How much does it cost to install gutters?

Price your gutters by the foot, from the rate the trade actually bills rather than one we made up. And meet the classification nobody reports: the government files gutter contractors under Siding Contractors, in the same class, which is why gutters are a quarter of that class's work and only 2% of a roofer's.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

Gutter length (linear feet)

Measure the roof edges the gutter will run along. A typical single-story house is around 150 to 200 linear feet; a larger two-story with a complicated roofline can be 250 or more. This is the number everything else scales from.

Gutter material

Sets the material rate below. THESE RATES ARE OUR MODEL, not a statistic: we could not find a free source publishing a gutter price per foot, and the assumptions below name every place we looked, because a refusal is a claim and we have been wrong about four of them. What keeps them honest is the Economic Census, which measures how a job's dollar splits, so our material price and our crew hours cannot both be wrong in the same direction without the split going out.

Material cost per foot (dollars)

Set by the material above, and worth overriding if you have a real quote. It is OUR price, but it is no longer unanchored: the Census gives a factory-gate figure of about $2.60 a linear foot for the sheet metal, and we ship $3.20.

We spent months telling you no federal source published a factory-gate price for gutter stock. One does, and we had convinced ourselves the file did not exist. The Census product line reads: 'sheet metal roofing, all types, AND ROOF DRAINAGE EQUIPMENT (including eave troughs)'. Eave troughs are gutters. It blends roofing sheet with gutter coil, so read it as the right order of magnitude rather than a quote, and the 11.75-inch coil width we use to turn square feet into linear feet is an industry convention rather than a federal figure. What it does do is corroborate the number we had modeled: $3.20 delivered against $2.60 at the factory gate is about a 23% distribution margin, which is what you would expect.

Crew hours on site

Our assumption. A straightforward single-story run of seamless aluminum is a day for two people, which is where our 8 field hours comes from. Two stories, awkward access, rotten fascia board to replace, or a roofline with lots of corners all push it up, and corners are the thing people forget: every inside and outside corner is a mitre, and mitres are where gutters leak.

Billed rate (dollars per field hour)

This one is MEASURED, not assumed, and it is the number we are most confident in.

The Economic Census tells us that 64% of US gutter work is done by siding contractors and 33% by roofers. Siding contractors bill $113.97 a field hour, roofers $136.72. Weighted by the gutter work each actually performs, gutter labor bills $121.70 a field hour, against the $30.89 the firm pays the person on the ladder.

Gutter guards (dollars per foot, 0 for none)

Our assumption. Guards are the industry's favorite upsell and they range enormously: cheap mesh screens are a couple of dollars a foot, while the branded micro-mesh systems sold at the door run $10 to $30 a foot fitted, which can cost more than the gutters underneath them. Leave at 0 to price gutters alone, and be sceptical of anyone who will not price the two separately.

Estimated cost

$1,614

Typical range $1,372 – $2,098

Gutter material$640
Labor, overhead and profit$974
Gutter guards$0
Total$1,614

See next steps →

The government files gutter contractors and siding contractors in the same class, and that tells you who to call. NAICS 238170 is titled "Siding contractors", and its own index lists, word for word, "Downspout, gutter, and gutter guard installation" and "Gutter and downspout contractors". Gutters are not a sideline of that trade.

They are part of its definition. And the Economic Census measures the consequence. Employer firms did $4.20 billion of gutter work in 2022. 64% of it went through the siding class and 33% through roofers. Gutter work is 24.8% of the siding class's receipts and just 2.0% of the roofing class's. Read that as a fact about the CLASS rather than about any one firm, because the class is also where the gutters-only specialists get filed, which lifts the average. What it means for you is simple enough. Gutters are a core business for one trade and a sideline for the other. The roofer quoting you for gutters is quoting for something that is 2% of what his industry does. It also gives us a real rate. Siding contractors bill $113.97 a field hour and roofers $136.72. Weighted by the gutter work each actually performs, gutter labor bills $121.70 a field hour against the $30.89 the firm pays the person on the ladder. A measured 3.94x markup, and the reason labor, not aluminum, is most of your bill.

