Roof Replacement Cost in 2026
Full tear-off and re-roof in architectural asphalt shingle — the job most homeowners mean when they say "new roof". Priced per square, with the size assumptions shown.
Estimated range — not a quote
Roof Replacement Cost — national estimate
Low end
$5,625
Typical
$11,000
High end
$27,000
What this covers: a complete tear-off and re-roof in architectural asphalt shingle, including underlayment, drip edge, flashing and ridge cap.
Per roofing square (100 sq ft of roof surface)
$375–$900(typical $550)
The job figures above are this per-square range applied to a 15–30 square roof (20 squares for the typical case). Multiply your own square count by the per-square figure and you will get a closer estimate than any national average can give you.
Modelled estimate. These figures come from national industry-typical ranges, not from quoted jobs, and no one has looked at your roof. Use them to sanity-check a bid — never as a substitute for one.
What the low, typical and high jobs look like
A range is only useful if you know which end you are at. These are the three jobs the numbers above describe.
Low$5,625
a small, simple, single-story roof — one layer to tear off, a walkable 4/12 pitch, few penetrations, standard shingle
Typical$11,000
an average single-family home of roughly 20 squares on a 5/12 to 6/12 pitch, one tear-off layer, a chimney and a couple of vents to flash
High$27,000
a large roof, or a steep or multi-story one, with two layers to strip, several valleys and dormers, some decking to replace, and an upgraded shingle
How this work is priced
A roof replacement is priced by area, not by the square footage of your house. Roofers measure the roof surface itself in "squares" — one square is 100 square feet of roof — and a sloped roof is always larger than the footprint underneath it. That gap is why two homes with identical floor plans can get quotes thousands of dollars apart: a 12/12 roof carries about 41% more surface than a 4/12 roof over the same footprint.
Almost all of the price is labor, tear-off and disposal. Shingles themselves are usually the smaller half of the bill. That is the single most useful thing to understand before you read a quote, because it explains why upgrading the shingle line is often cheaper than homeowners expect, and why a steep or cut-up roof is much more expensive than a simple gable of the same area.
What is and is not in the price
Most of the distance between two quotes is scope, not margin. Read both columns before you decide one contractor is expensive.
Normally included in the price
- ●Tear-off and disposal of one existing layer
- ●Synthetic underlayment across the deck
- ●Ice-and-water membrane in valleys and at eaves where the climate calls for it
- ●New drip edge and pipe boots
- ●Step and counter-flashing at walls and chimneys
- ●Architectural (dimensional) asphalt shingles
- ●Ridge cap and ridge ventilation
- ●Site cleanup, magnet sweep and haul-off
Normally billed separately
- ●Decking replacement beyond a token allowance — usually billed per sheet as found
- ●Rafter, truss or fascia repair discovered after tear-off
- ●Gutters, gutter guards and downspouts
- ●Skylight replacement (reflashing an existing skylight is often included; a new unit is not)
- ●Chimney masonry, crown or cap work
- ●Solar panel removal and reinstallation
- ●Permit fees in jurisdictions that bill them separately
What pushes the price to the top of the range
Pitch above about 7/12
Once a roof is too steep to walk, crews move to roof jacks, planks and harnesses. Production slows sharply and most contractors add a steep-pitch premium — commonly 25% to 50% on the labor portion, and more above 10/12.
A second or third layer to tear off
Every additional layer is another full pass of labor plus roughly double the disposal volume. Two-layer tear-off typically adds $50 to $125 per square over a single layer.
Decking that has to be replaced
Nobody knows what the deck looks like until the shingles come off. Soft or delaminated sheathing is billed as found, commonly $70 to $190 per 4x8 sheet installed. Ask what the per-sheet rate is before you sign, not after.
Two or more stories, or bad access
Height changes the staging, the dump-trailer placement and the safety setup. A tight urban lot, a steep driveway or landscaping that blocks the truck all cost labor hours.
A cut-up roof
Valleys, dormers, hips, skylights, chimneys and wall intersections are where the slow, skilled work lives. Two roofs of identical area can differ 20% or more on complexity alone.
Material tier
Moving from a builder-grade 3-tab to a designer or impact-rated shingle can add $150 to $400 per square. Impact-rated (Class 4) shingles sometimes earn an insurance discount that offsets part of that — ask your carrier before you decide.
