What a concrete patio or driveway slab costs in 2026, per square foot and per yard

The two slabs, measured

Thickness is the number people get wrong, because it is in inches. Divide by 12 first.

The patio is 12 × 16 ft, which is 192 square feet, at 4 inches. That is 192 × 4/12 = 64 cubic feet, or 2.37 cubic yards in the forms. A small slab on hand-graded ground loses more to a low spot in the base than a big machine-graded one, so I add 10% and order 2.61 yards. Laid in concrete pavers, the same 12 × 16 ft patio costs more than the slab but comes apart one piece at a time for repair; the guide to installing pavers prices it line by line.

The driveway is 20 × 24 ft, 480 square feet. At 5 inches that is 200 cubic feet, or 7.41 yards net. With 8% on top the order is 8.0 yards. At 4 inches it would be 5.93 yards net and 6.4 ordered. QUIKRETE's driveway guide says 4 inches is enough for passenger cars and recommends 5 or 6 inches for trucks and heavy vehicles. The Michigan Concrete Association draws the same line: 4 inches for cars and light trucks, 5 to 6 inches for light to medium trucks. If a pickup or a delivery truck parks on it, price the 5 inch slab.

The 2024 IRC requires slab-on-ground floors inside the house to be at least 3-1/2 inches thick over a 4 inch base of clean graded sand, gravel or crushed stone. For porches, carport slabs, steps and garage floors it sets 3,500 psi and 5% to 7% entrained air where weathering is severe. A driveway where it freezes should meet that spec whether or not anyone inspects it.

Run your own dimensions through the concrete calculator. It uses the same math as the numbers on this page.

Ready-mix price per cubic yard in 2026

Townsend Concrete in Vacaville, California posts a list updated August 22, 2026: $162 a yard for a 5 sack, 3,000 psi mix and $170 for 6 sack, 4,000 psi. Delivery to the Davis-Fairfield zone is $140 per load. Under 5 yards there is a short-load fee of up to $100, and the minimum charge is 2 yards ($324). Steuben County, New York awarded its 2026 ready-mix contract on March 2, 2026 at $173 to $285 a yard for 3,000 psi, depending on the supplier and the quadrant of the county.

The trend matters if you are holding an old quote. The BLS producer price index for ready-mix stood at 395.186 in August 2026 (preliminary), up 2.28% in a year, 7.52% since August 2023 and 38.66% since August 2020. A 2020 number for concrete is not a 2026 number.

For both cases I price the 4,000 psi mix at $170. The patio's 2.61 yards (2.607 unrounded) cost $443.26, plus $140 delivery and the $100 short-load fee: $683.26. The driveway's 8.0 yards cost $1,360 plus $140 delivery, $1,500, with no short-load fee because the order is over 5 yards. At 4 inches the driveway would take $1,228.

Bags or a truck: where the break-even sits

A 60 lb bag yields about 0.45 cubic feet per QUIKRETE's data sheet (the Menards bag lists no yield), so a yard takes 60 bags. At the $4.85 Menards price for a 60 lb bag that is $291 a yard, before you count the mixer and the backs. Against the Townsend truck ($170 a yard, $140 delivery, $100 short-load fee, 2 yard minimum charge), the calculator's crossover lands at 1.99 cubic yards. Below it, bags are cheaper. Above it, order the truck.

The patio needs 2.61 yards, so it sits just past the line: $683.26 by truck against 157 bags for $761.45. The money is close; the work is not. 157 bags is 9,420 lb of dry mix to lift, open and mix in batches that set at different times, and every batch boundary is a place for a cold joint. For the driveway there is no contest: 480 bags for $2,328 against $1,500 by truck.

The crossover moves with your supplier's terms, so get the minimum, the short-load rule and the delivery fee on the phone before you decide.

Base, forms and reinforcement

The base is 4 inches of compacted crushed stone in both cases. For the patio that is 192 × 4/12 = 64 cubic feet, which is 128 bags of paver base at $3.89, or $497.92. Loose material compacts, so the bags are a floor. For the driveway, 160 cubic feet in bags would be 320 bags and $1,244.80, and here bulk delivery wins easily. Gravelshop quotes a delivered load of 3/4 inch minus crusher run at $462 for 21 tons in Springfield, Missouri and $520 for 22 tons in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. At the quarry the stone is cheap; USGS puts the 2025 average value of crushed stone at $18.50 a metric ton. What you pay for is the truck. Ask the yard to convert your cubic yards to tons, and if the order comes in under a full load, you are paying for the delivery either way.

