Roof Replacement Cost Calculator: What Will a New Roof Cost?

A new asphalt shingle roof is mostly materials and labor, plus a few costs that are easy to forget: hauling away the old roof, replacing rotted decking and the permit. This calculator builds each of those from your roof’s size and shape, prices labor from the median roofer wage in your state, and gives you a range instead of a single number, because that’s what quotes look like in real life.

How it works

You enter the sloped roof area (from our roof square footage calculator if you don’t have it), your state, the shingle type, the pitch, the number of stories and how many layers come off. The estimate adds up five parts:

materials = order squares × (shingles + accessories) × markup
labor     = squares × crew hours × pitch × stories × wage × billing
disposal  = squares × layers removed × disposal per square
decking   = sheets × (sheet + 0.5 h of labor)
total     = materials + labor + disposal + decking + permit

Materials. Shingles are priced per square: about $114 to $174 for architectural, from $38 to $58 a bundle at three bundles per square. A flat $25 to $60 per square covers underlayment, starter, hip and ridge cap, drip edge, nails, pipe boots and vents. Contractors mark materials up 10 to 25 percent. We checked these prices at retailers and roofing suppliers in October 2026.

Labor. A crew spends about 1.4 to 2.3 labor-hours per square installing shingles and another 0.5 to 1 hour per square per layer tearing off. Above 6/12, we multiply labor by 1.15 to 1.6 for the slower work and safety setup, and add 10 percent for a two-story house and 20 percent for three stories. The hours are priced at the BLS median roofer wage for your state, multiplied by 2.5 to 4. That multiplier covers payroll taxes, workers’ comp (roofing has one of the highest rates of any trade), liability insurance, equipment, overhead, sales costs and profit.

Ranges. The low estimate uses every low assumption, the high estimate every high one, and “typical” sits in the middle. Real quotes rarely land at either extreme.

What’s not included: metal, tile or slate roofs, structural repairs, new gutters, skylights, chimney rebuilding, and changes to attic ventilation beyond standard vents.

Worked example

A one-story ranch in North Carolina has a 5/12 hip roof with 1,966 sq ft of roof and one layer of old shingles. The owner wants architectural shingles, uses 15% waste for the hips and budgets 6 sheets of decking. North Carolina’s median roofer wage is $23.56 an hour.

• Materials: 22.6 squares × ($135 + $40) × 1.15 = about $4,550
• Labor: 19.66 squares × (1.8 + 0.7) h × $23.56 × 3.2 = about $3,700. The pitch is under 7/12 and the house is one story, so there’s no surcharge.
• Disposal: 19.66 × $18 = about $350
• Decking: 6 × ($24 × 1.15 + 0.5 h × $75.39) = about $400
• Permit: $250

That’s a typical total of about $9,250, or $4.71 per square foot of roof, with a range of roughly $6,250 to $14,350. The same roof in Illinois, where the median roofer wage is $37.45, comes to about $11,550 typical, because labor rises with the wage and materials don’t.

Roof replacement cost by state: reference table

Installed cost per square (100 sq ft of roof) for a typical job, from each state’s roofer wage. Multiply by your roof’s squares for a quick check.

Tips and common mistakes

Price the roof area, not the house. Roofers quote by the square of sloped roof, which is usually larger than the footprint and has nothing to do with the house’s listed living area.

Get at least three written quotes. Ask each roofer to list the shingle line, underlayment, ice barrier, flashing, ventilation, the price per sheet of decking and the warranty. A low total often means something is missing.

Plan for decking. Nobody knows how much decking is rotten until the old roof is off. A good quote names a price per sheet. Budget for 5 to 10 percent of the deck on an older roof.

Don’t assume a roof-over saves money. The code bans a new layer over two existing layers, and a single roof-over hides deck problems and can shorten the new roof’s life. Most of the saving disappears when the next roof needs two layers removed.

Time it if you can. Roofers are busiest from late spring to fall and after big hail storms. Booking off-season can mean shorter waits, and sometimes a better price.

Check licensing and insurance. Ask for proof of liability insurance and workers’ comp. A worker injured on an uninsured job can become your problem. Falls from roofs are one of the leading causes of death in construction.