Price this estimate
Search for each job on the visit, or just fill in the hours and materials.
Choose from over 300 jobs
Search knows more than one name for most of these, so type what you call the job. Picking a job fills its hours and materials so you have something to correct rather than a blank box — they are typical figures, not yours. Materials means what the job costs you, before any markup. Qty is for repeats: six of the same fitting is 6, not six rows. Anything this list has never heard of, type it and press Add.
Labor cost: $0.00
Equipment, disposal or travel on this visit?
One question, asked once
Do you pay anyone besides yourself? It decides whether payroll tax, workers' comp and benefits need to be inside your labor rate.
Your pricing setupmarkup, profit
What the work costs you
An hour on someone's check isn't what that hour costs you. Payroll tax, workers' comp, liability insurance and the days they're paid but not on a job all come with it. Most crews land between 25% and 35%.
The part isn't the only thing you paid for. There's the run to the supply house, the wrong size going back, the money you're out until they pay, and the warranty call if it fails. Most land between 15% and 40%; on cut-and-waste materials many pros add another 5%.
What you add on top
The seized fitting, the rot behind the wall, the second trip nobody saw coming. This is padding for the job that fights you, and if nothing goes wrong it stays with you. Plenty of jobs go out at zero; 5% to 10% is common on work you can't see into.
Everything above is cost, or cover for cost. This is the one number here that isn't paying for something — it carries the slow months and buys whatever comes next. 50% is half again over those costs, 100% is double, and there's no ceiling on it.
Do you take a deposit to start?
Money down before the work begins, so you are not buying materials out of your own pocket. It goes on the estimate your customer signs.
A percentage follows the job — change the work and the deposit moves with it. Half down is common on material-heavy work; a flat figure suits a small repair.
Put in how much you need to start, or choose "No deposit" instead.
Opens the concrete invoice generator with these numbers as line items — profit folded into the rates, so your customer sees a clean, itemized estimate. Without Pro, the estimate never leaves your device; with Pro, it's encrypted on your device before it syncs.
Need the estimate on paper?
The blank concrete estimate template in all 20 designs — a PDF to print, Word or Excel to fill in, CSV to import.
Estimate templates →Print the blank without an account; the files need a free one. Your letterhead on any of them with Pro.
Concrete pricing, straight answers
How much should I charge for a concrete job?
Add up your true direct costs — labor including burden, materials with markup, and job extras like equipment or disposal. Add a contingency for surprises if the job has any. That's your break-even, the floor you never quote below. Then add your profit on top: price = break-even × (1 + profit%). This calculator runs exactly that math as you type, and shows the result both ways — what you added on to your costs, and what share of the final price that leaves you — because the two numbers are easy to confuse and quoting on the wrong one is how a job loses money.
What is labor burden and why does it matter?
Burden is everything an hour of labor costs beyond the paycheck: payroll taxes (typically 8–10% of wages), workers' compensation (a few percent for low-risk trades, well over 15% for high-risk ones like roofing or concrete), liability insurance, and paid time off. All-in burden commonly lands between 15% and 40% on top of base pay — and forgetting it is one of the most common ways a profitable-looking job loses money. If you're solo and paying yourself, you can leave it at 0%.
What's the difference between markup and margin?
Markup is a percentage added on top of your cost; margin is your share of the final price. Adding 100% on top — charging double your costs — is the same thing as a 50% margin. Quoting a markup when you mean a margin is one of the most common ways contractors underprice a job, so this calculator keeps it simple: you enter what you add on top — no cap — and it always shows what share of the final price that leaves you.
What hourly rate should I charge for concrete work?
Work backward from your own numbers instead of copying competitors: add up what you want to earn in a year plus every cost of being in business, then divide by your realistic billable hours — most concrete contractors bill far fewer hours than they work. That result is your floor. Local demand, licensing, and skill decide how far above it you can go.
How much should I mark up materials?
Somewhere between 15% and 50% is common practice across the trades, and it isn't padding: the markup pays for sourcing time, supply runs, returns, warranty callbacks, and the money you float between buying materials and getting paid. If the customer supplies materials, price the labor accordingly — you still carry the workmanship risk.
What makes a concrete job run past the hours I quoted?
What is under the old slab decides the day. A driveway that breaks out clean can be sitting on soft fill, a buried stump or a footing from a porch nobody mentioned, and now you are hauling gravel and compacting in lifts before anything gets formed. A utility locate marks the public lines and nothing else, so the sprinkler main, the gas run to the grill and the invisible fence all get found with the bucket.
After that the weather runs the finishing clock instead of you. Cool, damp and overcast and the bleed water will not leave, so a ninety-minute pour turns into a crew standing on the slab until dark waiting to trowel. Hot and windy and it goes off in front of you and everything has to happen at once.
The plant supplies the rest. A truck shows late, a short load waits behind a full one, or the pump gets rescheduled. And forming is where a quote quietly doubles: a flat rectangle is a morning, while steps, radius edges, a thickened edge, a tie-in to an out-of-level existing slab or anything that has to hold a grade in two directions is layout work before any concrete is ordered.
How do materials behave on concrete jobs?
This trade is materials-heavy and the main material spoils. Ready-mix is ordered by the yard a day ahead, cannot be returned, cannot be stored, and is yours from the moment it is batched.
Yardage is the number that gets missed. Volume comes off the plan dimensions, but a subgrade an inch low across a big slab is real extra concrete, and so are thickened edges and over-dug corners. Ordering a margin over the calculated yardage is normal practice for that reason, because coming up half a yard short in the middle of a pour costs far more than the overage.
Read what the plant bills behind the per-yard figure, including short-load charges, standby past the free unload time, and winter hot water and accelerator. Rebar, mesh, chairs, form lumber, stakes, form release, sealer and curing compound are all yours to carry, and sealer coverage drops on a rough or porous surface. Form lumber is reusable until it is not, and the job that finishes a stack of forms should be carrying some of that cost even though nothing on the ticket says so.
Is this calculator free? Where do my numbers go?
Free and unlimited, no account needed. The math runs in your browser and your pricing setup saves only on your own device — we never see your numbers. Printing or sending the estimate it makes counts as a document: your first 2 are free, with no account.