How much does a concrete slab cost?

It depends on the plant price, the thickness and how much of the work is labor. A 24 by 24 foot slab at 5 inches needs about 9.5 yards once waste and batching are counted. At $185 a yard that is $1,758 of concrete, and the finished cost is well above that once base, forms, reinforcement, crew time and overhead are on it. Build the cost, then divide by one minus your margin.

How do I work out what to charge for concrete work?

Add the concrete, everything that is not the concrete, crew hours at the burdened rate, and an overhead share. That total is your cost. Divide it by one minus the margin you want to keep, and that is the price. On our demo the cost is $7,656 and a 25 percent margin gives $10,208.

Why is concrete cost per square foot so different between quotes?

Because the foot number hides what is included. Material alone on our demo is $2.47 a square foot. The same job built, with tear-out, a pump, a haul-off and a crew, costs $12.76 a square foot and prices at $17.01. Both are true and they are not the same job.

What is the difference between margin and markup?

Markup is measured against cost and margin is measured against the price. A 25 percent margin is a 33.3 percent markup on the same job. If you add 25 percent to a cost you have a 20 percent margin, which is $638 less on our demo driveway.

Should I include overhead in a concrete quote?

Yes. Overhead is the shop, the trucks, the insurance and the estimating time, and every job carries a share of it or the company quietly absorbs it. The simple method is a year of overhead divided by the field hours you charge to jobs, which gives you a rate to apply to every estimated crew hour.

Does this calculator work for a paver patio?

Yes. The structure is the same: material, everything that is not the material, crew hours at the burdened rate, an overhead share, and a margin. Only the line names change, which is why the same tool prices a pour and a patio.

Concrete Cost Calculator | What to Charge

Slab area

Square feet of the pour. For an L shape, split it into two rectangles and add the areas.

Thickness

Depth in inches. 4 is a standard driveway or walk on prepared grade. 5 to 6 for anything carrying a vehicle.

Concrete per yard

Your plant's delivered price per cubic yard, including the fees on the ticket. The $185 default is the demo number from our pricing post, not a rate for your area.

Waste factor

Five percent on flatwork over subgrade you prepared. Ten when the subgrade is rough, the slab has thickened edges, or the forms were set by hand.

Everything that is not the mud

Base rock, rebar or mesh, forms and stakes, cure and seal, tear-out and haul-off, pump, equipment and rentals, disposal, small tools. On the demo that is $2,515 across five lines, and it is the number most per-foot prices leave out.

Crew hours

Every hour the job takes, all of them. Demo: four men, sixteen hours each across form, pour, finish and strip.

Cost per crew hour

The wage plus payroll taxes, workers comp, liability and paid time. Not the wage. Demo: $28 a hour with 40 percent burden is $39.20.

Overhead per hour

A year of overhead divided by the field hours you charge to jobs. Demo: $18 a crew hour. If you have never worked it out, the job costing guide walks it.

Margin you want to keep

Margin is the share of the price you keep, not a markup on cost. Both are shown below so you can see which one you are looking at.

How the price was built

Yards to order: 8 cu yd
Concrete: $1,480
Everything else: $2,515
Crew labor: $2,509
Overhead: $1,152
Total cost: $7,656
Divide by 0.75 for a 25% margin: $10,208

Charge this

$10,208

$17.01 per square foot, at a 25.0% margin.

Total cost

$7,656

$12.76 per sq ft

Profit

$2,552

Yards to order

Waste and batch round-up included

Concrete

$1,480

19% of the cost

The concrete is only 19 percent of what this job costs. A price built from the mud alone would be short by 81 percent, which is why a per-foot number that only counts material comes in under your cost.

A 25.0% margin is a 33.3% markup on cost. Same price, two names, and adding the markup to the cost instead of dividing gives you less than you meant.

The Mud Is Not the Job

Concrete is the easy line to see and it is rarely the biggest one. On the demo above, 8 yards at $185 is $1,480, and the job costs $7,656. The mud is 19 percent of the cost and 14 percent of the price.

That is the whole reason a per square foot number goes wrong. A foot price that only counts material is short by four fifths of the cost, and it cannot see a pump, a haul-off, thickened edges, or labor at anything other than the wage.

The Four Lines in a Price

Four lines make up the price, and the tool takes all four. Concrete at your plant delivered price. Everything that is not the mud, which on a driveway is base, forms, rebar, tear-out, haul-off, a pump, equipment and disposal. Crew hours at the burdened rate rather than the wage. And the job share of your overhead.

The burdened rate is the line that goes wrong most often. A $28 an hour installer costs closer to $42 once payroll taxes, workers comp, liability and paid time ride on top, and that gap is the single most common reason a job that should have made money did not. The job costing guide has the full method for working out your own number.

