How much does a roof replacement cost?

On this tool’s defaults, $9,636 to $20,637 for a 1,600 sq ft footprint at 6:12 in architectural asphalt. That is a survey band, not your bid. Type in the rate off a quote to audit it.

Why is the range so wide?

Because published $/square figures are surveys of quotes, and they disagree. Modernize’s architectural band is $400 to $850 per square. We print the width rather than picking a median and calling it local knowledge.

Does this include tear-off?

As its own line. One layer of asphalt is $100 to $240 per square in the SquareDash survey (retrieved 2 August 2026). Overlay is $0 here only if it is actually permitted.

No. It cannot see deck rot, layers, access, or what the permit desk will charge. Minus 5% to plus 30% once you have loaded your own rates, lopsided because unseen conditions add money.

HyreRoof tools

Roof replacement cost, as a budget you can audit

Six lines, every rate editable. The default range is the width of published surveys, not a quote for your house.

$400–$850 per square, architectural asphalt Modernize survey of quoted installed prices, retrieved 2 August 2026. Type in the rate off your own bid and the arithmetic becomes about your roof.

The short answer

On the defaults, a 1,600 sq ft footprint at 6:12 in architectural asphalt with one layer to strip, single storey, a 10% decking allowance and a $300 permit comes to $9,636 to $20,637. That width is the published covering range, not uncertainty about your house. Replace the $/square with a bid and the other lines still add.

Six lines, then a range

Survey defaults, or type the rate off a bid. Nothing is emailed.

Building footprint (sq ft)

To the drip edge. Use the squares calculator if you only have rooms.

Pitch (rise in 12)

6 means 6:12. Multiplier is sqrt(1+(rise/12)²).

New covering

Installed $/square from dated surveys. Replace with a bid.

What has to come off

Height and access

Decking allowance (% of deck)

Your $/square, low

0 uses the survey default. One number prices both ends.

Your $/square, high

Permit allowance ($)

— Budget range

— All-in per square

— Roof area

— Covering

— Tear-off

— Steep-slope premium

— Access premium

— Decking

— Permit

What this assumed —

A budget range, never a quote. Waste sits inside the per-square rate. HyreRoof does not sell roofs.

Why a roof costs so much more than it used to

Roofing material prices against general inflation, 2000-2026. Both indexed to 100 in 2000.HyreRoof calculation from BLS producer price and consumer price series. The full study →

The most common reaction to a reroof quote is that it seems far higher than it should be. It is, and the reason is measurable rather than anecdotal.

Since 2000, the producer price index for roofing materials has risen 255%. General consumer prices over the same period rose 92%. That means roofing materials have risen roughly 85% in real terms: the gap is not inflation, it is roofing specifically. Average hourly earnings in construction rose 115% over the same period, so labour has moved too, but nothing like as far as the materials.

HyreRoof analysis: a homeowner comparing today’s quote against what a neighbour paid in 2015, or against a figure from an article written then, is not comparing like with like by a wide margin. The estimate above is built from current inputs for exactly this reason.

What is in a roof replacement bid

Line	What it covers	Commonly missing from a cheap bid?
Tear-off and disposal	Removing the old covering, skip hire, tipping fees	No, but the number of layers being removed is often assumed rather than checked
Covering	Shingles, tiles or panels, plus starter and hip-and-ridge	No, this is the line every bid shows
Underlayment	Synthetic or felt across the whole deck	Sometimes downgraded to the cheapest felt without saying so
Ice and water barrier	Self-adhering membrane at eaves, valleys and penetrations	Yes: and in cold climates it is a code requirement, not an upgrade
Deck repair	Replacing rotten or delaminated sheathing found at tear-off	Usually excluded or capped: the most common change order in roofing
Flashing	New step, counter, valley and penetration flashing	Yes: reusing old flashing is the single most common corner cut
Ventilation	Ridge vent, intake at the soffit, balancing the two	Yes: and an unbalanced system voids many shingle warranties
Permit and inspection	Required in most jurisdictions for a full replacement	Yes: the clearest signal of a bid cutting corners
Warranty registration	Registering the system to activate the manufacturer term	Frequently omitted, which commonly shortens the term

The nine lines a complete replacement bid covers. The estimator above treats them as editable because the mix moves the total more than the shingle brand does.

