrong at all. Nearly any plausible rate passes it. So treat the placement as a sanity check that we are in the right universe, and not as evidence the rate is right to the dollar. The rate is our model. That is why it is a box you can overwrite. And a correction we owe you. This page first argued that house size and deck cost are unrelated, and pointed at two dips in the survey as proof. We were wrong, and the survey says so: bigger houses really do get dearer decks, from a median of $4,957 under 1,500 sq ft up to $13,155 above 4,000, a 2.65x spread that is statistically solid. The two dips we leaned on were noise. We had cited noise as proof of absence while a real signal sat in the same table, which is the exact trap our own rules warn about, because a refusal sounds rigorous and therefore needs a higher bar than a positive claim, not a lower one. We still do not offer a house-size selector, for the honest reason. We ask you the size of your deck, which is a measurement rather than a proxy, and multiplying a measurement by a proxy would count the same thing twice. What the house-size relationship really tracks is almost certainly your budget, not the geometry of your deck.

Where every number above comes from

US Census

US Census Bureau, American Housing Survey 2023 National PUF (JOBTYPE 15, what households actually paid)
www2.census.gov
US Census

US Census Bureau, American Housing Survey (programme and documentation)
census.gov
US Census

US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, EC2223BASIC (the microdata behind the billed rate, NAICS 236118)
www2.census.gov
BEA, residential improvements price index (deflator)
fred.stlouisfed.org

What this assumes, and where it could be wrong

Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.

A NAICS CODE IS A BUCKET, NOT A JOB, AND THE RATE ON THIS PAGE IS THE BUCKET'S.

NAICS 236118 is titled 'Residential remodelers', and only 61.2% of that class's receipts are remodeling contractor, except those performing specialized w. The largest single slice, 61.2%, is remodeling contractor, except those performing specializ. NAICS 238130 is titled 'Framing contractors', and only 75.8% of that class's receipts are framing contractor. The largest single slice, 75.8%, is framing contractor. NAICS 238350 is titled 'Finish carpentry contractors', and only 76.3% of that class's receipts are finish carpentry contractor. The largest single slice, 76.3%, is finish carpentry contractor. So the billed rate here is the CLASS's rate, measured from real firms doing real work, and it is the measured figure we have for this job. It is not a rate for specialists in this job specifically, and we have four times called a class rate something it was not. We would rather show you the composition than let you assume it away.

WHERE WE LOOKED FOR A DECKING PRICE, HOW BIG EACH PLACE IS, AND THE ONE WE HAD ONLY PRETENDED TO LOOK IN.

We name the universes rather than wave at them, because a refusal is a claim and we have got seven of them wrong. DOE and NREL's measures database: 93 sheets across two workbooks, all enumerated, no decking line item. The American Housing Survey: 37 named improvement job types, all read (36 occur in the 2023 data). The BLS lumber series: an INDEX, so it gives the price change and can never give a dollar. And the Economic Census products file (EC2200NAPCSINDPRD), 137,429 US product rows with quantity and unit columns, which is where we owe you a correction. THIS PARAGRAPH USED TO BE SHARED BOILERPLATE, copied across pages, saying 'for THIS material every cell is suppressed' without anyone having actually run it against LUMBER. We have now run it. The good news is that the boilerplate was right, and the better news is that we can now tell you exactly why: NAICS 321113 (sawmills, 44 US rows) and 321114 (wood preservation, 19 US rows) genuinely do publish the lines you would want, 'softwood dressed 2-inch lumber' and 'rough and dressed lumber, treated with preservatives' among them, and every single one of their quantity cells is flagged X, so no factory-gate board price can be derived from any of them. Wood rows in that file that DO yield a price exist, and they are veneer, plywood, hardwood flooring, laminated veneer lumber and 'glued laminated hardwood truck trailer flooring and railroad car decking'. That last one contains the word decking and is not a deck board, and we are writing that down so nobody here mistakes it for one later. If it is not in those four places, we have not found it, and that is a fact about us rather than about the world.

THE SURVEY CATEGORY IS FUSED, and this is the most important thing on the page.

AHS JOBTYPE 15 is literally 'added porch, deck, patio, or terrace'. A poured concrete patio, a screened porch, a stoop and a cedar deck are four different jobs at four different prices, and the survey files them all in one row. Its median is therefore the middle of four blended distributions. We use it to place your job in the real spread of what people paid. We never call it the cost of a deck, and nor should anyone else.

The cost per square foot is OUR MODEL, and it is the number that carries most of the uncertainty on this page.

Two smaller assumptions are also ours and are flagged where they appear: the height multiplier and the quote-spread band. No free source publishes the rate, and we checked three before saying so: the DOE measures database contains no decking across all 93 of its sheets; the BLS lumber series is a price index rather than a level, so it can tell you decking got dearer but never what it costs; and the Economic Census products file publishes softwood and treated lumber lines whose quantity cells are, every one of them, suppressed, so no factory-gate board price comes out of it either. Our rates are all-in and cover footings, framing, boards, fasteners, labor, overhead and profit. They are editable for exactly this reason.

Where the estimate lands is a sanity check on that rate, but a weak one, and we would rather say so than dress it up.

A plain 300 sq ft pressure-treated deck comes to about $10,500 and sits at the 63rd percentile of the Census category, which is a sensible place for a real deck in a distribution containing a lot of cheaper structures. But the test is blunt: the rate would have to drop below roughly $3 a square foot, or exceed roughly $205, before that placement looked wrong. Nearly any plausible rate passes. It tells you we are in the right universe. It does not tell you the rate is right to the dollar.

The height multiplier (30% for a raised deck, 55% for a second-story one) is our model too.

