Work out what each roof costs you per square, then set the price so the margin you want is left over, because what other roofers charge varies too much to copy. To keep 30% after overhead, divide your cost per square, overhead included, by 0.7. Roofers on Reddit quote about $385 to $700 a square for a retail asphalt roof, and the owners who post their margins report 27% to 50% gross.
I run Zentora, a marketing company for roofers, so the pricing figures here come from roofers and other contractors talking about price in 250 Reddit and YouTube posts and comments, plus published data. Owner figures are self-reported and regional, so use them to see where you sit.
Roofers quote about $385 to $700 a square for a retail asphalt roof
Roofers have posted $400 to $500 a square in Philadelphia in 2023 and in Texas in late 2025. In 2024 an Ohio owner put HDZ at $450 to $475 a square, and a Pacific Northwest roofer was bidding about $620.
A flat price per square can hide what each roof makes. In April 2026 an owner on r/Roofing wrote that he’d been “doing a blanket $700/square in CA, and only just learning my margin on jobs.” Another owner wrote in 2023 that his company had moved from a price per square to a markup on each job’s material and labor cost, and hadn’t had a losing job since. Quoting by the square is fine, as long as each roof’s number starts from that roof’s own costs.
Cost vs Value 2025, from the Journal of Light Construction and Zonda, puts a 30-square asphalt tear-off with two skylights at $31,871 nationally and $28,211 in Dallas, about $1,062 and $940 a square. Its local prices come from Verisk’s XactRemodel, part of the Xactimate family. The Dallas figure is about double the $400 to $500 a Texas owner quoted in late 2025, so treat it as a ceiling or as a guide to insurance pricing.
Owners who post their margins report 27% to 50% gross
These are gross margins, the share of the price left after materials and labor, and owners rarely say whether the sales rep’s commission comes out first:
- 27%, from an owner who wins about 3% of the jobs he bids
- 32% blended across $30 million of sales, with insurance work in the mid-40s and retail in the high 20s
- “Goal is 50%, expected minimum is 30% (95% insurance work). I average 40-45%,” from an owner in Texas on r/RoofingSales in 2024
- 40% to 50% in Denver
- a profit of “about 35%,” from one informal poll of companies in four Southern markets
- a 50% target before commission at a family exterior firm
Insurance work runs 10 to 20 points above retail in these reports. The 2022 Economic Census lands inside the range. For the 24,082 US roofing contractors with employees, commercial work included, 42.5% of revenue was left after materials, subcontracted work and the crew’s wages. Payroll tax and workers’ comp on the crew still come out of that.
Decide whether your target comes before or after commission, because the same roof shows a different margin on each side of it. If you pay reps out of profit, How to Pay Roofing Sales Reps: 10/50/50, Profit Splits and Draws goes through the common splits.
One owner’s roof costs him $256 a square before profit
In September 2025 a roofer in southeast Texas lost a job to a bid of $260 a square, and an owner on r/RoofingSales replied with what a square costs his company:
- materials, $115
- labor, $110
- other costs, $10
- overhead, $21
He aims for $400 a square and discounts some customers to $365, which leaves him 36% after overhead at his target and about 30% at his lowest price. His $21 of overhead looks low, and he didn’t say whether it covers sales commission.
For crews on payroll, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put the mean roofer wage at $27.95 an hour in May 2025, with $22.69 in Texas and $32.41 in California. Payroll tax and workers’ comp go on top, so ask your insurance agent for your comp rate. The survey also leaves out crews paid by the square as 1099 subs, which describes many residential roofers.
What you pay for the same shingle depends on who sells it to you. In December 2025 an owner starting a new company found Atlas Pinnacle Pristine at $118 a square at Menards, or $105 after an 11% rebate, against $116 to $130 at SRS and MBS. In May 2026 an ABC rep dropped a Midwest family firm’s GAF Timberline HDZ price from $129 to $119 a square, which is $300 on a 30-square roof.
Adding 30% to your cost leaves a 23% margin
A contractor asked in a 2026 YouTube comment whether to “add 15%-20% over head and then let’s say 20% of profit margin.” The answer depends on whether each number is a markup on cost or a margin on the price.