A bid cheaper because it excludes flashing, ventilation and the permit is not cheaper. It is a different job, and the difference shows up as a leak in five years rather than as a saving now.

Why we publish no national average price

Almost every page on this subject leads with a national average cost per square. We do not, because we could not find one traceable to a measurement. The figures that circulate come from lead-generation sites and paid market reports whose method is not public, and they are then cited between sites until they look official.

The spread is also genuinely enormous. Pitch, storeys, layers to remove, deck condition, flashing complexity, material and local labour rate each move the number substantially, and several of them are unknown until the old covering is off.

HyreRoof analysis: a range you can decompose is worth more than an average you cannot check. If a page gives you one number and no method, it is telling you about its own marketing rather than about your roof.

What moves the number most

Driver	Effect	Why
Pitch	Large	Above about 7:12 the roof is no longer walkable, which means staging, harnesses and slower work
Layers to remove	Large	Two or three existing layers double or triple tear-off labour and disposal weight
Deck condition	Large, and unknown until tear-off	Rotten sheathing must be replaced. This is why bids cap it rather than price it
Storeys and access	Moderate to large	Height drives staging, safety equipment and material handling
Complexity	Moderate to large	Valleys, dormers, chimneys and skylights are all flashing details, and flashing is where roofs leak
Material	Moderate	Architectural asphalt, metal and tile are different products with different labour, not just different prices
Local labour rate	Moderate to large	Varies several-fold nationally: the main reason a national average is meaningless
Brand of shingle	Small	Installation quality dominates brand. A perfectly installed mid-range shingle outlasts a badly installed premium one

Ranked by how much each typically moves a replacement quote.

The bottom row is what most bids compete on. The top three are the ones that actually decide the price, and two of them are only fully known once work starts.

Reading three quotes

Check they measured the same roof
Ask each bidder for the squares figure they used. If they differ by more than about 5%, at least one has estimated rather than measured, and the estimate above tells you which is plausible.
Ask what the deck repair allowance is
A bid with no allowance will produce a change order. A bid with a stated per-sheet rate and an estimated count is being honest with you about an unknown.
Confirm the flashing is new
Reusing old flashing is the most common corner cut in roofing and the most common source of a leak on a new roof. It should say "new" on the proposal.
Check the ventilation is balanced
Exhaust without matching intake does not ventilate, it depressurises. Many shingle warranties require balanced ventilation, so this is a warranty question as well as a performance one.
Ask whether a permit is being pulled
A bid that skips the permit is cheaper because it avoids inspection: the only independent check on the work that you get.
Do not choose on price alone
Three numbers are only comparable once you know they describe the same work. Until then the cheapest is usually just the least complete.

Materials are the headline. Labour is the bill.

Most explanations of roofing cost stop at material prices, because materials are the part with a published index. Labour is the larger share of most residential bids and it has moved differently.

Indexed to 100 in 2000. Three BLS series on one axis. The indexing is ours so they can be compared; the underlying data is not.US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price, CES and CPI series through 2026. The full study, with every series ID →

The three series, side by side. Since 2000, BLS producer prices for roofing materials are up 255%. Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees of roofing contractors are up 115%. Consumer prices generally are up 92%.

What that means in real terms. Roofing wages have risen about 12% against consumer prices over the same period, HyreRoof calculation from the two BLS series. Materials have risen considerably faster than that. So the two halves of your bid are not moving together, and an argument built on either one alone will mislead you about the whole.

And the workforce has grown while hours crept up. Employment in the industry is up 33% over the same period, and average weekly hours have moved from 35.2 to 37.1. This is not an industry that has shed capacity; it is one where the price of both inputs rose.

