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How much does a roof replacement cost?

Price your roof the way a roofer prices it, by the square, then check the answer against what US homeowners actually told the Census they paid. Roofing carries the second-widest markup of any building trade the Census measures, so the number you are quoted is worth arguing with.

Roofing carries the second-widest markup of any building trade, and the Census measures it. Take the 2022 Economic Census file for roofing contractors, strip out materials and subcontracted work, and the labour-and-overhead line still bills at 4.28 times the wage the industry pays its own field crews: $122.85 an hour billed against $28.73 an hour in wages, both numbers from the same Census file. That beats residential remodelers (3.95x), plumbers (3.09x) and tilers (2.71x), against a specialty-trade average of 3.21x. Only flooring bills a wider multiple (4.45x). Some of that gap is real and unavoidable. Roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in America and the workers' compensation premiums are brutal, and the residual also pays for trucks, benefits, office staff and insurance. But it is still near the top of the trades, and roofing prices have risen 54.9% since 2020 while the materials rose 39.0% and construction labour rose 19.3%. Which is to say: the first number you are quoted has room in it. Get three bids, ask every one of them for a price per square, and compare those.

§ 01 Your numbers

Installed cost per square (100 sq ft of roof), our model. Selecting a material also sets the labour share below.
Total living space, all floors. We divide it by your storeys to get the footprint the roof sits on.
A 2,000 sq ft house on two floors has half the roof of a 2,000 sq ft ranch. This is the single biggest thing people get wrong.
Rise in inches per 12 inches of run. A steep roof has more surface than its footprint, and above about 7/12 the crew can no longer walk it.
Each layer is stripped, hauled and tipped, and you pay for all three. Set 0 for new construction, or if the new roof is going straight over the old one.
Rotten sheathing under the old roof. Nobody can see it until the roof is off, which is why it is the classic mid-job change order. Leave at 0 and read the FAQ.
Set by the material above. Steep-pitch and multi-storey surcharges apply to this part only, not to the materials.
Set by your city or county, and it ranges from nothing to several hundred dollars. No federal source aggregates permit fees.
Estimated cost
$12,340

Typical range $9,872 – $16,659

  • Roofing material and accessories (18.4 squares)$3,929
  • Installation labour$6,401
  • Tear-off, dumpster and tipping$1,660
  • Decking replacement$0
  • Permit$350
  • Total$12,340
See next steps →

§ 02 Your roof, against the real ones

Your cost per square (100 sq ft)$669
What US homeowners actually paid (median)$11,965
Half of all jobs landed between$7,700 and $17,600
Roofer's wage vs the firm's all-in take per field hour$26.65 vs $256.85 an hour

Costs are 2025 dollars. The AHS figures are self-reported and recalled up to two years later, and 'added or replaced roofing' is the homeowner's own description, so it spans a partial re-roof through to a full tear-off with new decking. That spread is the story, not a defect. Roof area cannot be derived from the survey, so the geometry above is ours.

Where the money goes

Roofing material and accessories (18.4 squares)$3,929
Installation labour$6,401
Tear-off, dumpster and tipping$1,660
Permit$350

Recommended next steps

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This is where most American roofs land. Get the decking change-order price in writing before you sign, not after the roof is open.

By the numbers

  • American Housing Survey (Census/HUD, 2023): across 1,830 contractor-done roofing jobs on owner-occupied detached homes, the median cost was $11,965 in 2025 dollars. A quarter came in under $7,703 and a quarter over $17,607. These are not quotes or estimates. They are what homeowners told the federal government they actually paid.
  • 2022 Economic Census (NAICS 238160): every dollar a roofing contractor bills breaks down as 37.9 cents of materials, 8.9 cents of subcontracted work, and 53.2 cents of labour, overhead and profit. That split is measured, not modelled, and it is what the material-and-labour split in this calculator is checked against. The same file says the customer pays $256.85 for every hour a roofer spends on the roof, materials and everything else included, which is where the crew-hours estimate above comes from.
  • A quarter of all US roof replacements (25.8%) are paid for by a homeowner's insurance settlement, and those jobs run 26% dearer: a median of $13,744 against $10,888 for a roof paid from savings. Hail and wind write off whole roofs, so part of that gap is a bigger job. But a settlement also removes any incentive to shop, and the roofing trade knows it.
  • BLS producer price indexes, index only, never a dollar level: what roofing contractors charge is up 54.9% since 2020, against 39.0% for asphalt shingle materials and 19.3% for construction labour. The honest caveat, every time: the only roofing-contractor price index BLS publishes is the nonresidential one. There is no residential equivalent.

What is sourced here, and what is ours. The anchor is sourced: the American Housing Survey asks homeowners what a completed roofing job cost, and the median contractor-done job was $11,965 in 2025 dollars. The cost split is sourced: the 2022 Economic Census measures what fraction of a roofing contractor's dollar is materials rather than labour. But the per-square rates that drive this calculator are our model, not a published statistic. No free federal source publishes an installed price per square for any roofing material, nor labour hours per square, nor tear-off, dumpster or tipping fees, nor permit costs. We checked, including the DOE database that backs our window calculator, which turns out to hold roof insulation and no roof covering at all. So we built the rates and then held them to two tests we could not fudge: the default roof prices at $11,990 before the permit, against an AHS median of $11,965, and a metal roof prices at $27,486 against an AHS 90th percentile of $27,512. The material-versus-labour split falls out at 38.0%, against the Census-measured 37.9%. That is a model that reconciles, not a statistic. Treat it as a way to read your bids, not as a bid. And note what we have deliberately not cited: Angi, HomeAdvisor and Fixr publish "national average roof costs" drawn from jobs booked on their own lead-generation platforms, which earn a fee when you hire a contractor. That is marketing, not statistics, and there is now a federal number to use instead.

