Concrete flatwork cost guide: driveways, patios, slabs

Last updated: September 30, 2026

Concrete flatwork cost on our calculator runs $5.30 to $17.72 a square foot for a patio, $6.96 to $16.43 for a driveway, and $5.32 to $15.61 for a sidewalk or a garage or shop slab. That’s the going rate for our work in 2026. The low end of each range is a plain broom finish. The high end adds a stamped finish, tearing out an old slab, and the other upgrades.

Five things move your price inside those ranges. In the order a crew meets them, they are how thick the slab is and what’s under it, the steel or fiber inside it, the finish on top, whether an old slab comes out, and how many square feet share the setup cost. Four of the five are settled before a truck ever rolls. Everything else is small change. The rest of this page walks through each one and shows what it does to the price.

We’re based in Prague, Oklahoma. The prices here come straight from the same quote calculator that prices your job. Your quote then adds the drive cost, which is our trip out to your site, figured from your address.

What is concrete flatwork?

Flatwork is concrete poured flat and finished on top. Driveways, patios, sidewalks, garage and shop slabs, equipment pads, and walkways are all flatwork. The trade test is short. If you walk on it or park on it, it’s flatwork. If it holds something up, it’s formed concrete. Footings, walls, piers, and the steps in a retaining wall are formed work, priced on different math, and this page doesn’t cover them.

Ready-mix concrete comes by truck under ASTM C94, the standard for how it’s mixed and delivered. The concrete itself is a smaller part of the price than most people expect, and that catches folks off guard. Mostly you’re paying for grading, forms, placing, finishing, and a crew’s full attention on a pour that can’t stop once it starts. If the forms aren’t ready when the truck shows up, the concrete won’t wait politely in the drum.

These are the common jobs, from a 4-inch sidewalk to a 6-inch equipment pad:

Sidewalks and garage or shop slabs are priced as one general slab pour. That price is for a 4-inch slab, so a thicker slab costs more. Driveways run 4 to 5 inches, and our driveway price is built on a 5-inch slab over a rock base. A 6-inch pad is priced per job, because the depth and the steel depend on what will sit on it. These per-foot ranges fit a mid-size job. A small pour runs higher per foot, for the reason in the small-job section below.

How thick should the slab be, and what goes under it?

Under ACI 332, the concrete code for homes, 4 inches is the baseline for walkways and patios. Driveways that carry cars and pads that hold equipment earn the extra inch or two. Going from 4 inches to 5 or 6 takes 25 to 50 percent more concrete for every square foot, so we price that extra depth per job, based on what the slab has to carry.

What’s under the slab matters just as much. On a driveway, a 4-inch rock base runs $1.20 a square foot on our calculator. If dirt has to be cut, hauled off, or brought in, we price that per job after we see the site. This is where the urge to save shows up, and it’s the worst place on the whole job to give in to it. A slab is a lid. Skip the compaction, which means packing the dirt down tight, or skip the drainage, and the lid follows the dirt down. That usually happens in the second or third year, and no finish work on top will change it.

When one patio bid comes in cheaper per foot than another, the two are almost never the same job. Ask both bidders how deep the rock base goes and how many passes the plate compactor, the dirt-packing machine, makes. If a bidder can’t answer, that’s often where the lower price came from.

Thickness is also the one thing nobody can fix later. A sealer can be redone. A crack can be cut open and filled. A 4-inch pad under a skid steer is a tear-out job with a new pour behind it. Buy the inch now.

What does reinforcement add?

Welded wire mesh is the usual pick for patios and light driveways. It adds $0.63 a square foot on our calculator. Mesh holds shrinkage cracks tight once it’s lifted on small stands, called chairs, up into the middle of the slab. Left lying on the dirt where the crew dropped it, it does nothing at all.

Rebar is the answer for driveways under heavy trucks, equipment pads, and poor soil. There the steel has to keep the slab sections level with each other, not just hold cracks tight. A grid of #4 rebar on 18-inch centers adds $2.12 a square foot. A lighter #3 grid is priced per job.