Take the 79-square replacement a contractor was quoting on r/Roofing in December 2024. His costs were $252 a square for materials and fees and $130 for subs who carried their own general liability and workers’ comp, so $382 a square and $30,191 for the roof. At the $400 a square that leaves the owner above 36% after overhead, this roof would keep 4.5% before overhead. On his costs:
- adding 30% gives $496.60 a square, a 23.1% margin
- pricing for a 30% margin, by dividing by 0.7, gives about $546 a square, or $43,130 for the job
That’s about $49 a square apart, or $3,900 on one roof. At the low end of the YouTube question, adding 15% to cost for overhead and then pricing for a 20% margin comes out at a 30.4% gross margin.
The table below prices the $256 stack. That cost already includes overhead, so the margins are what’s left after it and sit below the gross figures owners post: at 12% overhead, a 40% gross margin leaves 28%.
| Margin left after overhead | Divide cost by | Same as a markup of | Price per square |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30% | 0.70 | 43% | $366 |
| 35% | 0.65 | 54% | $394 |
| 40% | 0.60 | 67% | $427 |
| 45% | 0.55 | 82% | $465 |
His $365 floor sits on the 30% row.
A 29.9% gross margin left the average remodeler 6.3% net in 2024
I couldn’t find a published net margin for roofing companies, and the closest free study covers remodelers. In the National Association of Home Builders’ cost study, the average remodeler took in $2.7 million in 2024. Overhead, with the owner’s own pay in it, came to 23.6% of revenue and cut a 29.9% gross margin to 6.3% net, the best since 1996.
For roofing contractors, the Census leaves 19.6% of revenue after every cost it reports. Interest and income tax still come out of that, and so does the pay of any owner who isn’t on payroll, so profit sits somewhere below it.
Two roofing owners carry much less overhead. One wrote in 2024 that his had risen to 12% of revenue, plus about 0.8% for a warranty fee, and the $256 stack’s $21 is about 5% of a $400 price. The remodelers’ 23.6% counts the owner’s pay, so whether you carry overhead as a share of revenue or as dollars a square, take it from last year’s books with your own salary in it.
A $260 bid is break-even on one owner’s costs
On the $256 stack, a $260 bid leaves $4 a square. In 2025 a Dallas-Fort Worth rep was up against a competing quote that worked out to about $340 a square. A Florida roofer charging $450 to $500 wrote in 2023 that he loses jobs to bids of $300 to $400. Whatever the other company’s costs are, check whether its number would cover yours.
Matching a bid below your cost per square loses money on every square you put on. More signed jobs won’t fix a roof priced under its cost, and neither will more marketing. If you’re losing on price, How to Win Roofing Jobs Without Being the Cheapest Bid covers what owners do besides cutting it.
Manufacturers’ shingle prices rose 7.6% from April to August 2026
The Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index for asphalt roofing and siding products covers shingles and tracks what manufacturers charge. It rose 7.6% from April to August 2026 after a dip early in the year, and stood 3.9% above August 2025. All goods going into residential construction rose 7.8% over the same year. The values since May 2026 are preliminary and can still be revised.
At the supply house, one owner reported a 10% increase in April 2026, against the 1% or 2% he usually sees, and said his customers would see about 16% to 18% once labor rose too. Someone on r/Roofing asked in March 2026 whether everyone else was seeing 5% to 8% increases at SRS.
Owens Corning’s filing doesn’t match those reports: it called second-quarter 2026 roofing prices “relatively flat.” QXO, which bought the distributor Beacon in April 2025, said its product costs rose faster than its selling prices, which puts pressure on it to pass increases on to roofers. The gap may come from distributor markup, or from timing and regional differences, so price each job from a current supplier quote.
Metal roofs can carry a separate increase. The Section 232 tariff on steel and aluminum, products made from them included, went from 25% to 50% in June 2025, and since April 6, 2026 it has applied to the full customs value. Ask your supplier whether it reaches the metal products you buy, and get a current price before you quote a metal roof.
Set a floor price per square before the next estimate goes out
- Price materials from this month’s supplier quote, and ask your rep for a better number.
- Add labor at what your crew or sub charges per square, with payroll tax and comp on top for W-2 crews.
- Add overhead per square: last year’s overhead, your own pay included, divided by the squares you installed.
- Divide the total by one minus the share you want left after overhead, and decide whether commission comes out of that share. The owner’s $256 divided by 0.64 is his $400, which leaves 36%.
After the roof is on and the invoices are in, check what you kept: the price minus what the roof ended up costing, divided by the price.
Whether to show a price on your website is a separate decision, covered in Should Roofers Publish Prices? What a Roof Cost Page Should Say.
Once your floor price is set, how many roofs you get to bid depends partly on where homeowners find you on Google Maps. The free Google Maps heatmap shows that: pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.