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.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

Roofing material

Installed cost per square (100 sq ft of roof), our model. Selecting a material also sets the labor share below.

Your home's floor area (sq ft)

Total living space, all floors. We divide it by your stories to get the footprint the roof sits on.

Stories

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.

Roof pitch

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.

Old roof layers to tear off

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.

Decking to replace (%)

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.

Labor per square

Set by the material above. Steep-pitch and multi-story surcharges apply to this part only, not to the materials.

Permit

Set by your city or county, and it ranges from nothing to several hundred dollars. We could not find a federal source aggregating permit fees.

Estimated cost

$12,340

Typical range $9,872 – $16,659

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

See next steps →

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 labor-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 labor rose 19.3%. Now be careful what you conclude from that, because we were not. A markup is a ratio of two industry AGGREGATES, and it bounds nothing about the firm on your roof: a wide class markup is just as consistent with every roofer carrying the same high insurance as it is with room to haggle. What actually tells you there is room is DISPERSION, so we went and measured it. Roofing's billed rate runs from $98.87 to $171.75 a field hour across the states (10th to 90th percentile), a 1.74x spread, and firm-to-firm is wider still. THAT is why you get three bids, ask every one of them for a price per square, and compare those.

§ 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

What the roofing trade bills per field hour, and what it pays$122.85 billed vs $28.73 in wages (2022$), a 4.28x markup

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 labor$6,401

Tear-off, dumpster and tipping$1,660

Permit$350

By the numbers

American Housing Survey (Census/HUD, 2023): across 1,897 contractor-done roofing jobs on owner-occupied detached homes, the median cost was $11,965 in 2025 dollars.
More
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 the roofing trade bills, in aggregate, breaks down as 37.9 cents of materials, 8.9 cents of subcontracted work, and 53.2 cents of labor, overhead and profit.
More
That split is measured, not modeled, and it is what the material-and-labor 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 (26.4%) are paid for by a homeowner's insurance settlement, and those jobs run 26% dearer: a median of $14,306 against $10,769 for a roof paid from savings.
More
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 labor.
More
The honest caveat, every time: the only roofing-contractor price index BLS publishes is the nonresidential one. There is no residential equivalent.
WE TOLD YOU NO FACTORY-GATE PRICE COULD BE DERIVED FOR THIS PAGE'S MATERIAL. FOR METAL, ONE CAN, AND WE WERE ALREADY HOLDING IT. The Economic Census products file prices sheet metal roofing at $2,658.22 per 1000 sq ft, which is $265.82 a square, leaving the plant.
More
The product line reads, verbatim: 'Manufacturing of aluminum, steel, and other sheet metal roofing, all types, and roof drainage equipment (including eave troughs, etc.)'. Two caveats and they matter. It blends corrugated barn panel with architectural standing seam, so read it as a floor for metal rather than a quote for the roof you want. And it is the price at the factory gate: our model puts $620 a square on standing-seam panel, and the gap between the two is the fabrication, the distributor and the trip to your street. The same file gives no price for an asphalt shingle at all, because all 20 of that industry's product lines withhold their quantity. Our own gutter page has printed this figure for months. This page was next door telling you it could not be derived.

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 labor.

But the per-square rates that drive this calculator are our model, not a published statistic. No federal STATISTIC prices an installed square of roofing, and that is a narrower claim than the one this box used to make. It used to tell you that an installed price per square was not published by any free federal source at all. We are withdrawing that, because it is not true. GSA runs a roofing schedule, SIN 238160, which covers "roofing products, services and associated application materials" including "installation and site preparation", and the prices its contractors are awarded under it are published. A negotiated federal vendor rate is a price, even though no statistical agency computed it. And what GSA does instead of computing one is the genuinely useful fact here. Its own pricing instructions for that schedule send contractors to RS Means, a commercial estimating book you have to buy, and tell them to "utilize only material and labor unit prices within RS Means". The federal government BUYS the installed unit price rather than publishing it. So what is missing is a federal STATISTIC: no statistical agency publishes an installed price per square, nor labor 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. One thing we said was unfindable turned out to be in a file we already had open, and you should know it. The Economic Census publishes what sheet metal roofing costs leaving the FACTORY: $2,658.22 per 1000 sq ft, which is $265.82 a square. That is the metal only, before the distributor, before it is rolled into a standing-seam profile, and before anybody carries it up a ladder, and the Census line blends barn panel with architectural standing seam. Set it against the $620 a square our model puts on standing-seam panel and you can see the whole distribution-and-fabrication chain in one number. It does not price a shingle, because every one of asphalt shingle's product lines has its quantity withheld. 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 $27,488. The material-versus-labor 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.

