Cement Mason Pricing Calculator
Price slabs, sidewalks, driveways, steps, and tear-outs from your real costs — crew labor for the pour, concrete by the yard you order, short-load fees, disposal weight — with your profit margin built in, not troweled away. Concrete is the one trade with no re-dos: once the truck backs up, you finish what you started, and your price has to be right before the chute swings. (Pricing block walls, brick, or stone instead? That's masonry — suggest it below and we'll build it.)
Your Company Setup
Set these once — they reflect your business, not the job.
Price a Job
Enter one job — the price updates as you type.
Instant Rate Card — Common Concrete Jobs
Twelve common cement mason jobs priced with your company settings above. Change your labor rate or margin and the whole menu reprices instantly. Hours and material costs are typical starting points for average conditions — access, grade, tear-out thickness, and finish spec all move the numbers. Material figures assume the concrete you actually order (with overage and any short-load fee), not the bare geometry of the slab.
| Job | Typical hours | Typical materials | Your flat rate |
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We really appreciate feedback from working pros like yourself to get these numbers accurate — to help our fellow trades and businesses succeed, now and for the next generations to come.
Worked Examples: Three Real Concrete Jobs
Using the default company settings above ($30/hr loaded labor, $14/hr overhead, 25% materials markup, 20% target margin, 3% card fee, 3% warranty reserve):
1. Sidewalk section replacement — five lead hours plus four laborer hours, $260 in materials, $60 disposal
Labor $222 (your five hours plus a laborer at 60% of your rate) + overhead $126 + materials charged at $325 + $60 disposal passed through = $733 base → about $999. Roughly $20 a square foot for fifty square feet — and that's correct, not high. Tear-out, disposal weight, and a short-load fee don't shrink because the job did; small concrete jobs carry the same truck, the same tools, and most of the same setup as big ones.
2. Patio slab, 10×12 broom finish — six lead hours plus six laborer hours, $650 in concrete, base, and mesh
Labor $288 + overhead $168 (running on all twelve labor-hours) + materials charged at $813 = $1,269 base → about $1,719. Just over $14 a square foot. Notice the crew: nobody pours and finishes 120 square feet alone. The second set of hands isn't optional on pour day, so it isn't optional in the price either.
3. Single-car driveway, tear-out and repour (400 sq ft) — fourteen lead hours plus fourteen laborer hours, $2,100 in materials, $400 in permit and disposal
Labor $672 + overhead $392 + materials charged at $2,625 + $400 passed through = $4,089 base → about $5,529. Under $14 a square foot including demolition — the per-foot number drops as the job grows because mobilization finally has room to spread out. This is why one per-foot price for every driveway in town is a trap: the math changes with the size, and this calculator changes with it.
What Does Concrete Overhead Actually Cost?
Overhead is every cost of being in business that isn't a specific job — and concrete hauls more iron to the curb than almost any trade on this site. The truck and a real trailer, general liability insurance, and marketing are standard; on top of them sit the form lumber and stakes, screeds, bull float, power trowel, walk-behind saw with diamond blades that wear like money, a mixer for small batches, hand tools by the bucket, and the quiet constant drain of cure compound, form oil, and blades that get used up a little on every pour. Concrete also punishes equipment: everything it touches gets washed, worn, or replaced on a schedule.
The number that matters is overhead per billable hour. A working mason with a small crew might bill 1,400–1,600 hours a year once estimates, plant runs, weather days, and cleanup are subtracted. Divide annual overhead by those hours: roughly $21,000 ÷ 1,500 billable hours ≈ $14 per billable hour — the default this calculator starts with. Weather days deserve a word: rain and freezing temps cancel pours but not truck payments. The hours you can bill have to carry the days you can't, and that only happens if overhead is in the price on the days you pour.
Common Concrete Pricing Mistakes
Recommended Profit Margins for Concrete Businesses
These are working benchmarks, not laws. The pattern that matters: margin in concrete follows risk and comparability. Plain broom-finish flatwork gets bid by every outfit with a truck, so it earns fair-but-tight margins won on efficiency. Stamped patios, exposed aggregate, and structural work get compared against your portfolio, not a price list — that's where 25%-and-up lives. And carry a real warranty reserve in this trade above all others: there is no touch-up coat on a slab. A callback in painting is an afternoon; a callback in concrete is a jackhammer, a dumpster, and a second pour. The reserve is what lets you honor your work without a bad slab taking a good month with it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should a cement mason charge per square foot?
Build it from your costs, then check it against the market — not the other way around. With typical numbers, plain broom-finish flatwork on an average-sized job lands around $6–$12 per square foot installed; small jobs and tear-out-and-repour work run $12–$20+ because mobilization, disposal, and short-load fees spread over fewer feet; stamped and decorative work runs $15–$25+. The per-foot number is an output of your labor, crew, concrete, and margin — never an input you copy off the internet.
How do I price the concrete itself?
Ready-mix runs roughly $150–$200 per yard delivered in most markets, more for high-PSI, fiber, or accelerator mixes. Order 5–10% over the geometry — subgrade is never perfectly flat, and a truck that comes up half a yard short stops the whole pour. Price the yards you order, not the yards in the slab, add base gravel, reinforcement, forms, and cure or sealer, and put your materials markup on all of it. The overage that goes home in the chute is still a cost of the job.
What's a short-load fee and who pays it?
Batch plants want to send full trucks — usually 9 to 10 yards. Order less than about 4 or 5 yards and most plants add a short-load fee, commonly $75–$150 or a per-empty-yard charge, because the truck and driver cost the same either way. Your client pays it, inside your price. Small pours that ignore the short-load fee are how a one-yard step repair quietly becomes a money-losing morning.
What profit margin should a concrete business target?
Common working targets: 15–30% true net margin for an established concrete business, and 10–15% on plain flatwork where you're bidding against volume outfits, after all costs, card fees, and a warranty reserve. Decorative, stamped, and structural work carries 25% and up. Carry a real reserve in concrete: there is no touch-up coat in this trade — a failed slab is a jackhammer, a dumpster, and a second pour on your dime.
What's the difference between markup and margin?
Markup is added on top of cost; margin is the share of the final price that's profit. A 20% markup on a $100 cost gives $120 — but only a 16.7% margin. To earn a true 20% margin you divide by 0.80, giving $125. On a driveway with two thousand dollars of concrete in it, the gap between those two numbers is the difference between a profitable month and a busy one.
Is this calculator really free?
Yes. No account, no email, no ads. The calculator runs in your browser and the numbers you enter are never sent to us. We use basic traffic analytics, described in our privacy policy.