What keeps it at the bottom
A simple gable at a walkable pitch
Two planes, no valleys, 4/12 to 6/12, one story. This is the fastest roof a crew can install and it prices at the bottom of the band.
One layer, sound decking
A single strip-off over solid plywood removes both the biggest disposal cost and the biggest unknown.
Scheduling in the off-season
Late autumn through late winter is slower for most crews outside storm season. Flexibility on timing is real negotiating leverage; an urgent job in peak season is not.
Standard-line shingles
Every major manufacturer's mid-line architectural shingle carries a similar warranty and a similar service life. The premium lines mostly buy appearance and wind rating.
Component costs
The pieces a quote for this work is assembled from. Use them to interrogate a bid line by line — a contractor who can explain each of these is worth more than one who cannot.
| Line item | Range | Unit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tear-off and disposal, one layer asphalt | $100–$200 | per square | Walkable pitch. Add for extra layers, steep pitch, tile or shake. |
| 3-tab asphalt shingles, installed | $300–$500 | per square | Increasingly rare on replacements; still used on rentals and outbuildings. |
| Architectural asphalt shingles, installed | $375–$700 | per square | The default choice on most re-roofs. |
| Designer / impact-rated asphalt, installed | $600–$1,000 | per square | Heavier profile, higher wind and impact ratings. |
| Synthetic underlayment | $20–$50 | per square | Standard on new work; has largely replaced felt. |
| Ice-and-water membrane | $60–$150 | per square | Priced over the covered area — eaves, valleys, penetrations — not the whole roof. |
| Drip edge | $2–$5 | per linear ft | Required by most current code adoptions on new roofs. |
| Ridge cap shingles | $4–$12 | per linear ft | Cut-up shingles cost less than purpose-made cap; cap performs better. |
| Ridge vent | $10–$25 | per linear ft | Needs matching intake at the soffit to actually move air. |
| Pipe boot replacement | $30–$90 | each | Cheap now, expensive later — cracked boots are a top-three leak source. |
| Chimney or wall step flashing | $300–$800 | each | Reusing old flashing to save money is the classic false economy. |
| Decking replacement | $70–$200 | per sheet | 4x8 sheet installed. Billed as found after tear-off. |
| Dumpster or dump trailer | $350–$700 | per job | Sometimes bundled into the per-square price, sometimes a line of its own. |
| Building permit | $150–$500 | per job | Varies widely by jurisdiction; some fee schedules scale with job value. |
National baseline component ranges. These are the pieces a replacement quote is built from — use them to read a bid, not to build one.
Size your own roof before you read a quote
Every number in this guide is priced against roof area, and roof area is not house area. Put your footprint dimensions and your pitch into the squares calculator and you will know how many squares you are buying — which turns a vague estimate into arithmetic you can check against a bid.
Roof Replacement Cost by city
The same model, adjusted by each metro’s cost index and written with the climate and building context that applies locally. Only the metros we have modelled appear here — there is no page for a city we have not.
North Carolina
North Carolina roofing contractorsIllinois
Illinois roofing contractorsGeorgia
Georgia roofing contractorsCommon questions
How do I turn my house size into roofing squares?
Take the building footprint in square feet, multiply by the pitch multiplier for your roof slope, then divide by 100. A 1,600 sq ft single-story footprint at a 6/12 pitch works out to about 1,789 sq ft of roof, or roughly 18 squares before waste. The roofing squares calculator on this site does the arithmetic and shows the formula it used.
Is it cheaper to layer new shingles over the old ones?
Up front, yes — you skip the tear-off and disposal, which is commonly $100 to $200 per square. Most codes permit a second layer on an asphalt roof that is otherwise sound. It is still usually the wrong call: nobody inspects the deck, the second layer traps heat and ages faster, the added weight matters on older framing, and the eventual tear-off costs more. Several manufacturers also limit warranty coverage over an existing layer.
How many quotes should I get?
Three is the working number, and they should be scoped alike — same shingle line, same underlayment, same flashing treatment, same per-sheet decking rate — or you are comparing different jobs. A bid that is far below the others usually differs in scope, not in efficiency.
How long does a replacement take?
Most single-family asphalt roofs are stripped and re-covered in one to three working days once the crew starts. The wait to get on the schedule is usually longer than the job, especially after a regional storm event.
Does a new roof pay for itself when I sell?
