Enter the footprint and the pitch and the tool works out the roofing squares for you, then prices material, labor, tear-off, overhead and profit at your own rates. You get the bid and the price per square. Free, and no signup needed.
Roof sections
Waste, tear-off, overhead and profit
A margin is a share of the price, so it can never reach 100%: at 99% the bid would be a hundred times your cost. Capped at 80% here. If you meant a markup on cost, a 100% markup is a 50% margin.
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These figures are estimates to help you bid a job. Adjust the rates to match your own suppliers and your own crew, and remember that a roof with several valleys, dormers or hips takes longer per square than a plain gable.
It is a free tool that turns a footprint and a pitch into a priced quote. You enter the area the roof covers on the ground, which is the number you can actually measure, and pick the pitch. The tool converts that to the real sloped area, divides by a hundred to give you roofing squares, and prices material and labor per square at your own rates. It adds waste to the material, tear-off by the square and by the layer, a steep-slope premium on the labor, and then overhead and profit. It ends on the price per square, which is the figure every other roofer's quote will also come down to.
Add one row per roof section, enter its footprint in square feet, and pick the pitch. Choose the roofing going on and adjust the material and install rates, which are per SQUARE rather than per square foot. Set your waste factor, your tear-off rate per square and how many layers are coming off, and a steep-slope premium if the roof needs staging. Tick the skip, the ridge vent, the flashing and the permit. Finally set your overhead and profit margin. Everything updates as you type, and nothing is sent anywhere.
By the square, which is 100 square feet of roof. Everything in the trade is quoted that way: a bundle covers a third of a square, a roll of felt covers four, and a crew's day is counted in squares laid. So the first job of any roofing estimate is working out how many squares are up there, and the second is pricing material and labor per square separately so you can requote the same roof in architectural shingle or in standing seam without starting again.
Then come the things that are not the roof covering and that sink a quote when they are left out. Stripping the old roof, which is priced per square and per layer. Getting rid of it, which is a skip and a day. Ridge vent, drip edge, valley metal and flashing round every chimney and skylight. The permit and the inspection. A steep roof that needs staging before anyone can stand on it. Each is its own line here, because a single blended price per square cannot be defended when the homeowner puts your quote next to two others. For more detail, see our guide on how to price a roofing job.
This is the one that makes a roofing estimate wrong before any money is involved. The number you can measure, from a plan or by walking the perimeter, is the FOOTPRINT: the area the building covers on the ground. The roof is bigger than that, because it runs up a slope. How much bigger depends only on the pitch.
A pitch of 6:12 means the roof rises 6 inches for every 12 inches it runs. The sloped length is the hypotenuse of that triangle, so the roof area is the footprint times the square root of 6 squared plus 12 squared, over 12, which is 1.118. A 2,000 square foot footprint at 6:12 is 2,236 square feet of roof, or 22.4 squares. At 12:12 the same footprint is 28.3 squares, a quarter more roof and a quarter more everything. Pick the pitch in the calculator and it does that conversion for you.
The two adjustments that follow are the same shape as each other and worth keeping straight. Waste goes on the MATERIAL, because you order more bundles than the roof needs for cuts, starters, ridge and a spare, but you do not nail down squares that are not there. The steep-slope premium goes on the LABOR, because a 10:12 roof costs no more to buy and a great deal more to walk.
And this one costs money quietly on every job. A 20% markup on a $1,000 cost gives a $1,200 bid, and your profit is $200 on $1,200, which is a 16.7% margin, not 20%. To actually keep 20% of the price you divide by 0.80 and bid $1,250. The calculator treats the profit field as a margin and divides, so the number you type is the share of the bid you keep. Overhead is applied to cost before that, because overhead is a cost, not a profit.
These are common starting points in the United States for residential work, per square, material and installation separately. Treat them as a baseline and replace them with your own supplier prices and your own crew's rates.
| Roofing | Material and install, per square |
|---|---|
| 3-tab asphalt shingle | $110 and $180 |
| Architectural asphalt shingle | $150 and $200 |
| TPO membrane, flat roof | $180 and $300 |
| EPDM rubber, flat roof | $200 and $300 |
| Corrugated metal | $250 and $300 |
| Concrete tile | $400 and $500 |
| Cedar shake | $450 and $500 |
| Standing seam metal | $600 and $500 |
| Clay tile | $700 and $800 |
| Slate | $900 and $1,000 |
| Tear-off, per square per layer | $40 to $80 |
| Waste factor | 10% simple gable, 15% or more with valleys and hips |
| Steep-slope premium, 8:12 and above | 20% to 50% on labor |
The slope factor is the same arithmetic every time: the hypotenuse of the rise over a 12 inch run, divided by 12. The calculator carries these, so you pick the pitch rather than doing it.
| Pitch | Multiply the footprint by |
|---|---|
| 3:12 | 1.031 |
| 4:12 | 1.054 |
| 6:12 | 1.118 |
| 8:12 | 1.202 |
| 10:12 | 1.302 |
| 12:12 | 1.414 |
Count the layers before you quote the tear-off, because finding a second layer after the skip arrives is a day you did not price. Say in writing what happens if the deck under the old roof turns out to be rotten, with a per-sheet rate, since you cannot see it until the shingles are off and it is the commonest reason a roofing job goes over. Price the steep-slope premium at the quote, not on the invoice. Put a date on the quote: shingle prices move. Quote the flashing round every chimney, skylight and wall as its own line, or the homeowner will assume it was included. When the job is agreed, our free roofing quote template and estimate and quote generator turn the same line items into a document you can send in seconds.
Once the estimate is accepted, invoice the job straight away and keep the payment terms short:
From our invoice data: Shorter terms bring the money in sooner: invoices due on receipt are paid in 15.9 days on average and Net 30 invoices in 47.2 days, while the share paid by the due date barely changes (39.1% against 42.3%).
Source: Billbooks invoice payment study, 53,095 paid invoices from 180 businesses, 2007 to August 2026. See the invoice payment study
This calculator provides estimates for planning purposes only. Your final quote should reflect your own supplier prices, your own crew's rates, local market rates and what you find when the old roof comes off. It is not a substitute for getting on the roof.
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