Why this matters when you are handed a number. If a bid is mostly labour, then a material price argument, "shingles have gone up", explains a minority of the movement in your quote. Conversely, if a bidder is materially cheaper than two others, the saving is far more likely to be in labour, scope or the permit than in a better price on shingles. Nobody is getting a special deal on bundles.

What this is not. It is not a price for your roof and it is not a national average. It is an index of movement. We publish no national average because we could not find one traceable to a measurement: the figures that circulate come from lead-generation sites and paid reports with no published method.

Which series says what, because they are not interchangeable

Roofing cost claims are made with whichever index supports them. These are the instruments, what each one actually measures, and what it therefore cannot tell you.

Cumulative change since 2000. Plywood and steel are included because they are what the deck and the metal options are made of, and both sit inside a roofing bid.US Bureau of Labor Statistics. HyreRoof calculation of cumulative change from the series levels.

Series	What it measures	What it cannot tell you
Prepared asphalt and tar roofing and siding products WPU1361	What manufacturers received for shingles, roll roofing and cap sheets. Base 1982 = 100; series begins January 1926.	What you will pay. It is what manufacturers received, at the factory gate, before distribution, delivery, waste and installation.
Asphalt shingle and coating materials manufacturing (NAICS 324122) PCU324122324122	The output price of the whole shingle-and-coatings industry, not one product. Base June 1984 = 100; series begins December 1975.	What you will pay. It is what manufacturers received, at the factory gate, before distribution, delivery, waste and installation.
Roofing contractors, nonresidential building work (NAICS 23816X) PCU23816X23816X	What roofing contractors received for installed nonresidential roofing work. Base December 2007 = 100; series begins December 2007.	Anything about your house. It is a nonresidential series, and residential reroofing is a different market with different scale and different crews.
Average hourly earnings, production and nonsupervisory employees, roofing contractors CEU2023816008	Gross hourly pay on employer payrolls in NAICS 238160. Base US dollars, not an index; series begins January 1990.	What a contractor charges. Wages are an input to price, not a price, and the gap between them is overhead, equipment, insurance and margin.
CPI-U, all items, US city average, not seasonally adjusted CUUR0000SA0	The deflator. Used here to convert nominal changes into constant dollars. Base 1982-84 = 100; series begins January 1913.	What you will pay. It is what manufacturers received, at the factory gate, before distribution, delivery, waste and installation.

Every one of these is a real, public, federal series. The mistakes made with them are mistakes of attribution, not of data.

Retrieved for our roofing inflation study; the full instrument table and method are published there. Data through 2026.

The cost that arrives with the permit, not with the estimate

A reroof is a permitted alteration in most jurisdictions, and the permit brings the current code with it. That is a real cost, it is frequently absent from the cheapest bid, and it is the reason the cheapest bid is cheapest.

What a reroof commonly triggers

An ice barrier, where local history requires one. "In areas where there has been a history of ice forming along the eaves causing a backup of water as designated in Table R301.2, an ice barrier shall be installed" for the listed coverings, extending "not less than 24 inches (610 mm) inside the exterior wall line of the building." HyreRoof analysis: the ice-barrier requirement is triggered by local history recorded in Table R301.2, which your building department fills in, it is not a national switch. The 24 inches is measured inside the wall line, not from the fascia, so on a house with a deep overhang the membrane has to run considerably further up the deck than 24 inches of roll. Bids that quote "one roll of ice and water at the eaves" have often measured from the wrong place.

Drip edge at eaves and rakes. "A drip edge shall be provided at eaves and rake edges of shingle roofs", and it "shall extend not less than 1/4 inch (6.4 mm) below the roof sheathing." Older roofs frequently have none, and adding it is edge metal plus labour on every linear foot.

Underlayment appropriate to the slope. Double underlayment is required on slopes between 2:12 and 4:12. A porch or extension below 4:12 doubles the underlayment on that plane, and it is routinely missed at estimate stage because nobody measured the pitch.