§ 02 The return

All in, per linear foot$8.07

Material share of your bill39.7%

What the Census measures it at40.2%

Of the labor, what the crew is paid$247

The billed rate, the trade shares and the split of a job's dollar are all measured from the 2022 Economic Census, in 2025 dollars. The material price per foot is our model, because we could not find a free source that publishes one, and the assumptions name every place we looked. The measured material share is shown beside your result so you can see whether our assumptions are holding.

Where the money goes

Gutter material$640

Labor, overhead and profit$974

By the numbers

WE SAID NO FEDERAL SOURCE PRICES GUTTER STOCK. ONE DOES, AND IT CORROBORATES US. The Economic Census products file carries, verbatim: 'Manufacturing of aluminum, steel, and other sheet metal roofing, all types, and ROOF DRAINAGE EQUIPMENT (including eave troughs, etc.)'. Eave troughs are gutters. It leaves the factory at $2.658 a square foot. A 5-inch K-style gutter is rolled from 11.75-inch coil, so a linear foot of gutter is about $2.6 of metal at the factory gate. We ship $3.2 a foot as the delivered material price, which is about 23% above factory gate: the distributor's margin and the trip to your street. Our model was right, and we had told ourselves the number did not exist.
NAICS 238170 is titled 'Siding contractors', and its own index lists, verbatim, 'Downspout, gutter, and gutter guard installation' and 'Gutter and downspout contractors'.
More
The government files the two trades in one class. We originally told you there was no NAICS code for gutter contractors at all, which was false, and it was the fifth such claim we have got wrong.
Economic Census (2022): employer firms did $4.20 billion of gutter, gutter guard and downspout work. That is not 'what Americans spent': the Economic Census counts only firms with employees, and a great many gutter outfits are one van and no payroll.
64% of that work went through the siding class and 33% through roofing contractors.
More
Gutter work is 24.8% of the SIDING CLASS's receipts against 2.0% of the ROOFING class's. Read those as facts about the classes, not about individual firms: because NAICS files gutters-only specialists into the siding class, the class average is lifted by firms that do nothing else, and a typical siding contractor does less gutter work than 24.8%.
What survives all that, and is the useful part: gutters are a CORE business for the siding class and a SIDELINE for roofers. The roofer quoting you for gutters is quoting for something that is 2% of what his industry does.
Siding contractors bill $113.97 a field hour and roofers bill $136.72.
More
Weighted by how much gutter work each actually performs, gutter labor bills $121.70 a field hour, against the $30.89 the firm pays the person up the ladder. A measured 3.94x markup, which is why labor and not aluminum is most of your bill.
3 more
- Economic Census: a gutter job's dollar splits roughly 40% materials and 60% labor, overhead and profit, once you drop the subcontract line that a gutter job never uses.
  More
  On a 200 ft aluminum job that means the metal is about $640 of a $1,614 bill, and everything else is people, ladders, insurance and profit.
- Gutter guards are the industry's favorite upsell, and the branded micro-mesh systems sold door to door run $10 to $30 a foot fitted.
  More
  On a 200 ft house that is $2,000 to $6,000, which can cost several times the gutters underneath them. Ask for the two priced separately, and be wary of anyone who will not.
- We could not find a free source publishing an INSTALLED gutter price per foot, and here is every place we looked: DOE's measures database (both workbooks, 93 sheets, no gutter line item anywhere); the Economic Census Kind of Business file (gutter receipts, but no quantities, so no route from $4.20bn to a price per foot); and the federal producer price indexes, which give the change in a price and never the level. The FACTORY-GATE price of the metal we did find, and it is above.
  More
  This paragraph used to say something false and we are replacing it rather than quietly deleting it. It said that 'only 207 of those rows publish an actual quantity, and every one of them is an extractive industry (oil, gas, ore)', and that therefore 'no factory-gate unit price is derivable for anything we build a page about'. Three things wrong with that. The count is 789, not 207: 207 was the number our own screen produced when it rejected a row if EITHER of two independently-suppressed flag columns was set, which is a bug we have written up and fixed. They are not all extractive: 361 are mining and oil and gas, and 428 are MANUFACTURING. And a factory-gate price IS derivable for at least one thing we build a page about, because it is the fact at the top of this list: the roof-drainage line publishes a quantity, and gutter stock leaves the factory at $2.658 a square foot. Carpet's quantity cells, while we are here, are flagged X, which in this file means never collected, and not D, which means the Census has the number and is withholding it. We had called that 'suppressed'. Those two flags mean opposite things and we have now confused them more than once. What survives is the narrow claim, and it is the one that matters to you: nobody publishes what a contractor will charge you to hang the gutter on the house.