Fiber is plastic or steel strands mixed right into the concrete at the plant, under ASTM C94. Fine plastic fiber adds $0.32 a square foot, and heavier structural fiber adds $0.72. It controls the fine shrinkage cracks that form while the slab cures. It’s cheap, and it works on exactly the problem it’s meant for. It doesn’t replace a steel grid, though. A bid that swaps in fiber where rebar belongs is quietly a different slab than the one next to it.

Plenty of pours use fiber and mesh together, with fiber for fine surface cracks and mesh for the bigger ones. On a patio that pair is usually the right call, so ask for it on your quote. Each of these prices goes on top of the slab price, and the ranges at the top of this page already count them.

How much does the finish change the price?

The finish is the biggest price swing you control on a flatwork quote. The slab under every finish costs the same to pour.

A broom finish is the low end of every range on this page. There’s no color, no mats, and no washing. The finisher drags a stiff broom across the smoothed concrete to leave lines that give you grip, and the work is done.

Exposed aggregate adds $1.60 a square foot on a patio and $1.40 on a driveway. The crew washes the top layer of cement paste off at just the right hour, not an hour later, to show the stone underneath. Then it gets sealed. That’s an added step, an added material, and a narrow window to hit.

Stamped concrete adds $3.93 a square foot over broom. It’s the most hands-on finish in flatwork, with mats, a release agent, color, and a crew racing the concrete as it sets. Budget a reseal every two to three years, because on stamped work the sealer is the wear layer that carries the color.

A 600-square-foot patio runs $3,300 to $11,050 before the drive cost. A plain broom finish sits at the low end of that, and a stamped finish with the other upgrades sits near the top. It’s the same slab underneath, the same dirt work, and the same trucks. The patio cost guide goes deeper on that choice.

Tearing out the old slab

Tearing out old concrete adds $2.30 a square foot on our calculator, before the new pour even starts. The crew breaks the slab up, hauls it to a dump or recycling yard, and pays a fee by the ton to drop it off. A thick slab or one with steel inside costs more to break out, because the steel has to be cut as the concrete comes apart. A site too tight for a skid steer or a dump trailer costs more too. We price those after we see them.

Access changes the cost of the pour too, not just the tear-out. A backyard patio behind a 6-foot gate can cost more to pour than a bigger driveway at the curb. Nothing about the concrete changed. The difference is whether it comes down a chute, or by wheelbarrow and pump one load at a time, with the clock running on every yard.

Why does a small job cost more per foot?

Setup is a fixed cost. It doesn’t care how big the pour is. The crew shows up and sets the forms, the finishing tools come out either way, and the ready-mix truck brings a minimum load whether the job needs all of it or not. On top of that, the drive cost is one charge for the trip, big job or small.

Our calculator shows the effect. A 200-square-foot patio runs $1,200 to $4,100 before the drive cost, and a 1,200-square-foot patio runs $6,400 to $21,500. That’s six times the size but not six times the price, because the same setup is spread six times further.

That math is worth using. If a patio this year and a walkway next spring are both on your list, pouring them on one trip is usually the cheaper path. It’s fair to ask any crew to price it both ways.

Rural pours and the price of ready-mix

Ready-mix is built on portland cement under ASTM C150, the standard for the cement itself. It costs more where the rock has to be hauled a long way or the batch plants are few and far apart. That’s why pours out in the country can cost more than pours in town, before anybody looks at the design.

Getting your own number

Five facts price a flatwork pour: square footage, thickness, reinforcement, finish, and whether an old slab comes out first. The quote tool asks for all five. Your estimate comes back with the slab and the finish as separate lines, so you can see which one is really driving the price. To get your own number, start with the slab, add the options you pick, and let the tool add the drive cost for your address.

The work itself answers to published standards, not opinion. ACI 117 sets how flat and level the slab has to be. ACI 302.1 covers how floors and slabs get built. ASTM C143 is the slump test, a quick check at the truck of how stiff or soupy the mix is. Ask any bidder which of those they hold themselves to. The answer tells you a lot for one question.

Our flatwork workmanship goes out under Slab Boss. Inside slabs that will be polished later get poured under Pour-4-Polish. There, one specification governs both the pour and the finish, so the surface comes out clean instead of fighting the grinder.

For the build side of all this, step by step, read the concrete flatwork guide. For pricing on a certain kind of pour, start with the concrete cost overview, then the driveway cost guide or the slab cost guide that fits your project.