You can stay busy all season and still end up broke. In roofing that's not a figure of speech — it's what happens when you price to win instead of pricing to earn. The quote looks clean on paper: materials, labor, round up a little. Then you pay the crew, haul two layers of shingles to the dump, replace the blades you forgot to count, cover insurance and the truck, wait 30 days to collect — and the $8,500 job you "won" nets $900 on a good week.
The fix isn't complicated. It's knowing your numbers cold, then walking one real bid through them so the floor stops being theoretical. That's what this is: the math, then a complete bid — 24 squares, 8:12 pitch, two layers — every line to the final number.
The unit is the square. Know yours cold.
Everything in roofing prices per square — 100 sq ft of roof. For a standard asphalt re-roof, the cost stack per square:
- Materials: $120–$180 (shingles, underlayment, flashing, nails, caps, starters)
- Labor: $80–$150 depending on pitch, crew, and market
- Disposal: $30–$60 on tear-offs (dumpster, dump fees, loading time)
- Miscellaneous: $10–$25 (permits, tarps, blades, drive time)
Call it $240–$415 per square bare-bones, before you've paid yourself or covered a day of overhead. For where that lands as a selling price: full asphalt replacement runs about $500 per square installed in the 2026 side-work rate data — a typical 19-square ranch at $500 is the $9,500 job you see quoted everywhere. Hold that $500 benchmark; the worked bid below will show you exactly when a roof deserves more.
And if your market "expects" full replacement at $350 installed? Run $350 against the cost stack above. That's not a market. That's charity with a nail gun, and the right move is to work a different market or a different trade of customer.
Labor costs more than the check says
A crew member at $22/hour reads as manageable. Workers comp in roofing runs 15–25% of wages — add $4–$6. Then productive time: setup, staging, cleanup, and breaks eat 25–30% of the hours on a normal job. The real cost of one person producing roofing is closer to $38–$40 per hour of billable output. Price labor at the check rate and the margin died before the first shingle moved.
Overhead rides every square too, whether you put it there or not. Fixed costs of $4,000 a month across 60 completed squares is $67 a square just to exist. That number belongs in every bid — not the 25–30% rule-of-thumb somebody's guide suggested, your number, run once and confirmed.
Markup is not margin
If a job costs $6,000 and you want 20% profit, the answer is not $7,200. That's a 20% markup, which is only a 16.7% margin — margin being the share of the selling price you keep. The formula:
Selling price = cost ÷ (1 − desired margin)
$6,000 ÷ 0.80 = $7,500
Across 40 jobs a year, confusing the two quietly leaves $10,000–$15,000 behind. Target 15–20% net; live under 12% and one slow month becomes a crisis.
The bid, start to finish: 24 squares, 8:12, two layers
Say the call is a 1970s two-story: 24 squares measured off the drawing, 8:12 pitch, and two existing shingle layers because somebody roofed over in the nineties. Here's the whole bid, every line.
Materials. 24 squares plus 10% waste for cuts, valleys, and starters is 26.4 — order 27. At $150/square: $4,050.
Base labor. $110/square × 24 = $2,640.
Pitch factor. An 8:12 is steep work — slower movement, harness time, more cuts. Add 15% to labor: +$396.
Second-layer tear-off. Two layers rip roughly 40% slower than one and double the disposal weight. Add $50/square: +$1,200.
Disposal. Dumpster, dump fees, loading: $45/square × 24 = $1,080.
Overhead. $67/square × 24 = $1,608.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Materials (27 sq @ $150) | $4,050 |
| Labor (24 sq @ $110) | $2,640 |
| Steep-pitch factor (+15% labor) | $396 |
| Two-layer tear-off (24 sq @ $50) | $1,200 |
| Disposal (24 sq @ $45) | $1,080 |
| Overhead (24 sq @ $67) | $1,608 |
| Cost floor | $10,974 |
| ÷ 0.80 for 20% margin | $13,717 |
| Quote | $13,700 |
That's $571 a square against the $500 benchmark — and every dollar of the gap is named: pitch and a second layer. This is the whole point of building the bid instead of multiplying a rule of thumb. A $500-flat bidder on this roof hands in $12,000, eats the steep-pitch hours and the double dump runs out of his own margin, and finishes the job having worked for about half of what he thinks he made. You hand in $13,700 and can defend every line of it out loud in the driveway.
Where bids bleed
The same handful of leaks, job after job:
Waste. Standard jobs need 10–15% extra material; hip-and-valley cuts push 20–25%. Order it, and charge for it.
Small jobs. A 10-square repair burns nearly the mobilization of a 30-square replacement — truck loaded, site staged, dump run at the end. Set a minimum job fee off what half a day costs you, and hold it.
Repairs priced cheap. Here's the hill I'll die on: a repair should out-price a replacement per square, and most of this trade has it backwards. A $450 shingle repair or a $600 leak repair carries more diagnostic time, harder integration with aged material, and more callback risk per square than open-field production work. Roofers discount repairs like they're small favors, then wonder why their most failure-prone work is their least profitable. Price repairs above your production rate or stop taking them.
Complexity you didn't template. Put the factors in your estimate template now — steep (7:12–10:12) +15% labor, very steep (11:12+) +30–50%, second layer +$50/square, tight access +$15–$30/square — because bid-pressure day is the wrong day to derive them.
When they say the other guy was cheaper
"I can't speak to his number. I can tell you what mine covers — proper disposal of both layers, insurance protecting your property the whole job, and a labor warranty that means I'm back if anything fails. That's either worth something to you or it isn't."
Then stop talking. You're not obligated to match a number that doesn't cover real costs, and if you chase it down and win, you'll resent the job, cut the corners you swore you wouldn't, and lose the referral anyway. Knowing your floor — $10,974 on the roof above — is how you recognize which jobs to walk from.
Before any bid goes out: materials against the supplier quote, real labor hours at all-in crew cost, complexity factors applied, above your minimum fee. Five minutes. It catches most of the bids that would have cost money to complete.
Ready to run the takeoff, the estimate, and the real profit per job from your phone? Start your free 14-day trial — no card — and there's more for the trade at the roofing contractor hub.
FAQ
How much should a roofer charge per square in 2026?
Full asphalt replacement benchmarks around $500 per square installed — a 19-square roof at $9,500. But that's for standard pitch and a single layer: a 24-square, 8:12, two-layer roof builds out to $13,700, or $571 a square, once pitch labor, tear-off, disposal, and overhead each get their own line.
What does a two-layer tear-off add to a roofing bid?
Roughly $50 per square. Two layers strip about 40% slower than one and double the disposal weight, so on a 24-square roof that's a $1,200 line item — plus a fatter disposal line. Skip it and you're subsidizing the previous owner's decision to roof over.
What's the difference between markup and margin on a roofing job?
Markup adds to cost; margin is the share of the selling price you keep. A 20% markup on $6,000 of cost ($7,200) yields only a 16.7% margin — to truly keep 20%, divide cost by 0.80 and quote $7,500. Confusing them costs a 40-job operation five figures a year.
Should roof repairs cost more or less per square than replacement?
More. Repairs carry higher diagnostic time, trickier integration with aged material, and the most callback risk of anything you do — a $450 shingle repair or $600 leak repair is dense, skilled work, not a discounted favor. Pricing repairs below your production rate is backwards.