Forms are the smallest line. The patio's 56 ft perimeter takes seven 2 × 4 × 8 boards, plus three more cut into stakes, at $4.65 each: $46.50. The 5 inch driveway needs a board at least 5 inches tall, so it gets 2 × 6s: twelve 6 ft boards at $8.09 for the 68 ft formed on three sides (the fourth side butts the garage slab through an isolation joint) plus four 2 × 4s for stakes, $115.68 in all.

Reinforcement is where the choices have a price. I ran three options through the rebar calculator's module with 3 inches of cover, laps of 45 bar diameters and 8% waste, buying 20 ft #4 sticks at $8.29 (cheaper per foot than 10 ft sticks at $5.38).

The spacing figures are design choices; your plan or your building department sets them. The counts include the extra bar that closes each row, which is where hand counts usually come up one short. At 24 inch spacing the driveway grid has 143 intersections to tie, and the 24 ft bars each need one lap splice. Chairs to hold the steel mid-depth are extra and not priced here, but steel lying on the gravel does nothing.

Fiber is the third route. In bags, Menards sells a 60 lb crack resistant mix with synthetic fibers and air entrainment for $7.76, 60% more than the plain $4.85 bag, which has no entrained air; for the patio that premium is $456.87. With ready-mix, fiber is an add-on per yard, and neither price sheet above lists it, so ask for it on the quote. Check your grid in the rebar calculator.

Control joints: spacing that follows the thickness

A slab will crack somewhere; joints choose where. NRMCA's guide on joints in slabs on grade sets the maximum spacing at 24 to 36 times the slab thickness, which works out to a handy rule: joint spacing in feet is 2 to 3 times the thickness in inches. For 4 inches that is 8 to 12 ft, with about 10 ft as NRMCA's example; for 5 inches it is 10 to 15 ft, and 15 ft is the stated maximum for any slab. Panels should be square or nearly so, the long side no more than 1.5 times the short side.

For the patio, one joint across the middle of each direction makes four 8 × 6 ft panels, 28 linear feet of joint. For the 5 inch driveway, a joint down the center and one across makes four 10 × 12 ft panels, 44 linear feet. At 4 inches the same driveway needs three 10 × 8 ft panels per side, which is 64 linear feet. The groove has to reach a quarter of the depth and never less than 1 inch, so 1-1/4 inches on the 5 inch slab. Conventional saw cuts go in 4 to 12 hours after finishing. If the crew comes back the next afternoon, the slab may have picked its own joints.

Joint sealant fails and random cracks show up anyway. The guide on how to repair cracks in concrete matches the filler to the crack width, using this driveway as the example.

Line-by-line cost of each slab

Labor is priced from the BLS: cement masons and concrete finishers earned a national mean of $28.87 an hour in May 2025. Wages were 69.0% of total compensation for construction, extraction and related occupations in the June 2026 employer cost survey ($32.17 of $46.65), so the loaded hour is $28.87 × 46.65 ÷ 32.17 = $41.86. The crew-hours are my assumption: 40 for the patio (a day of excavation, base, forms and steel, then a pour day) and 72 for the driveway. Replace them with the crew-days on your quote.

Concrete is 22% of the patio's subtotal and 20% of the driveway's. Labor is 55% and 41%. The crew's schedule moves the total more than the per-yard price you shop for.

Low, typical and high scenarios

Each scenario changes only the inputs named, and all include the 10% contingency.

As a cross-check, Angi puts concrete driveways at $8 to $20 per square foot, which is $3,840 to $9,600 for 480 square feet. The new driveway with no tear-out here costs $12.37 per square foot in direct cost, and a bid at Angi's $14 midpoint ($6,720) would sit 13% above it. A bid at $8 on a tear-out job is missing something.

Labor by state

The labor line swings more by state than anything else. Same crew-hours, same loading factor, OEWS May 2025 mean wages:

North Carolina and Washington are $1,740 apart on the same driveway.

Tear-out, pump and permit

The old 20 × 24 ft slab at 4 inches is 5.93 cubic yards of concrete, about 23,970 lb at the calculator's density of 2,400 kg per cubic meter. Larimer County, Colorado charges $40 a cubic yard for concrete rubble in 2026, so disposal alone is at least $237.04 there, and more in practice because broken slab takes up more room in a truck than it did in the ground. Angi reports removal at $2 to $6 per square foot including disposal, $960 to $2,880 for this slab. Breaking it yourself? Menards rents an electric jack hammer for $84 per 4 hours, and the haul is still 12 tons.

