Planning tool
Concrete project cost planner
Seven questions about what you can see, and you get the likely project category, the likely repair path, where the job sits relative to other residential concrete work, and the specific factors that will move your quotes.
What you will not get is a dollar figure — and the reason for that is worth thirty seconds of your time before you start.
Why this planner shows no dollar amounts
We have no verified cost dataset for residential concrete work. We could assemble a range from figures circulating online, and it would look exactly like the ones you have already seen — but it would be averaged across jobs so different from each other that it describes none of them, and you would then use it to judge honest local quotes.
That is worse than useless, so we do not do it. What this planner gives you instead is the structure of your own project: how big and how invasive it is relative to other residential concrete work, and which line items will actually differ between the bids you collect. Those are the things that let you read a quote properly.
If we ever verify a cost source we can cite honestly, a dollar overlay gets added here and the source is published with it. Until then, only your local quotes can tell you a price.
How the relative band is worked out
- Four inputs contribute to a complexity index: the area you gave, how invasive the indicated method is, how easy the area is to reach, and how much of it is affected. A small premium is added for project types that are genuinely harder — steps and pool decks always, and driveways and garage floors when they are being replaced.
- That index maps to one of four relative bands at fixed thresholds: three or below is lower, four to six moderate, seven to nine higher, ten or above the top of the residential range.
- The bands describe position within residential concrete work. They are not currency, not converted from currency, and not derived from any pricing dataset.
- The rules are fixed, so the same answers always produce the same result, and the index is shown alongside it so you can see what moved it.
Why it asks about the inside of your house
The last question is about walls, doors, floors and the foundation rather than the concrete outside. That is deliberate. If the building itself may be moving, pricing a driveway is answering a question you do not yet have — and the right professional is a licensed structural engineer or a qualified foundation professional, not a flatwork contractor.
Where any of those signs is reported, this planner stops. It produces no cost band, no repair path and no offer to match you with a concrete contractor. That is the one case where the most useful thing a tool can do is refuse to answer.
What it cannot do
It cannot see your site, and the things that decide both the method and the price are mostly invisible from above: what the base is made of, how well it was compacted, where water actually runs underground, and what reinforcement is in the slab.
It is not an engineering determination, not a structural inspection and not a safety assessment. Nothing it produces is an estimate, a bid, a quote or an offer.
About this planner
Why will you not just give me a ballpark number?
Because a ballpark implies we know the park. Concrete pricing is driven by things we cannot see from a form — how much base has to come out, whether a truck can reach the area, what the contractor's minimum charge is — and a national figure loses all of them. A homeowner armed with a wrong number argues with the honest bidder and trusts the suspiciously cheap one.
What is a relative cost band actually useful for?
Two things. It tells you whether you are looking at the kind of job where minimum charges dominate, or the kind where base preparation and disposal do — which changes what you should ask about. And it tells you whether a large gap between quotes is plausible for a project this size, or a sign that the bids describe different work.
Do I have to give my contact details to see the result?
No, and there is no point in the flow where you are asked to. The result appears immediately and in full, including its limitations. Asking to be matched with a local contractor afterwards is a separate, optional step.
Is the complexity index a real measurement?
It is a transparent scoring device, not a measurement. It adds four documented factors, and the thresholds are published above so you can see exactly what moved your result. It has no units and it does not convert to currency.
What if my answers point somewhere I did not expect?
The result will say so and explain why. If you tell it you want resurfacing but describe a slab that has settled, it will tell you that a surface treatment follows the shape of whatever is beneath it. Naming that conflict is more useful than agreeing with you.
If you are still deciding between repairing and replacing, start with the repair-or-replace tool →