The pour
One row per slab. Thickness is what turns a cheap square-foot quote into a losing job — a 6-inch RV pad is 50% more concrete than a 4-inch driveway of the same size. Pick a finish to start from a common labor figure, then replace it with a time from your own crew.
Material, access, and demo
Most plants add a short-load fee under about five yards. A 5×5 stoop that looked cheap per square foot often loses the job on that fee plus the truck minimum.
Your costs
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the customer — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Your bid
- Yards in the slab (no waste)
- Yards with waste
- Yards the plant will bill
- 80-lb bags (comparison only)
- Form edge
- Ready-mix
- Forms + reinforcement
- Pump + short-load
- Demo haul
- Labor hours
- Loaded labor
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit
- Price per sq ft
- Price per cubic yard
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
Where the yards go
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. The starting finish hours are common ballpark figures, not an industry standard, a benchmark, or a guarantee — time your own crews and replace them. Confirm slump, mix, and reinforcement with the engineer or the ready-mix plant before you order.
Common questions
What does this concrete estimate include?
Each slab’s cubic yards from its area and thickness, a waste percentage rounded up to the plant’s billed order increment, forms priced by perimeter, reinforcement priced by area, finish labor by the finish you pick, access costs for a pump or wheelbarrow pour, a short-load fee if the order falls under your threshold, demo and haul of any existing slab, and overhead and margin on top.
Why does the ordered yardage differ from the raw calculated volume?
Ready-mix plants typically bill in quarter-yard increments, so after your waste percentage is added the tool rounds the order up to the next one. The exact volume and the ordered volume are shown separately so you can see what you’ll actually be billed for, rather than eating the rounding difference yourself.
What is the “80-lb bags (comparison only)” number for, if the bid prices ready-mix?
It is not part of the priced bid — it converts your ordered cubic yards (waste included) into 80-lb bags at about 0.6 cubic feet per bag, so you can weigh a hardware-store bag run against calling in a ready-mix truck. Once a pour is over about a cubic yard, bagging it is almost never the cheaper path; the bag count exists mainly to confirm that a small patch, footing, or post base is one of the rare jobs where it might be worth comparing.
Does finish labor account for a stamped or exposed-aggregate patio the same as a broom driveway?
No. Finish hours per 100 square feet are different for broom, smooth trowel, exposed aggregate, and stamped finishes, and a stamped or decorative finish carries meaningfully more hours than a broom finish of the same size. Pick the preset that matches the job, or replace it with your own crew’s times.
Does this check the mix design, slump, or reinforcement spec?
No. Reinforcement is priced only as a flat cost per square foot for wire mesh or rebar, and there is no mix design, slump, or engineering check built in. Confirm those specifics with your ready-mix plant or an engineer before you pour.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No account and no network requests — the calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your entries are optionally kept in this browser’s local storage as a draft so a reload doesn’t lose them, and nothing is sent to a server. A share link encodes only the job details you see on screen into the web address itself, so copying one and sending it does not upload anything either.
What’s the difference between the total cost and the price shown?
Total cost is concrete, forms, reinforcement, labor, demo, and access fees plus overhead — the walk-away number. The price on top applies your target margin, so it is what you’d need to charge to hit that margin rather than just cover your costs.