Fastening to the current standard. Asphalt shingles shall have the minimum number of fasteners required by the manufacturer, but not less than four fasteners per strip shingle or two fasteners per individual shingle. And the fasteners themselves: Fasteners must be galvanized, stainless steel, aluminum, or copper roofing nails, minimum 12-gauge with a 3/8-inch diameter head. They should penetrate at least 3/4 inch into roof sheathing and comply with ASTM F1667.

Ventilation. IRC 2021 R806.2, Minimum vent area requires net free ventilating area as a ratio of the vented space, and the intake half of it is at the eaves, which means work in the soffits, not on the roof.

Model code, locally adopted. Model code. Adoption and amendment are local, and the edition your jurisdiction adopted may differ. Confirm with your building department before relying on any of it.

Why the cheap bid is cheap

Once you have read that list, the price gap between three bids usually explains itself. A bid that omits the permit omits the inspection, and the inspection is the only independent check on the work that you get. A bid that omits the permit also, by construction, omits everything the permit would have triggered.

This is not always dishonest. A contractor who has always worked to an older adopted edition, in a jurisdiction that has since updated, will price what they have always priced. But the consequence lands on the homeowner, at resale or at the next claim, and it is worth one phone call to the building department to find out what is currently required before you compare numbers.

Ask each bidder the same question: what does the permit require here that this roof does not currently have? A contractor who answers it fluently is a contractor who has pulled permits in your jurisdiction recently.

And the insurance question behind it

Some homeowner policies carry ordinance-or-law coverage, which pays for code-required upgrades triggered when a covered loss forces a repair. Many carry it at a small sub-limit and some carry none. On a house that predates the current adopted edition by a couple of decades, that sub-limit is the difference between the claim covering the roof and the claim covering most of the roof.

It is a line on your declarations page and it can be read today, which is a much better time than during a claim.

The lines that are missing, and what each absence means

Comparing three bids is mostly an exercise in noticing what is not in them. The last column is why each omission matters.

Illustrative. The covering: the part homeowners spend the most time choosing, is not the largest line.HyreRoof illustration. Not a measurement; we hold no bid dataset.

Line	What it should say	What its absence means
Squares, and how they were derived	The measured area including the slope factor, and the waste allowance separately.	The bidder estimated from a footprint or from satellite imagery. On a complex roof that is where a large error hides, and it is the error that produces a mid-job conversation about material.
Deck repair rate	A per-sheet unit rate agreed in advance, plus a requirement to show and photograph before replacing.	You have agreed to an open-ended cost on the item most likely to arise. Every roofer knows the deck may need work. A bid silent on it has moved that risk to you without saying so.
Tear-off, layer count and disposal	How many layers come off, and where they go.	A second layer is real labour and real tonnage. If the bid assumed one and finds two, that is a change order on day one.
New flashing, itemised by location	Chimney, walls, valleys, vents and skylights, each named, each new.	Reused flashing is the most common corner cut in the trade and the most common reason a new roof leaks. Roofs leak at transitions, not in the field.
Wind classification of the covering	The standard and class together. The code’s own requirement: "Asphalt shingles shall be classified in accordance with ASTM D3161, TAS 107 or ASTM D7158 to resist the basic wind speed per Figure R301.2(4)."	The covering was selected on price and availability rather than on your site’s design wind speed. On an exposed or coastal site this is the most consequential omission on the page.
Ventilation, both halves	The ratio designed to, the net free area, and a separate intake line.	Most covering warranties condition on adequate balanced ventilation. A bid silent on it leaves a warranty exclusion in place at your expense.
Permit	Who pulls it, what it costs, and what it triggers.	No inspection, and none of the code upgrades the inspection would have required. It is usually the single largest reason one bid is materially cheaper than two others.
Payment schedule	A modest deposit, a progress payment tied to materials on site, and a final payment after inspection.	A schedule that front-loads the contract is the pattern behind most post-storm contractor failures, and it is the term to negotiate before signature rather than after.

