How Much Does a Roof Cost?

Tired of generic blog posts that don't actually give specific information for how much your roof replacement will cost? Well, you've come to the right place! As a quick intro: I worked in roofing for 5 years while working through undergrad and grad school. Once I finished school, I went into software, specifically as a machine learning engineer. I've built this site along the way to help homeowners like you find the right roofer at the right price. I've been on thousands of roofs, and priced out that many as well. I've worked at three roofing companies including my own, and today I'm going to show you what actually goes in to your roof price. If you want to skip the reading and get a quote specific to your roof (accounting for actual surface area and material), click here: Instant Roof Estimate.

Okay, so here's the basics. When a roofer prices out your roof, it involves three main things: materials, labor, and job profit. Keep in mind, "job profit" is very different than profit the company takes home. A fairly standard pricing range for most roofers puts job profit at 30% - 50%. For sake of simplifying the example, let's say 50% for now. If that seems high to you, let me explain why that's actually a good number. Roofing companies provide a commodity. This means there are tons of roofing companies that all install the same materials. Most roofs in the United States are asphalt. The primary asphalt manufacturers are Owens Corning, Certainteed, and GAF. The price for their products are almost exactly the same. Labor crews have some variance in pricing. The biggest difference in quotes you recieve will be in the gross profit figure.

Why would you want to pay someone $20,000 for a roof, knowing they are going to take home $10k? Well, a few really good reasons. The first is overhead cost. Overhead cost has a diminishing return in terms of value to you, the consumer. At some point, too much overhead is bad. You want to find the roofing company that has the right gross margin. Not too much overhead, but not too little. If a roofer is a one man operation, their likelihood of going out of business is much higher than a roofing company with 200+ employees. The salaries and benefits of those employees are paid out of gross margin from the jobs sold by their roofing sales reps. Keep in mind, if a company makes $10k gross profit on the job, they have fixed overhead costs that never go away. Usually, a company really only nets 10-20% of a job sale price, after expenses.

You might be wondering, why would I want to pay an admin's salaries and benefits? Let's say you buy a roof from Joe Shmoe's roofing company. He's been around for 3 years, but he's been doing construction his whole life. It looks like he did a great job when the roof is installed. Fast forward 2 years, and you have a roof leak. You call Joe, and his number is disconnected. You fear the worst, and google his business name. Your suspicion is confirmed -- he's out of business. His workmanship warranty now means nothing, and you have to hope that the roof leak is caused by a material defect from the manufacturer (and it probably isn't). Now you need to call a bigger roofing company, one that's been around for 20 years and has that admin you didn't feel great about earlier. They quickly dispatch a roofing repair tech to fix you roof, and you're out $500 because Joe decided he wanted to get into HVAC.

This might seem like a silly example, but this happens all the time. It's worth it to pay a premium for quality. Quality in roofing is largely defined as the likelihood the roofing company you hire will be around in the future to service warranty calls. This is a big deal. Roofs protect your home, which for most Americans is their largest investment. Now, the question is, how do you know who is charging the right price?

RoofHero ensures that our contractors are charging a fair price. We reserve the right to refuse a contractor coming onto the platform if their pricing is above market rate and not within a reasonable range given their overhead. Both are taken into consideration. In roofing, a "square" is shorthand for 100 square feet of roofing material. Here's a few ranges for you to consider on roofing pricing in 2024:

• architectural asphalt shingles: $350 - $1,000+ per square
• standing seam metal: $1,200 - $2,200+ per square
• tile (concrete, ceramic, and composite): $2,000+ per square
• cedar shake: $1,800 - $2,500 per square
• flat roofing (TPO or similar): $1,200 - $1,600 per square

You'll notice that asphalt pricing, which is the most common roofing material, has the most variance on price. This is due to company size, warranties, product quality, and geography. We have vetted contractors in Georgia on the lower end of this range, and contractors up in Northern Virginia on the upper end. Again, all of these factors come in to play before a contractor can be approved to come onto the RoofHero platform. Repair pricing also has a large variation. The minimum repair price for most contractors can range anywhere from $299 to $1,000+, even for a simple shingle repair. The cost is almost entirely for time and risk for the contractor, in the case of a repair job.

RoofHero was designed to provide price transparency and immediate routing to the best contractor for you. We have two main algorithms that help with this. One is getting the surface area of your roof in 3 seconds. The next, which is equally as important, is routing you to the right company. RoofHero has a robust network of contractors that our team personally vets. If you're in a zone where we have vetted contractors, our algorithms will magically find the best roofing company for you. In cases where we don't have a pre-vetted contractor, the site will display the top 10 roofers near you with their websites linked as well as ratings. We will also not share your information with anyone in this case, because we haven't had a chance to vet them first. We worked really hard making this website extremely simple to use, so that you can sit back, relax, and get a real roofing quote and match with a pro in under 90 seconds.

So don't worry about getting up on your roof and manually measuring it, being left with only a wide range on prices. We built software that matches your roof's surface area to your assigned contractor and gets you a real, instant price. No one else on the market is doing this right now. So if you've stumbled across this page, lucky you! Your roof buying experience just got that much easier.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this post. The easiest way to get an instant and accurate roofing price is to click the "Get an instant estimate" button below and fill out the form. It's completely free to use, fast, and accurate. Thanks for taking the time to visit RoofHero and learn more about roof pricing.

About RoofHero | RoofHero is your go-to platform for instant roof estimates and seamless roofing services. RoofHero connects you with vetted roofing professionals and provides AI-driven pricing that save you time and money. Our services include custom roof estimates tailored to your needs and access to roofing contractors with transparent pricing. Trust RoofHero for a smooth and stress-free roofing experience.

Get your free, instant estimate with RoofHero today for your next roofing project!