The quote is the start of the job

You have the price. What decides whether it was right is whether the hours, the material and the extras land on that job while it runs, and most tools leave that until the job is closed. SiteOps puts the clock-ins, the receipts and the change orders against the same job the day they happen.

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Concrete Slab Cost

A slab is the simplest version of this job, because there is usually no tear-out and no pump. A 24 by 24 foot garage slab at 5 inches is 576 square feet times five twelfths of a foot, which is 240 cubic feet, or 8.89 cubic yards. Add 5 percent waste and round up to the quarter yard a plant batches, and the order is 9.5 yards.

At $185 a yard that concrete is $1,758. Add base and forms, mesh or rebar, a day of crew time and an overhead share, and the cost lands well above what the material suggests. Slab work is where the gap between the price of the mud and the price of the job is most obvious, and it is why the tool asks for the other lines separately.

Concrete Driveway Cost

A driveway carries the lines a slab does not. Tear-out and haul-off if it is a replacement, a pump if the truck cannot reach, thickened edges, and a finish that has to run to the street. On the demo those extra lines are $2,515 against $1,480 of concrete.

That is why two driveways of the same square footage can differ by thousands. Access and subgrade decide the price far more than the area does, which is the argument against quoting one from a foot price over the phone.

Paver Patio Cost

A paver patio is not a concrete pour but it prices the same way, and the same tool does it. Spoil volume in cubic yards, bulked for the truck. Base and bedding at compacted depth rather than loose depth. Pavers at delivered cost with five to ten percent waste for cuts. Edge restraint and polymeric sand. Crew hours by phase.

Our paver patio pricing post costs a 400 square foot patio at $11,229 and prices it at $14,972 on a 25 percent margin, and the estimate builder starts from those same lines. The arithmetic is identical to the concrete job above. Only the line names change.

Margin Is Not Markup

The most common mistake in concrete pricing is adding a markup and calling it a margin. On the demo, $7,656 plus 25 percent markup is $9,570, which is a 20 percent margin, not 25. To keep 25 percent you divide by 0.75, which gives $10,208.

The difference is $638 on one driveway, and it is invisible on the quote because both look like reasonable prices. The contractor markup calculator shows the gap for any pair of numbers.

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Frequently asked questions

How much does a concrete slab cost?: It depends on the plant price, the thickness and how much of the work is labor. A 24 by 24 foot slab at 5 inches needs about 9.5 yards once waste and batching are counted. At $185 a yard that is $1,758 of concrete, and the finished cost is well above that once base, forms, reinforcement, crew time and overhead are on it. Build the cost, then divide by one minus your margin.
How do I work out what to charge for concrete work?: Add the concrete, everything that is not the concrete, crew hours at the burdened rate, and an overhead share. That total is your cost. Divide it by one minus the margin you want to keep, and that is the price. On our demo the cost is $7,656 and a 25 percent margin gives $10,208.
Why is concrete cost per square foot so different between quotes?: Because the foot number hides what is included. Material alone on our demo is $2.47 a square foot. The same job built, with tear-out, a pump, a haul-off and a crew, costs $12.76 a square foot and prices at $17.01. Both are true and they are not the same job.
What is the difference between margin and markup?: Markup is measured against cost and margin is measured against the price. A 25 percent margin is a 33.3 percent markup on the same job. If you add 25 percent to a cost you have a 20 percent margin, which is $638 less on our demo driveway.
Should I include overhead in a concrete quote?: Yes. Overhead is the shop, the trucks, the insurance and the estimating time, and every job carries a share of it or the company quietly absorbs it. The simple method is a year of overhead divided by the field hours you charge to jobs, which gives you a rate to apply to every estimated crew hour.
Does this calculator work for a paver patio?: Yes. The structure is the same: material, everything that is not the material, crew hours at the burdened rate, an overhead share, and a margin. Only the line names change, which is why the same tool prices a pour and a patio.

This calculator and page are general information for the construction trades, not engineering, accounting, tax, or legal advice. Every figure on this page is a worked example with stated assumptions, not a market rate for your area, and the tool does no estimating of its own: it multiplies your quantities by your rates and adds them. Structural slabs, footings and anything carrying a load need an engineer's drawing. Confirm your burden, overhead and plant pricing against your own books before you quote.

Know what the job made before it is over

You just priced one job by hand. SiteOps holds the estimate, sends it for signature, and then puts the real hours and receipts against it as the work runs, so the margin you priced is a number you watch instead of a number you hope for. Priced by crew size, not per seat — $79/mo for a 10-man crew.

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