Not in full, and be sceptical of anyone who tells you otherwise. A new roof mostly removes an objection and prevents a price reduction at inspection rather than adding its cost to the sale price. Treat resale as a secondary benefit, not the reason to do it.
How we build these cost ranges
The short version: these are industry-typical ranges, not a quote.
These are modelled ranges, not quotes
Every figure on this page is an estimate produced by a model, not a price anyone has been charged. We do not collect invoices, we do not receive bid data from contractors, and we do not have a feed of completed jobs. If you need a number you can rely on, the only source of one is a written quote from a contractor who has been on your roof.
Where the national ranges come from
The national baseline for each work type is an industry-typical installed-price band: the range that published cost guides, manufacturer installation literature and ordinary contractor pricing conventions broadly agree on for 2026. Each band is expressed low / typical / high, and where the work is genuinely sold by the square we show the per-square price and the roof size assumptions separately, so the whole-job figure can be re-derived rather than taken on trust.
Where the city adjustment comes from
Each metro carries a single cost index, with 1.00 meaning the national baseline. The index is our own editorial estimate of where local labor, overhead and permitting sit relative to the national middle, based on the well-established general pattern that construction costs run higher in large, high-wage, densely-built metros and lower in smaller ones. It is not a measured price feed, it is not a licensed location-factor dataset, and it is not derived from local quotes. The city figure is simply the national band multiplied by that index.
What we deliberately do not do
We do not publish invented local statistics. There is no "average roof size in your city" on this site, because we have not measured one. Local context here is limited to climate, geography and building-practice factors that are true of the region and that you can verify independently. We would rather be generic and correct than specific and made up.
Why the numbers are rounded
Modelled figures are rounded before display — to the nearest $500 above $10,000, the nearest $100 above $1,000, and more finely below that. A modelled estimate printed to the exact dollar is claiming a resolution it does not have. The rounding is the honest representation of how coarse these estimates really are.
What the model cannot see
It cannot see your pitch, your decking, how many layers are up there, how a truck reaches your house, what your local supplier quoted this month, or how booked the good crews are after the last storm. Those factors routinely move a real quote further than the entire spread between our low and high figures. Treat these ranges as a way to tell a plausible quote from an implausible one — nothing more than that.
A note on this particular topic
The per-job range spans different roof sizes as well as different unit prices, which is why it is wide. A small simple roof at the low unit price and a large steep roof at the high unit price are both real jobs, and they are genuinely five figures apart.
Cost model version 2026.08. Baselines and the regional index are reviewed periodically; the date shown on each page is the date that page's figures were last reviewed. Contractor listings on this site are compiled from public records — confirm any contractor’s licence and insurance with your state licensing board before work begins.
Other cost guides
Roof Repair Cost
$250–$3,500
Localized fixes — leaks, flashing, boots, valleys, a section of shingles. Priced per visit rather than per square, because that is how the trade actually sells it.
Metal Roof Cost
$8,250–$56,000
Exposed-fastener panel through steel and aluminium standing seam. The widest price band in residential roofing, because "metal roof" covers products that differ by a factor of four.
Flat Roof Replacement Cost
$3,600–$35,000
Single-ply membrane — TPO, EPDM and PVC — plus modified bitumen. Covers whole low-slope roofs and the flat sections over additions, porches and dormers.
Storm Damage Roof Repair Cost
$450–$12,000
Wind, hail and impact damage — from a tarp on the night of the storm to a full insurance-scoped replacement. The one topic where the price you pay and the price of the work are usually different numbers.
Roof Tear-Off Cost
$1,500–$9,000
Stripping and hauling away the existing roof — the line item that is usually bundled into a replacement quote and is worth pulling out and looking at on its own.
Roof Decking Replacement Cost
$500–$14,000
Replacing sheathing under the shingles — the change order that surprises more homeowners than any other, because it cannot be quoted until the old roof is off.
Roof Inspection Cost
$0–$1,200
From the free look that comes with an estimate through to an infrared moisture scan or an engineer's report. Priced per visit, and often free — which is itself worth understanding.
- ●Longer-form background on this work: The complete new roof installation guide.
- ●All eight cost topics and every city guide: the roofing costs hub.
The only real number is a written quote
Get three, scoped alike — same material line, same underlayment, same flashing treatment, same per-sheet decking rate. Search roofing companies by city or state and contact them directly, free and with no middleman.