← Asphalt driveway paving bid calculator
A published $3.50-a-square-foot special treats 800 square feet of sound asphalt as the same job as 1,000 square feet with a failed base, a 4-inch street apron, and 60 feet of sawcut at the garage. It is not. Sealcoat calculators price a thin coating and crack fill. Concrete calculators price cubic yards of slab. Paving the driveway is a method, a thickness, and the extra work you have to do before the paver rolls. Quoting all of that from a per-square-foot special is how the first sawcut eats the field margin.
Each extra inch of thickness is mix that never appears on the brochure. On the sample rates an 800-square-foot 2-inch overlay with 20 feet of sawcut prices about $3,076 ($3.85 per square foot, 5.6 crew-hours, 9.7 tons, walk-away $2,215). The same shop’s 1,000-square-foot full-depth at 3 inches with 200 square feet of failed base and an 80-square-foot 4-inch apron prices about $6,530 ($6.05 per square foot, 18.2 hours, 20.1 tons). A quarter of that full-depth bid is extra work — demo, dump, gravel, and the apron. Matching the overlay’s $3.85-a-square-foot special on the full-depth driveway is how that job becomes a loss.
Overlaying a failed base is a callback, not a savings. On the same 1,000-square-foot driveway the sample rates price a 3-inch overlay at about $5,287 — $1,243 less than full-depth. That gap is demo and gravel, not profit. Mill-and-overlay of that run prices about $5,787. Overlay is still the right bid on sound 800-square-foot work: milling that refresh prices about $3,437 and full-depth about $3,818 because you would be tearing out a driveway that only needed a lift. Treating every driveway as one per-square-foot number is how the method that looked cheapest on paper is not the one that keeps the margin.
A 1,200-square-foot mill-and-overlay at 2 inches with an 80-square-foot 4-inch apron is not the 800-square-foot refresh plus 50%. On the sample rates that mill-and-overlay prices about $5,073 ($3.96 per square foot, 11.2 crew-hours, 16.4 tons). Millings are a dump ticket; the apron is extra tons at a thicker lift. A 2,000-square-foot mill-and-overlay at 2.5 inches with fabric over cracks prices about $10,801 ($5.02 per square foot, 33.8 tons). Neither number lives in a $3.50-a-square-foot special.
A $38/h hand loaded at 32% payroll burden is $50.16. Margin is a share of the price you send, not a markup on cost. The walk-away price is total cost — below that the job makes nothing before you take a dollar home. Replace every rate with your invoices before you send either number.
This is arithmetic on the rates you type. It is not a paving specification, a code determination, a permit, an engineering stamp, or a recommendation of overlay versus full-depth. Thickness, base condition, and what the jurisdiction will accept at the street still decide the method. Verify every figure against your own takeoff.
No warranty. This free page is not paving, construction, legal, tax, or financial advice. You are responsible for reviewing and verifying its output before relying on it. It is hosted best-effort with no SLA: it may be slow, broken, moved, or taken offline without notice. Open the bid calculator to price a specific driveway, or see should I only charge material cost for paving fabric?
Charge from the method (overlay, mill-and-overlay, or full-depth), the square footage, new-asphalt thickness, street apron, failed-base gravel, sawcut, loaded labor, overhead, and a margin that is a share of price. A default 800-square-foot 2-inch overlay at the sample rates in this calculator prices around $3,076 — about $3.85 per square foot.
When the existing mat and the base have to come out. On the sample rates a 1,000-square-foot full-depth at 3 inches with 200 square feet of failed base and a 4-inch apron prices around $6,530. Overlaying that same driveway looks cheaper on paper — around $5,287 — until the failed base shows up under the new mat. The per-square-foot special never sees the demo ticket.
Milling is not an overlay and an overlay is not full-depth. On the sample rates a 1,200-square-foot mill-and-overlay at 2 inches with an 80-square-foot 4-inch apron prices around $5,073 ($3.96 per square foot, 11.2 crew-hours, 16.4 tons). Millings are a dump ticket; the apron is extra tons at a thicker lift.