A pump is for when the truck cannot get its chute to the forms, as with a backyard patio behind the house. Angi lists line pumps at $150 to $200 an hour with a $400 to $600 minimum, and $400 to $800 for a pour of 1 to 5 yards. Steuben County's contract prices a conveyor truck at $350 to $400 an hour. If the truck can reach the forms, skip it.

Permits depend on where the slab sits. A driveway usually touches the public right-of-way at the curb, and that part is cheap to permit: Chicago charges a one-time $10 for a residential driveway, and Woods Cross, Utah charges $50 for a residential encroachment permit to widen a driveway plus $1 per linear foot for concrete repair or replacement in the right-of-way. A backyard patio may need nothing. The patio table carries $0 and a note to call your building department, because I found no national rule to put a number on.

Thickness and steel against the cost of a cracked panel

Here is the decision in dollars. Going from 4 to 5 inches on the driveway adds $272 of concrete. Going from mesh to #4 rebar at 24 inches adds $124.18, and tightening the grid to 18 inches adds another $66.32. The whole upgrade package is $462.50.

Now price one failure. A cracked, sunken 10 × 12 ft driveway panel at 5 inches has to come out and be poured again. Tear-out at Angi's $2 to $6 per square foot is $240 to $720. The new concrete is 2.0 yards, which is a short load: 2.0 × $170 + $140 + $100 = $580. Sixteen crew-hours at $41.86 add $669.83. One panel costs $1,489.83 to $1,969.83.

Neither thickness nor steel prevents cracking; NRMCA is blunt that mesh will not prevent it and only helps keep cracks from opening. What the upgrade buys is a slab whose cracks stay tight and level, which is the difference between a cosmetic line and a trip hazard. At $462.50 against $1,490 or more for a single panel, the upgrade pays for itself if it saves one panel in the life of the driveway. For a patio that only sees foot traffic, the math is weaker: the rebar-over-mesh premium there is $93.30, and no heavy load ever sits on it.

Pay cash or finance

Take the typical driveway at $8,050.82. The Federal Reserve's G.19 shows commercial banks charging 11.86% on a 24-month personal loan in the second quarter of 2026. Financed that way, the payment is $378.45 a month and the interest totals $1,032.07. Put it on a credit card at the 20.94% average and pay it off over the same two years: $413.46 a month, $1,872.21 of interest.

Paying cash has a cost too, just a smaller one. The FDIC's national rate for a 12-month CD was 1.71% in August 2026; two years of that on $8,050.82 is $277.69 you give up. Even at the 4.08% 12-month Treasury yield, the forgone interest is $670.35, still $361.72 less than the personal loan. If the cash is sitting in a savings account at the 0.38% national rate, you give up $61.30. Pay cash if it leaves your emergency fund intact. If you have home equity, compare a line of credit in the HELOC calculator before signing a card-rate plan.

Where the budget blows up, and how to check a quote

Most overruns on flatwork come from the same few places. The base runs deep and a 4 inch slab becomes a 4-1/2 inch slab, about 12% more concrete than planned. The order runs short and a second truck brings its own delivery fee and a cold joint. The truck waits while forms get finished, at $10 per 5 minutes on the Townsend sheet. The old slab turns out to be 6 inches thick with steel in it, and there is 50% more to break and haul. Weather pushes the pour to a Saturday, which is $100 extra on the same sheet.

A quote you can trust puts these in writing:

• Slab thickness, psi, and whether the mix is air-entrained (5% to 7% for exterior work where it freezes).
• Base material and compacted depth.
• Reinforcement: mesh, rebar size and spacing, or fiber, and how the steel is held up.
• Joint layout, the cut depth and when the saw comes.
• Cubic yards ordered and the waste allowance.
• Whether tear-out, haul-off, pump and permit are included.
• Who pays for standby time and a second truck.

Then check the concrete line yourself. Divide the yards on the quote by the area: yards × 324 ÷ square feet gives the thickness in inches. For the driveway, 8.0 × 324 ÷ 480 = 5.4 inches, which is the 5 inch slab plus its 8% allowance. A quote that orders 6 yards for a "5 inch" 480 square foot driveway is really a 4 inch slab. After the pour, run the same check on the batch ticket.