What is sourced, and what is ours. The rate is sourced and it is the spine of the page: the Economic Census measures what siding and roofing contractors bill per field hour, and its Kind of Business file measures how much gutter work each of them actually does, so we can weight the two and get a rate for gutter labor specifically rather than borrowing someone else's. The industry size and the trade shares are sourced from the same place.

Ours is the material price per foot, and it carries most of the uncertainty. Two smaller things are ours as well and say so where they appear: the crew hours and the guard price. But the material rate is what moves the answer. We hunted before saying so, because a refusal is a claim and we have got four of them wrong. We checked DOE and NREL's measures database, both workbooks, all 93 sheets: its unit-cost tables cover siding, roof, duct and pipe insulation, and there is no gutter line item. We checked the Economic Census Kind of Business file, which gives gutter receipts but no quantities, so there is no way to get from $4.20bn to a price per foot. We used to tell you here that the Economic Census products file publishes no quantities at all. It does, and it prices the metal. 789 of its rows publish a shipped quantity, and the roof-drainage line is one of them, which is where the factory-gate figure at the top of this page comes from. And the federal price indexes are indexes: they can tell you gutters got dearer, never what gutters cost. So the metal has a published price and the INSTALLATION does not, and that narrower sentence is the only one we are entitled to. But we did not guess it either, and the honest version of this is better than the one we first wrote. The Economic Census measures how a job's dollar splits. Blended for the trades that hang gutters and renormalised over the two lines we actually model, it is 40.2% materials and 59.8% labor, overhead and profit. Given your crew hours and the measured billed rate, that split does not merely check the material price. It determines it. It pins it at $3.22 a foot, and $3.20 is that number rounded. We first called this a validation. It was not, and you should know why. It was circular: we fitted the price to hit the share and then announced that the share agreed, which is a parameter agreeing with its own definition. And it was backwards: the share is invariant to scaling the material price and the crew hours together, so doubling both leaves the gauge reading exactly the same while the total doubles. It catches the two drifting APART. It is blind to both being wrong in the same direction, which is precisely what we claimed it would catch. It is a ratio test, not a level test. Two things will move that gauge legitimately, so do not read them as failures. Copper takes the material share to about 84%, because copper is copper. And gutter guards take it past 70%, because a guard is almost pure material. Both are real changes of scope, not broken arithmetic. The gauge is a sanity test for an ordinary aluminum job and nothing more. And one thing we deliberately do not do. Every other home page here is anchored on what households told the American Housing Survey they paid. Not this one, because the survey never asks about gutters. We read the question wording: the nearest one asks about "any other part of the exterior of your home, such as chimney or stairs". A gutter job might land in that bucket, but so does a chimney rebuild, and its median is dominated by them. Borrowing it would be a lie with a citation attached.

Where every number above comes from

US Census

US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, EC2223KOB (Kind of Business), code 8170: gutter, gutter guard and downspout installation contractor
www2.census.gov
US Census

US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, EC2223BASIC (the billed rates and the composition of a job's dollar)
www2.census.gov
US Census

US Census Bureau, AHS 2023 Items Booklet (the question wording showing the survey never asks about gutters)
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 238170 is titled 'Siding contractors', and only 24.8% of that class's receipts are gutter, gutter guard, and downspout installation contractor. The largest single slice, 57.5%, is siding contractor, including fascia and soffit. 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, AND HOW BIG EACH PLACE IS.

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 is 93 sheets across two workbooks and we read the sheet list; the American Housing Survey asks the cost of 37 named improvement job types (36 of which occur in the 2023 data) and we read all 37; the Economic Census products file (EC2200NAPCSINDPRD) carries 137,429 US product rows with quantity and unit columns. We twice told you it did not exist, and then that it was all oil and ore. Both were wrong. What is TRUE, having read it properly: 789 rows publish a quantity and 669 of those also publish a dollar value, so prices ARE derivable for many building materials. AND THIS MATERIAL IS ONE OF THEM, which is the third thing this paragraph got wrong: it used to end by telling you every dollar-or-quantity cell for gutter stock was suppressed, on a page whose FIRST FACT is the factory-gate price of gutter stock. The roof-drainage line publishes both a quantity and a dollar value, and the metal leaves the factory at $2.658 a square foot. Nothing is suppressed here and nothing is refused. Also: its Kind of Business file has 96 categories, and the 2022 NAICS index has 20,398 entries. If it is not in those, we have not found it, and that is a fact about us rather than about the world.

