Roofing owners who post their numbers report gross margins, the share of the price left after materials and crew labor, from the high 20s to 50%, with insurance work toward the top. Net margin, what the company keeps after commission, the office, the trucks and the owner’s own pay, is a fraction of that, and the nearest public benchmark puts it in single digits. Whether roofing pays comes down to that second number, worked out after you have paid yourself a salary.
Owners who post their margins report 27% to 50% gross
Owners who post their margins nearly always mean gross margin, and they rarely say whether the sales commission has already come out of it. One owner on r/RoofingSales put his company at 32% blended, with insurance jobs in the mid-40s and retail jobs in the high 20s.
A Texas owner doing 95% insurance work posted a 30% minimum and a 40 to 45% average.
One owner on r/Roofing reported 27% at the low end. An owner in Denver reported 40 to 50% in a YouTube comment, and a family exterior company on r/smallbusiness aimed for 50% before commission.
Track gross margin separately for insurance and retail jobs, because a blended number hides which kind of job is carrying the other.
In 2022, roofers had a fifth of revenue left after every cost the Census counts
The Census Bureau’s Economic Census shows where revenue went for roofing contractors with employees, commercial and residential work together. Materials took 36.8%, subcontracted work 8.6% and crew wages 12.1%.
Take those three out and 42.5% of revenue was left. That is a rough industry gross margin before payroll taxes and workers’ comp on the crew, and it sits inside the range owners report.
Other salaries, benefits, fuel, rent, depreciation and the rest of the overhead came out next, leaving 19.6% of revenue after every cost the Census reports. The Census does not report profit, and that remainder still had to cover interest, income tax, commission paid outside payroll and any owner who was not on the payroll.
The industry’s net margin sat somewhere below that line, and these figures come from before the price rises of 2025 and 2026. Lay out your last full year in the same order, materials first and the office last, and set each line’s share of revenue beside the Census shares above to see which one runs high.
The average remodeler kept 6.3% net in 2024, after paying its owner
The closest public net figure comes from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), whose study of remodelers counts the owner’s pay as a cost. For fiscal 2024 its average firm had $2.7M in revenue, close to the $2.90M a roofing contractor with employees averaged in the Census figures above.
That firm’s gross margin was 29.9%, and operating expenses took 23.6% of revenue, with the owner’s compensation counted inside them alongside sales and marketing and the general office overhead.
What was left came to a 6.3% net profit, NAHB’s highest since 1996. Because the owner is paid before net is counted, that net is profit on top of his pay.
A commenter under a Roofing Insights pricing video worked out what a 10% net would mean and asked, “So if I sell a 15k roof job, I only make $1,500??” Counted NAHB’s way, that money is what the company keeps after he has already been paid.
By that measure, a roofing company that pays its owner a fair wage and keeps a single-digit profit on top is doing about as well as the average remodeler in a strong year. Put your own pay on the books as a cost before you work out net, so your number compares with NAHB’s. How Much Do Roofing Company Owners Make? covers the owner’s side.
In roofing pay plans, “net profit” usually means the job’s gross margin
In roofing sales talk, “net profit” usually means the job price minus materials and labor, and sometimes minus a flat office fee. One pay plan posted on r/RoofingSales pays a 10% commission on a job at 35% net profit, and another rep there was used to 50% of net profit as commission.
An accountant would call each of those a gross margin, because overhead and the owner’s pay still come out of what is left after the rep is paid.
A poster on r/RoofingSales who came into roofing from tech ran into both meanings at once. “My investors think 10% net is aggressive,” he wrote. “My sales guys insist anything under 25% kills their motivation.”
The investors mean what the company keeps at the end of the year, and the sales staff’s 25% reads like the job-level “net” in the pay plans above. When a rep or an investor quotes you a margin, ask what has already come out of it before you agree to the number. How to Pay Roofing Sales Reps: 10/50/50, Profit Splits and Draws covers how the common splits work.
A 30% markup on cost works out to a 23.1% margin
Margin is profit as a share of the selling price, and markup is profit as a share of cost, so the same percentage gives two different prices. Take a quote posted on r/Roofing with $382 a square of direct cost: marking that up 30% gives $496.60 a square.
Reaching a true 30% margin on the same roof takes $545.71 a square. The full method, with overhead per square, is in How to Price a Roof: Price per Square, Overhead and Target Margin. Check which of the two your price sheet or estimating software uses before you set a target.
A price sheet built on last year’s costs loses margin in 2026
Preliminary Bureau of Labor Statistics figures put manufacturer prices for asphalt roofing and siding products 3.9% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier, and 7.6% higher than in April.
Roofing asphalts, coatings and cements rose 16.6% over the year. These figures track what manufacturers charge, before the supply house sets its own price.
One owner on r/Roofing reported a 10% supplier increase in April, which his customers felt as 16 to 18% once labor rose with it.
Labor is climbing on its own as well. In Roofing Contractor magazine’s 2026 survey of its subscribers, 55% reported rising labor costs, with the average labor cost up 14%.
QXO, which has owned the distributor Beacon since April 2025, reported in an August 2026 filing that its product costs were rising faster than its selling prices. A distributor in that position is under pressure to pass increases on to you.
Rebuild your price per square from the latest supplier invoice whenever an increase lands, and check the margin on jobs signed at the old price.
Pull these numbers from your own jobs before you compare
Before you set your margin against anyone else’s, pull these from your own books:
- Gross margin per job, with insurance and retail kept apart.
- Whether commission comes out before or after that margin.
- Whether your price sheet adds a markup to cost or sets a margin on the price.
- Overhead as a share of revenue (one owner on r/RoofingSales said his had risen to 12%, plus about 0.8% for a warranty fee).
- Your own pay, booked as a cost, before anything gets called net.
- Material cost per square from this month’s supplier invoice.
Every margin on this page starts with a homeowner finding you and asking for a price. If you want to see where you show up for that search, the free Google Maps heatmap lets you pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes shows your rank at 49 points around your office.