Where every number above comes from

US Census

US Census Bureau / HUD, American Housing Survey 2023 National PUF
census.gov
US Census

US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Construction sector, table EC2223BASIC (roofing contractors, NAICS 238160)
census.gov
Wage data

BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (roofers, 47-2181)
bls.gov
BLS PPI, asphalt shingle materials (escalation only)
fred.stlouisfed.org
HUD, CNA e-Tool Estimated Useful Life Table (the roof lifespan we said no free federal source published). Sloped roofs, Standard EUL: asphalt shingle 20 years, wood shingle and cedar shake 25, metal 50, clay or cementitious barrel tile 60, slate 75. Low slope: built-up with gravel finish 20, EPDM and TPO membrane 15. Roof drainage: aluminium gutters and downspouts 20, copper 50. HUD's own words: this is the recommended average useful life, and the assessor may override it. It is a capital-planning standard for HUD-assisted multifamily property, not a survival curve of American roofs
hud.gov
Federal contracts

GSA, Supplemental Pricing Instructions for SINs 238160 and 238910. Those SIN numbers borrow NAICS codes: 238910 is Site Preparation Contractors, a class that is 49.2% excavation and land clearing work, and this page draws nothing from it. SIN 238160 covers roofing products and services 'including installation and site preparation'. Contractors pricing ancillary installation 'will utilize only material and labor unit prices within RS Means', a paywalled commercial book: the federal government buys the installed unit price rather than computing one
gsa.gov

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.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY IN THE CLASS WE PRICE FROM. NAICS 238330 is 60.1% 'floor contractor, including wood, resilient, and computer flooring (except fireproof flooring)'. A NAICS code is a bucket, not a job, and the rate here is the bucket's.

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

NAICS 238160 is titled 'Roofing contractors', and only 91.7% of that class's receipts are roofing contractor. The largest single slice, 91.7%, is roofing 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, 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 PARAGRAPH USED TO END BY REFUSING ANYWAY, which is the third error in a row on one file. It said every dollar-or-quantity cell for this page's material was suppressed. Half true. Asphalt shingle (NAICS 324122) has 20 product lines and not one publishes a quantity, so there is genuinely no factory-gate shingle price. But sheet metal roofing (NAICS 332322) DOES publish one, we hold it, and we were refusing to print a number sitting in our own data file. It is in the facts above. Also: the Kind of Business file has 96 categories, and the 2022 NAICS index has 20,398 entries. AND WE HAVE ADDED TWO PLACES TO THE LIST, BECAUSE BOTH HELD SOMETHING WE HAD SAID WAS NOT THERE. HUD's CNA e-Tool Estimated Useful Life table publishes a Standard EUL for every roof type, which is the roof lifespan this page's FAQ used to refuse. And GSA's Multiple Award Schedule carries a roofing SIN (238160) covering installation, whose awarded prices are published, which is why the refusal on installed price is now scoped to federal STATISTICS and no wider. If it is not in those, we have not found it, and that is a fact about us rather than about the world.

Roof area is your floor area divided by your stories, 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-story 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 $27,488. And the material-versus-labor split of an asphalt roof falls out at 38.0%, against a Census-measured 37.9%.

Steep-pitch and multi-story surcharges (14% above 8/12, 30% above 10/12, 8% for a second story) apply to the labor 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 labor 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 is genuinely dangerous work and its insurance costs reflect that, though we will not put a rank on it: we have no source for how roofing's workers' compensation premiums compare with other trades, and we are not going to guess one. 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. 26.4% 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 $14,306 against $10,769. 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?

There is a free federal number, and this page used to tell you flatly that there was not. HUD publishes a Standard Estimated Useful Life for every roof type, in the table its assessors are required to use when they plan a property's replacement reserves: asphalt shingle 20 years, wood shingle and cedar shake 25, metal 50, clay or cementitious barrel tile 60, slate 75. Flat roofs run shorter: a built-up roof with a gravel finish is 20 years, an EPDM rubber or TPO membrane 15. Read it for what it is, because HUD is careful about this and we will be too. It is a capital-planning standard for HUD-assisted apartment buildings, HUD calls it the 'recommended average useful life', and HUD explicitly lets an assessor override any row of it with a justified remaining life. It is a budgeting convention, not a survival curve measured on American houses, and an average bounds no individual roof: the same shingle goes thirty years on a shaded north slope in Oregon and twelve in a hail alley. And the tempting figure in our own data is still 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: we will not print a single number for what a metal roof saves on cooling, and here is exactly what we checked before saying so. DOE's Oak Ridge lab does publish a free Cool Roof Calculator, and we should not pretend it does not exist. But it is explicitly for FLAT roofs, so it does not answer the question for the pitched roof on your house. What nobody publishes, and reasonably so, is one national figure, because the answer swings entirely on your climate, your attic insulation, your ventilation and your electricity price. We would rather point you at the tool than print an average that is wrong for almost everyone. Buy it because you want a roof you never think about again.

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