The patio
Start from a common job, then replace every rate with numbers from your own crew and invoices. Picking a pattern fills waste and extra-cut labor only if you have not already changed them.
Your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance, and paid time off. A $32/h crew loaded at 30% is $41.60. Quoting the raw wage is how a per-foot special that looked fine turns into a loss after the first dump ticket.
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
- Finished area
- Pavers purchased (with waste)
- Excavation
- Compacted base
- Edge restraint
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Materials
- Haul-away + travel
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit at this price
- Price per finished sq ft
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
Where the cost goes
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. Pattern waste and base depths are common ballpark figures, not an industry standard, a benchmark, or a pavement design — replace them with your own takeoff.
Common questions
Why can't I just quote a paver patio per square foot?
Because the square footage the homeowner measures is the finished face, and three of the biggest costs do not follow it. Pattern waste and cut labor follow the layout. Excavation and haul-away follow the volume under the patio, which is area × base depth. Edge restraint follows the perimeter. A 12 × 16 running-bond patio and 192 sq ft of 45° herringbone on a driveway section have the same face and are not the same job.
How much does the laying pattern actually change the price?
Two ways at once, which is why patterns are worth pricing rather than eyeballing. Waste: running bond starts at 7%, 90° herringbone 10%, 45° herringbone 15%, circular or random 18%. Labor: the same patterns carry factors of 1.0, 1.15, 1.25, and 1.35 on install hours. So moving from running bond to a 45° herringbone buys about 8 points more material and a quarter more labor — and both come out of the same per-foot number a competitor quoted.
Why is a driveway priced differently from a patio of the same size?
Base depth. A patio or walkway starts at 6 in of base; a driveway or parking pad at 10 in. That is not a small adjustment: excavation volume, stone tonnage, and haul-away all scale with depth, so the same face area digs out and hauls off roughly two-thirds more material. These are common starting depths you can change, not a pavement design — soil, frost depth, and load are your call and your jurisdiction's, not this page's.
Does haul-away make much difference?
Enough to decide a bid. Excavated volume comes out as cubic yards from area and base depth, and hauling it costs both trucking and dump fees on top of the excavation hours themselves. Turning haul-away off — spreading spoil on site, when the site allows it — is one of the few levers that moves a paver bid materially without changing what the customer receives. The tool shows the gap rather than assuming either way.
Why is edge restraint priced separately from the pavers?
Because it is bought by the linear foot of perimeter, and perimeter does not track area. A long narrow walkway has far more edge per square foot than a square patio of the same size — a 4 × 40 walkway is 160 sq ft with 88 ft of edge, while a 12 × 16 patio is 192 sq ft with 56. Polymeric sand is counted the same careful way: whole bags, rounded up from your own coverage figure.
Why isn't a 25% margin the same as adding 25% 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 $6,000 cost marked up 25% is $7,500, a 20% margin; a 25% target margin is $8,000. Nothing leaves your browser — no account, no upload, and the optional local counter records only which features were used and the day.