The billed rate of $121.70 a field hour is MEASURED and specific to gutter work rather than borrowed from a neighboring trade.

The Economic Census gives the value of construction work each trade does and the field hours behind it, so we can compute what the siding class bills ($113.97) and what roofers bill ($136.72). Its Kind of Business file says the siding class does 64% of US gutter work and roofers 33%, with the remaining 3% spread across masons, framers and finish carpenters. We weight over just the two big trades, which means renormalising 64/33 to 66/34. That renormalisation is ours, and if you take the raw 64/33 straight off the page and do the arithmetic yourself you will get $117.80, not $121.70. It is a trade-wide average either way, not a quote for your job.

The material price per foot is OUR MODEL, and it is now the DELIVERED price above a factory-gate one that is measured.

Two smaller assumptions are ours too and are flagged where they appear: the crew hours and the guard price. What we could not find is an INSTALLED gutter price, and here is every place we looked: DOE and NREL's measures database (both workbooks, all 93 sheets, no gutter line item); the Economic Census Kind of Business file (receipts but no quantities, so no route from $4.20bn to a price per foot); the BLS producer price indexes (which are indexes, and so give the change in price and never the level); and the Economic Census products file, EC2200NAPCSINDPRD, which carries 137,429 US product rows with quantity and unit columns. THAT LAST ONE IS WHERE WE KEPT REFUSING, AND IT IS WHERE THE ANSWER WAS. We told you it did not exist, then that it was all oil and ore, then that every cell for gutter stock was suppressed. All three were false. 789 rows publish a quantity, 669 of those also publish a dollar value, and the roof-drainage line is one of them: gutter stock leaves the factory at $2.658 a square foot. So the metal is MEASURED, our $3.2 a foot is that metal delivered, and the only thing still unpublished is what a contractor charges to hang it.

The material price is not a free guess, and this is the most important thing to understand about the page.

The Economic Census measures how a job's dollar splits: renormalised over the two lines we model, 40.2% materials and 59.8% labor, overhead and profit. Once you fix the crew hours and the measured billed rate, that split DETERMINES the material price. It pins it at $3.22 a foot, and $3.20 is that rounded. We did not pick it.

We first presented the resulting agreement as a validation, and it was neither honest nor sound.

It was CIRCULAR, because we had fitted the price to hit the share and then reported that the share agreed. And it was BACKWARDS: the share is invariant to scaling the material price and the crew hours together, so a 2x error in the total leaves the gauge reading identically. It detects the two drifting APART, and it is blind to both being wrong the same way, which is exactly the failure we told you it would catch. It is a ratio test, not a level test. The gauge is still worth showing, but only for what it can actually do.

The renormalisation that drops the subcontract line is not a fudge, and it is worth being precise.

The Census split has three parts (36.1% materials, 10.1% subcontracted, 53.8% labor). Our model has two, because a gutter job subs nothing out. Comparing a two-part share against a three-part share would be comparing different denominators, which is exactly the unit-of-analysis error this site exists to avoid. Renormalising over the two lines we model fixes the COMPARISON. It does not move the pin: the material-to-labor ratio is 0.672 either way.

Eight crew hours is our default and it describes a straightforward job: a single-story house, seamless aluminum, decent access, a simple roofline.

Two stories, awkward ground, fascia board that turns out to be rotten, or a roof with many corners will all push it up. Corners matter more than people expect, because every one is a mitre and mitres are where gutters leak.

There is NO American Housing Survey anchor on this page, unlike every other home job we cover, and here is the precise reason.

The survey never asks what a gutter job COST. We read the whole items booklet: the only place gutters appear in the entire instrument is an instruction to EXCLUDE them from a roof-condition question ('does the roof have missing shingles... do not count gutters or downspouts'). Which is a small, pleasing corroboration of the headline, incidentally: Census's own survey tells respondents that gutters are not roofing.

