A starting job
Pick a common call to fill the squares, panel, tear-off, and trim. Changing a kit never overwrites hours or material costs you have already typed.
The roof
Length and width are the building plan. Pitch turns that into roof squares. These are starting points, not a code opinion.
Hours and counts
Squares, panel squares, and tear-off start from the plan and pitch. Panel hours apply to the wasted squares. Change them when the site disagrees.
Materials and your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance, and paid time off. A square special written on the roof never sees it — or the panel type.
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 homeowner — 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
- Plan / roof
- Squares / panel squares
- Tear-off
- Trim
- Panel share of direct
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Materials
- Travel, seamer, extras
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit
- Price per square
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
A bid link carries your own rates — wage, burden, overhead, and target margin — so the page reopens exactly as you left it. Send it to yourself or your crew. The numbers ride after the #, which is never sent to a server, so copying a link uploads nothing. The customer should get the price, not the link.
Where the hours go
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. The starting pitches, waste, hours, and material rates are common ballpark figures, not a building-code opinion, a permit, a warranty, or an engineering stamp. Time your own crews and replace them.
Common questions
Why can a competitor advertise $950 a square for a metal roof?
Usually because the special is written around one specific job, and that job is a preset here: a 40 × 30 ranch at 4/12, exposed-fastener 5V panels laid straight over the existing shingles, one storey, no valleys, no snow guards. It really does price low. What the per-square number cannot see is panel type, pitch, tear-off, stories, trim lineal feet, ice-and-water, and snow guards. Price your actual roof beside the special and the gap becomes a list of line items you can show the homeowner instead of an argument about who is honest.
How is standing seam different from exposed fastener in the price?
They are different products and different labor. Exposed-fastener panels (5V, R-panel, corrugated) screw through the face and go on fastest. Snap-lock standing seam costs more in panel and takes longer. Mechanical-lock standing seam is the most of both — it needs a seamer run over every seam, which is time nothing in a per-square number accounts for. Choosing the panel here changes material and hours together, because in the field they never move separately.
Does pitch change the price the same way it does on a shingle roof?
The geometry is the same — more pitch, more surface for the same footprint, and slower work on it — but the exposure is worse on metal, because a steeper roof usually also means more valley and more trim, and both are priced by the lineal foot here rather than by the square. That is the practical difference: on shingles a steep roof is mostly more squares; on metal it is more squares and a longer cut list.
Is it cheaper to lay metal over the existing shingles?
On the bid, yes, and the calculator will show you exactly how much: an overlay skips tear-off labor and the disposal that goes with it. Whether it is allowed is a separate question this tool does not answer — layer limits, deck condition, and underlayment requirements are set by your jurisdiction and the panel manufacturer, and nothing here is a code opinion, a permit, or a warranty determination. Price both and take the decision to the inspector, not to the spreadsheet.
Why are ridge, hip, valley, rake, and eave entered separately?
Because trim is bought and installed by the lineal foot, and a roof with the same square count can have wildly different trim runs. A simple gable has ridge, rake, and eave and nothing else; a hip roof with two valleys and a dormer has all five, and the cut, flash, and seal time is where a metal job's hours actually go. Boots and snow guards are counted per unit for the same reason.
Why isn't a 20% margin the same as adding 20% to my cost?
Margin here is a share of the final price — price = job cost ÷ (1 − margin) — which is how the quote reads to the homeowner and how your books read it. Overhead is a separate markup on direct cost, applied before margin and never to itself or to profit. A $22,000 cost marked up 20% is $26,400, a 16.7% margin; a 20% target margin is $27,500. Everything stays in this browser — no account, no upload, and the optional local counter records only which features were used and the day.