Above roughly 30 inches, code requires a guardrail, the posts and footings become substantial, and you need stairs. This is the single biggest thing people forget when they price a deck from a per-square-foot figure they read somewhere.

The split into materials, labor and subcontracting applies the 2022 Economic Census composition of a NAICS 236118 job (35.9% materials, 19.8% subcontracted, 44.3% labor, overhead and profit).

Those shares are measured, but they are the average across all residential remodelling work in the country, so treat the split as indicative rather than as a costing of your deck.

A deck may also be built by a framing contractor (NAICS 238130, which bills less per hour) or a finish carpentry contractor (238350).

We use residential remodellers because they are the trade that takes on home additions and by far the largest: 128,187 establishments against 13,125 framers. If your builder is a specialist, their rate will differ.

There is NO house-size selector on this page, and the first reason we published for that was WRONG.

We claimed the relationship did not exist, citing two dips in the size-band medians. Those dips are noise (z = -0.28 and z = -0.57). The trend we overlooked is real and significant: the median runs from $4,957 for a home under 1,500 sq ft to $13,155 above 4,000, a 2.65x spread, with a rank correlation of +0.886. Bigger houses do get dearer decks. We keep the finding and drop the false argument, because citing noise as proof of absence is precisely the trap our own methodology warns about.

We still decline the selector, for the reason that actually holds: this page asks for the size of your DECK, which is a direct measurement, while house size is only a proxy.

Multiplying a measurement by a proxy would count the same thing twice, and what the house-size relationship is really capturing is almost certainly the household budget rather than the geometry of the deck. The bands are individually noisy too, with relative standard errors up to 40.8%, so even if we wanted them they would be a blunt instrument.

The low and high band is our own estimate of quote-to-quote spread (15% below and 30% above), not a survey figure.

The real spread in the survey is far wider than that, because it is measuring four different kinds of structure rather than four quotes for the same deck.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to build a deck?

On our numbers, a plain 300 sq ft pressure-treated deck runs about $10,500, or roughly $35 a square foot all in, covering footings, framing, boards, labor and the contractor's profit. Cedar takes it to about $13,500, composite to about $16,500, and PVC to about $21,000. Raise it more than about 30 inches off the ground and you need a guardrail, real footings and stairs, which we reckon adds about 30%. The per-square-foot rate is our model rather than a published statistic. We looked before saying so: we enumerated every sheet of both DOE measures workbooks and there is no decking line item in either, and the federal lumber series is a price index rather than a level. If a free source does publish an installed decking price, we have not found it.

Why is my quote so much higher than the average deck cost I read online?

Because that average is not a deck. It comes from the Census, which asks households what they paid to add a 'porch, deck, patio, or terrace', all in one category. Its median is $7,674 and its 5th percentile is $877, which buys a small concrete slab rather than a deck. So a genuine deck sits well above the middle of that distribution by definition: our 300 sq ft pressure-treated deck lands at the 63rd percentile, and a composite one at the 75th. Your quote probably is not out of line. You are being compared against a pile of patios.

How much of a deck's cost is labor?

About 44%, and it is measured rather than guessed. The 2022 Economic Census publishes what residential remodellers take in and the field hours they work: 35.9% of a job's dollar is materials, 19.8% is subcontracted out (on a deck that is usually the concrete for the footings), and 44.3% is labor, overhead and profit. On a $10,500 deck that is roughly $4,650 of labor, buying about 45 field hours at the $104.30 the firm bills. Across the trade, construction workers are paid an average of $26.41 of that hour.

Is composite decking worth it over pressure-treated wood?

It costs roughly 55% more to build and it is not a maintenance-free material, whatever the brochure says: it still needs cleaning and it can stain and scratch. What it does not need is sanding, staining or sealing every couple of years, which is the real cost of a wood deck and the one people forget when they compare the two. If you would genuinely re-stain a pressure-treated deck on schedule, composite closes much of the gap over ten years. If you know perfectly well that you would not, then you are choosing between a composite deck and a gray wood one.

Does a bigger house mean a more expensive deck?

Yes, and rather strongly. In the Census data the median runs from $4,957 for a home under 1,500 sq ft up to $13,155 for one above 4,000: a 2.65-fold spread, and a solid one statistically. We will own up here, because we originally published the opposite. We had looked at two dips in the middle of that series and called the whole relationship non-existent, and those dips turned out to be sampling noise while the real trend sat in the same table the whole time. What we still do not do is ask for your house size, and that is for a better reason: we ask for the size of your deck instead, which is a measurement rather than a proxy, and stacking a proxy on top of a measurement would count the same thing twice. What the house-size relationship is really tracking is probably your budget, not your deck.

Should I build the deck myself?

The survey shows a do-it-yourself median of $2,193 against $7,674 for a contractor, and decking is genuinely one of the more approachable builds: it is outdoors, it is forgiving of small errors, and nothing is hidden inside a wall. Two warnings. The survey cannot tell you whether the DIY builders built the same thing, and the parts that are structural rather than cosmetic (the footings, the ledger board where the deck attaches to the house, and the guardrail) are precisely the ones that injure people when they are wrong. A ledger fixed with the wrong fasteners is the classic way a deck full of people ends up on the ground.

How do I check a quote I have been given?

Put it in the box above. We will show you what it works out to per square foot of deck, and where it sits among what households actually reported paying. If it comes to $35 a square foot for pressure-treated, it is in the ordinary range. If it comes to $70, either you are getting PVC and a second-story structure, or you should ask exactly what is in the price: the footings, the guardrail, the stairs and whether the concrete is subcontracted are the four places a deck quote quietly grows.

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