Every line here is ordinary contract language. None of it is unreasonable to ask for, and asking is free.

HyreRoof analysis. We hold no dataset of bids or invoices, review no contracts, and take no fee from any contractor. This is not legal advice.

How to make three quotes actually comparable

The problem with three quotes is almost never the prices. It is that they describe three different jobs. This is the fix, and it takes about an hour.

1
Write one scope sheet before you invite anyone
One page: covering type and wind class, underlayment, ice barrier extent, new flashing at every named location, drip edge at eaves and rakes, ventilation target, layer count, deck rate, permit, disposal, and the planes included. Send the same sheet to every bidder. You have just made three quotes comparable before they were written.
2
Ask each bidder for their squares figure separately
Before you see the price. If they differ by more than about five percent, at least one has estimated rather than measured, and the calculator on this page tells you which figure is plausible for your footprint and pitch.
3
Call the building department once
Ask what edition is adopted, what a reroof permit requires, and what it costs. Ten minutes, and it converts the biggest source of bid variance into a known quantity.
4
Read your declarations page while you wait
Settlement basis, any roof endorsement, the wind or hail deductible and whether it is a percentage, and whether you carry ordinance-or-law coverage. All four change what a roof actually costs you, and none of them is on any quote.
5
Normalise the numbers before you compare them
Add back what each bid left out, using the other bids’ own figures for those items. The cheapest bid frequently stops being the cheapest at this step, and occasionally it stays cheapest, which is genuinely useful to know.
6
Do not get on the roof to check anything
HyreRoof position: OSHA regulates employers, not homeowners. But the threshold tells you something a homeowner should act on. The federal government requires a trained worker with equipment and a rescue plan to be protected above six feet. "Get up there and have a look" is advice that asks an untrained person to do, unprotected, what a professional may not do unprotected. Falls from height are the leading cause of death in construction. Inspect from the ground, from a window, from a ladder at the eave, or with a drone or a photograph, not from the roof.

HyreRoof sells nothing, ranks no contractors and takes no referral fee. This process is the whole of our advice on procurement and it costs you nothing to run.

What this estimator is, and what it refuses to be

What it does

Takes your own measurements and your own selected bands, and does the arithmetic in front of you, with the formula on the page.

Applies the slope factor, the tear-off, the layer count and the access premium as separate visible steps, so you can see which one is driving the number rather than being handed a total.

Shows the movement in the underlying federal series, so you know whether a remembered figure from years ago is a fair comparison. It generally is not.

What it will not do

It will not publish a national average. We looked and could not find one traceable to a measurement with a published method. Writing one down anyway would make the page look more authoritative and would be a fabrication.

It does not know your local labour market. Which is the largest single driver of what a roof costs and varies severalfold across the country.

It does not know your deck. Unknown until tear-off, and the largest change order in the trade.

It does not know your permit. Fees and triggered upgrades are local, and one phone call answers it better than any model could.

It is not a bid and it is not a negotiating position. It is a way of knowing whether a bid is plausible before you discuss it, which is a different and more useful thing.

And it does not tell you what the money costs. Once you have a plausible figure, the roof financing calculator shows what a contractor-arranged loan adds to it, and what is and is not documented about the dealer fee.

And it is not the assembly reference. NRCA publishes The NRCA Roofing Manual, the trade’s reference for assembly detailing. It is a purchased document rather than a free publication, so this site does not quote from it and describes only what is publicly and consistently stated about its role. The controlling text is the manual itself, and a competent contractor has a copy.