The nearest cost question asks whether you added or replaced 'any other part of the exterior of your home, such as chimney or stairs'.

A gutter job might be recorded there, alongside chimney rebuilds and new front steps. We CANNOT tell you what share of that bucket is gutters, because the survey records no sub-code and neither can Census. So we will not claim the bucket is 'dominated' by chimneys, which we originally did and could not support. We simply cannot use it, and we would rather leave a hole in the page than fill it with a number whose meaning we do not know.

Gutter guard pricing is our assumption and it is the widest range on the page, deliberately.

Simple mesh screens are a couple of dollars a foot. The branded micro-mesh systems sold at the door are routinely $10 to $30 a foot fitted, which on an average house costs more than the gutters. We default the guards to zero so that you are pricing gutters, and we would encourage you to make any contractor quote the two separately.

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

Access, roof height and the state of the fascia board are the things that move a real quote most, and none of them are visible from a length in feet.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to install gutters?

On our numbers, a typical 200 linear foot house in seamless aluminum comes to about $1,614, or roughly $8.07 a foot all in: about $640 of metal and about $974 of labor at the rate the trade actually bills. Vinyl is cheaper and goes brittle in the sun; steel is dearer; copper is several times the price and will outlive you. The per-foot material figure is our model, because we could not find a free source that publishes one (the assumptions name where we looked), but the labor rate behind it is measured rather than guessed.

Who actually installs gutters, a roofer or a siding contractor?

Start with the classification, because it explains everything else. NAICS 238170 is titled 'Siding contractors', and its own index lists 'Downspout, gutter, and gutter guard installation' under it. The government files the two trades together, so a firm that does nothing but gutters counts as a siding contractor in the statistics. That is why 64% of US gutter work goes through that class and only 33% through roofers. Now the useful part, stated carefully: gutter work is 24.8% of the SIDING CLASS's receipts and 2.0% of the ROOFING class's. Those are facts about the classes rather than about any one firm, and because the gutters-only specialists sit inside the siding class, a typical siding contractor does less than 24.8%. What holds regardless is the asymmetry: gutters are a core business for one trade and a sideline for the other, and the roofer quoting you is quoting for something that is 2% of what his industry does.

Why is the labor more than the metal?

Because you are paying a company's rate, not a worker's wage. The Economic Census lets us measure both: gutter labor bills $121.70 a field hour, weighted by the trades that actually do the work, while the firm pays the person up the ladder $30.89. That 3.94x gap is the truck, the ladders, the liability insurance for working at height, the time driving between jobs, the office and the profit. On a typical job the aluminum is about 40% of the bill and the people are about 60%, and the Census measures that split too.

Are gutter guards worth it?

Sometimes, but price them separately and be suspicious of anyone who will not. Simple mesh screens run a couple of dollars a foot. The branded micro-mesh systems sold door to door run $10 to $30 a foot fitted, which on a 200 ft house is $2,000 to $6,000, several times the cost of the gutters they sit on. They genuinely reduce cleaning, they do not eliminate it, and no guard survives a roof with pine needles indefinitely. The honest test is what you would otherwise spend having the gutters cleaned twice a year, and for most houses that maths does not reach $4,000.

Should I just do it myself?

Seamless aluminum is formed on site by a machine in the back of the van, so the seamless option is not available to you at all: what you can buy is sectional gutter in lengths, joined with connectors, and every joint is a place it can leak. The bigger issue is the ladder. Gutters are, by definition, at the edge of the roof, and falls from height are the thing that turns a saved thousand dollars into an emergency room. If your house is single story and you are confident on a ladder, sectional gutter is a real weekend job. If it is two stories, pay someone.

How do I check a quote I have been given?

Divide it by the linear feet. If it comes to around $8 a foot for aluminum, it is in the ordinary range. If it comes to $20 a foot, there is almost certainly guard product bundled in that has not been named, or someone has priced a fascia repair silently. (Copper is dearer still: on our numbers it is nearer $30 a foot.) The two questions worth asking are what the material is per foot, and how many hours the crew expects to be on site, because those are the only two numbers in the job. Anyone who will not answer both is not quoting, they are negotiating.

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