Sources: US Census Bureau / HUD, American Housing Survey 2023 National PUF · US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Construction sector, table EC2223BASIC (roofing contractors, NAICS 238160) · BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (roofers, 47-2181) · BLS PPI, asphalt shingle materials (escalation only)

How this estimate is calculated

  • Roof area is your floor area divided by your storeys, multiplied by the pitch factor, plus 10% for eave and rake overhangs and for cutting waste at hips and valleys. A plain gable roof runs nearer 5%; a roof full of dormers, hips and valleys runs 15% or more. The pitch factors are exact trigonometry, sqrt(1 + (rise/12) squared), and need no source.
  • The installed rate per square is our model. It is calibrated so that the default roof, a 1,500 sq ft single-storey house at 6/12 pitch with one layer to strip, prices at $11,990 before the permit, against an American Housing Survey median of $11,965. It is then checked against two further points we did not fit it to. Standing-seam metal on the same roof prices at $27,486, against an AHS 90th percentile of $27,512. And the material-versus-labour split of an asphalt roof falls out at 38.0%, against a Census-measured 37.9%.
  • Steep-pitch and multi-storey surcharges (14% above 8/12, 30% above 10/12, 8% for a second storey) apply to the labour line only, because the materials cost the same whatever angle they are nailed at. Those surcharges are our estimate.
  • Tear-off is $90 per square per layer, covering the strip, the dumpster and the tipping fee, and decking replacement is $4.50 a square foot. Both are ours. The EPA tracks asphalt shingles as a construction waste stream but publishes tonnage, not price, so there is no free federal disposal cost to use.
  • The low and high band is 20% below and 35% above the central figure. It is our estimate of ordinary bid spread, and region moves it further: AHS medians run 0.92 times the national figure in the Midwest and South and 1.17 times in the West. We do not apply that regional index to your roof, because a Western median is higher partly because Western houses are bigger, not only because Western roofers charge more.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to replace a roof?
US homeowners who had a roof replaced by a contractor reported a median of $11,965 in 2025 dollars to the American Housing Survey, with half of all jobs falling between $7,703 and $17,607. That is a federal survey of what people actually paid, not a marketplace average. Your own roof depends mostly on three things: its area, which is your footprint stretched by the pitch, the material, and how many old layers have to come off. Run those above.
What is a roofing square, and why does every roofer use one?
A square is 100 square feet of finished roof surface. It is the unit shingles are packaged, priced and quoted in, and learning it is the single most useful thing you can do before reading a bid. It also protects you: two contractors quoting one lump sum are impossible to compare, but two contractors quoting a price per square are comparing the same thing. A typical suburban roof is 18 to 30 squares. Note it is roof surface, not floor area: a 1,500 sq ft ranch with a 6/12 pitch has about 18.4 squares of roof, because the slope and the overhangs add roughly 23% to the footprint.
Why do roofing quotes vary so much?
Because the markup is among the widest in the trades and there is real room to negotiate. The Economic Census measures it: a roofing company bills 4.28 times the wage it pays its own field crews on its labour line, against 3.21 times across all specialty trades. Of the 19 building trades the Census breaks out, only flooring bills a wider multiple. Part of that is genuine. Roofing has some of the highest workers' compensation premiums of any occupation, and the residual also pays for trucks, benefits and office staff. But the practical consequence is that the first number is rarely the last number. Get three bids, insist on a price per square, and ask each one what happens if they find rotten decking.
Will my homeowner's insurance pay for a new roof?
For a quarter of American roof replacements it does. 25.8% of contractor-done roofing jobs in the American Housing Survey were paid for by an insurance settlement, which is far more than most people expect, and it is overwhelmingly storm damage rather than age. Two things worth knowing. Insurance generally covers sudden damage from hail or wind, not a roof that simply wore out, and many policies pay actual cash value rather than replacement cost on an older roof. And insurance-funded jobs run 26% dearer than roofs paid from savings, a median of $13,744 against $10,888. Some of that is a bigger job. Some of it is that nobody shops as hard with someone else's money, and the trade knows it.
How long does a roof actually last?
We will not pretend to know. There is no free federal source for roof lifespan, and the tempting figure in the data is a trap: the American Housing Survey shows the median house getting a new roof is 53 years old, but a 53-year-old house is very likely on its second or third roof, so that is an upper bound and nothing more. What the survey does support is how often roofs fail: of all owner-occupied detached homes in America, 4.2% reported a water leak from the roof in the past year, 3.3% had missing shingles and 1.6% had visible sag. If yours is doing any of those, the question of what the manufacturer's warranty promised has already been answered.
Is a metal roof worth the money?
On our rates it costs about 2.3 times an architectural asphalt roof, $27,836 against $12,340 on the same 1,500 sq ft house, and that puts it at the 90th percentile of what Americans actually pay. It should last two to three times as long, so on a very long horizon the arithmetic can work, but only if you genuinely stay in the house or can sell the roof to a buyer. Be careful with any payback claim someone makes for you here: nobody publishes a free, credible figure for what a metal roof saves on cooling, and we are not going to invent one. Buy it because you want a roof you never think about again.

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