The vocabulary, once

Square: 100 square feet of actual roof surface, not of footprint. Every material quantity, labour rate and bid in the trade is denominated in squares, which is why the slope factor has to be applied before anything is counted.
Producer price index (PPI): What producers received, at the factory gate, before distribution, delivery, waste and installation. It measures movement in a manufacturer’s price, not in yours.
Average hourly earnings (AHE): A BLS payroll series for production and nonsupervisory employees. It is an input to what a contractor charges, not what they charge: the difference is overhead, equipment, insurance and margin.
Tear-off: Removal and disposal of the existing covering. Priced by square and by layer, and heavier for tile, slate and wood than for asphalt. Its per-square rate and the layer count are two separate questions.
Deck rate: The agreed per-sheet price for replacing sheathing found to be unsound at tear-off. Agreeing it before signature converts the trade’s largest unknown into a number you consented to.
Ordinance or law coverage: Insurance for code-required upgrades triggered when a covered loss forces repair. Frequently carried at a small sub-limit and frequently absent. It is on your declarations page.
Change order: A priced addition to a contract after work has begun. Legitimate for genuine unknowns. A symptom of a thin estimate when it covers things anyone could have foreseen.
Waste allowance: Material ordered above measured area to cover cuts at hips, valleys and rakes. A simple gable roof needs little. A cut-up roof with many planes needs considerably more, and a flat percentage applied to both is a guess.
Access premium: The labour uplift for storeys, staging and fall protection. It steps rather than rising smoothly, and a bid showing no step on a steep or three-storey roof may not have visited the property.

Questions this calculator answers

How much does a roof replacement cost?: On this tool’s defaults, $9,636 to $20,637 for a 1,600 sq ft footprint at 6:12 in architectural asphalt. That is a survey band, not your bid. Type in the rate off a quote to audit it.
Why is the range so wide?: Because published $/square figures are surveys of quotes, and they disagree. Modernize’s architectural band is $400 to $850 per square. We print the width rather than picking a median and calling it local knowledge.
Does this include tear-off?: As its own line. One layer of asphalt is $100 to $240 per square in the SquareDash survey (retrieved 2 August 2026). Overlay is $0 here only if it is actually permitted.
Is this a quote?: No. It cannot see deck rot, layers, access, or what the permit desk will charge. Minus 5% to plus 30% once you have loaded your own rates, lopsided because unseen conditions add money.

Sources and methodology

Figures dated 2 August 2026. Last reviewed September 16, 2026.

IRC 2021 Chapter 9, Roof Assemblies, R903 drainage and flashing, R905.1.2 ice barriers, R905.2.8.5 drip edge (ICC, 2021 IRC as adopted in Maryland, read at UpCodes, retrieved 2026-09-05. Model code. Adoption and amendment are local, confirm the edition your jurisdiction adopted.)
IRC 2021 R806.3, Vent and insulation clearance (ICC via UpCodes, retrieved 2026-09-05. The one-inch airspace and the requirement that insulation not block the free flow of air. Model code; adoption is local.)
IRC R905.2.6.1, Classification of asphalt shingles (ICC via UpCodes, retrieved 2026-09-05. The requirement to classify to ASTM D3161, TAS 107 or ASTM D7158 and to label the wrapper. Table R905.2.6.1 itself was not retrieved and is not reproduced.)
29 CFR 1926.501(b), duty to have fall protection (OSHA, read at the Cornell LII mirror, retrieved 2026-09-05. osha.gov returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval on 5 September 2026, so the text was read at the Cornell LII mirror and is cited that way.)
Asphalt roof shingles: costs per square foot (Modernize, retrieved 2026-08-02. 3-tab $350–$500 and architectural $400–$850 per square installed.)
How much does it cost to tear off and replace a roof in 2026? (SquareDash, retrieved 2026-08-02. Tear-off $1.00–$2.40 per sq ft; 25–40% second-layer increment.)
Cost to replace roof decking (HomeGuide, retrieved 2026-08-02. $70–$150 per 4×8 sheet installed during a reroof.)
Roof replacement cost (Fixr, retrieved 2026-08-02. Labour at 40–60% of a replacement, the share the access premium is applied to.)
Building permits cost (Fixr, retrieved 2026-08-02. $100–$500 residential reroof permit band; $300 is the default allowance.)

Roofing squares calculator Squares first, then money.
Repair vs replace A cheap repair can still be the wrong next step.

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