Guide / Roofing, Austin, TX

How much should a roof replacement cost in Austin, TX?

Toshikatsu Oga / September 27, 2026

What we mean by public data, and what they cannot say
Labor: the wage, the loading and the hours
Shingles: a floor built from the import and distribution chain
Lines with no public benchmark
The permit line
A worked example: an invented quote next to the public numbers
What to do with these numbers
Questions
Sources

Public data do not give a market price for a roof. They give a floor for shingles, about $82 to $89 per square from Census import prices, Census distribution margins and state DOT markups, and a reference for labor, $43.34 to $59.83 per loaded crew hour from BLS wage statistics for roofers in Austin with the TxDOT loading. Tear-off, underlayment, flashing and overhead have no public benchmark. A quote is not too high or too low because of its total; it is checkable line by line, and only some lines can be checked.

What we mean by public data, and what they cannot say

Every number on this page comes from a government source you can open yourself: wage statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, import values and trade margins from the U.S. Census Bureau, markup rules from state departments of transportation, and the City of Austin's own list of work exempt from permits. None of these sources publishes a price for replacing a roof on a house. They publish the parts a price is made of.

That is why the honest answer to "how much should it cost" is not a single figure. Anyone who gives you one for Austin is either quoting their own price list, averaging quotes they were paid to collect, or guessing. What public data can do is show, for each line of a quote you already have, whether the number is above, inside or below what the parts add up to. That is a smaller claim, and it is one we can prove.

The figures below are the ones our Quote Check prints for a roof in Austin, TX, and they are the same figures published in the open dataset United States Construction Cost Database (USCCDB) v1.0, doi:10.5281/zenodo.22979157, CC BY 4.0.

Labor: the wage, the loading and the hours

The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025 give roofers (SOC 47-2181) in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metropolitan area a mean hourly wage of $24.08 and a 90th percentile wage of $33.24 (BLS OEWS, metropolitan areas). A contractor does not pay only the wage. Payroll taxes, insurance, supervision and profit sit on top of it, and public works contracts say how much on top. The Texas Department of Transportation allows a 25% markup on labor and 55% for insurance and taxes, both on base wages, in Item 9 of its 2024 Standard Specifications (TxDOT Item 9, Articles 9.7.1.1 to 9.7.1.3). Together that is a loading of 1.80.

So a loaded crew hour in Austin is $24.08 x 1.80 = $43.34 at the mean wage and $33.24 x 1.80 = $59.83 at the 90th percentile (BLS OEWS; TxDOT Item 9). A crew of three working three eight-hour days is 72 crew hours, which puts the labor reference at $3,121 to $4,308. If your quote states a crew size and a number of days, you can do this multiplication yourself. If it states only a lump sum for labor, that is the first thing to ask for.

Two cautions. The BLS wage is what roofers employed in the metro area are paid; it is not what a self-employed roofer charges, and it does not include travel to your house. And the TxDOT loading is a public-works rule; a residential contractor may carry more or less overhead. That is why we call this a reference and not a price.

Shingles: a floor built from the import and distribution chain

There is no public retail price list for asphalt shingles. There is, however, a public record of what shingles cost when they enter the country, and public records of the margins added at each step. U.S. imports for consumption under HS 6807.90.0010 (asphalt roofing articles) show a landed duty-paid value of $0.4667 per kilogram for January to July 2026 (Census IMDB 2026-07). The Census Annual Integrated Economic Survey gives roofing wholesalers (NAICS 423330) a gross margin of 28.35% (Census AIES 2024). State DOT force-account rules allow a contractor markup on materials of 15% to 25% (Caltrans 9-1.04C, 15%; FDOT 4-3.2.1, 17.5%; TxDOT 9.7.1.3, 25%).

Chain those together and a kilogram of shingles reaches the homeowner at $0.4667 / (1 - 0.2835) x 1.15 to 1.25 = $0.749 to $0.814. Architectural shingles weigh about 240 pounds per square when the product sheet says so, which is 108.86 kilograms, so one square is about $82 to $89 and 26 squares are $2,120 to $2,304 (Census IMDB; Census AIES; TxDOT).

We call this a floor, not a price, because three things are left out on purpose: freight from the distributor to your street, any brand premium over the import average, and any extra tier of distribution between the importer and the roofer. Each of those raises the real cost. What the floor tells you is that a shingle line far above it needs one of those explanations, and you are entitled to ask which.

Material prices move. The BLS Producer Price Index for construction materials (WPUSI012011) stood at 375.908 in August 2026, up 10.1% on a year earlier (BLS PPI via FRED), so a floor computed from January to July import data is, if anything, on the low side by late 2026. Our report prints the data version it used.

Lines with no public benchmark

Tear-off and disposal, underlayment, flashing, vents, drip edge and ice barrier appear on almost every roofing quote, and no government publishes a reference for them. Landfill tipping fees are public in some counties, dumpster rental is not, and the labor share of a tear-off depends on the roof. We do not invent a number where there is none. The report marks these lines "no public benchmark" and tells you what to ask instead: the square count the tear-off is priced on, the number of layers being removed, and the product names for the accessories so you can look up a retail price yourself.

The same goes for "overhead and profit." Many quotes add 10% to 20% on top of every other line. That is a legitimate way to price a job, but if the labor line is already at or above the loaded rate above, the loading has been counted twice: the TxDOT 25% labor markup and 55% insurance and taxes are exactly the things an overhead line is meant to cover. The report flags this as an overlap, not as an error, and gives you the sentence to ask about it.

The permit line

Inside the Austin city limits, asphalt shingles that replace existing asphalt shingles on one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses not more than three stories are exempt from a building permit, unless the property is in the Wildland-Urban Interface area and 50% or more of the roofing is being replaced (City of Austin, Work Exempt from Building Permits). A permit line on a quote for that work is worth a question: which jurisdiction, and can you see the receipt. Our guide on roof permits in Austin has the full exemption text and the cases where a permit is still needed.

A worked example: an invented quote next to the public numbers

The quote below is invented; the reference figures are real and dated. A roofing quote for a house in ZIP 78745 came to $19,872 for 26 squares of architectural shingles (USCCDB v1.0; the same figures appear in the sample report).

Line	Quoted	Public reference (USCCDB v1.0)	What the report says
Tear-off and disposal	$3,360	none	No public benchmark; ask for squares and layers
Architectural shingles, 26 squares	$4,420	floor $2,120 to $2,304	Above the floor by $2,116; ask which brand, freight and tier explain it
Underlayment, flashing, vents	$1,850	none	No public benchmark; ask for product names
Labor, 72 hours	$6,480	$3,121 to $4,308	Above the reference by $2,172 at the 90th percentile
Permit	$450	often exempt in Austin	Ask which jurisdiction and for the receipt
Overhead and profit 20%	$3,312	overlaps the loaded labor rate	Ask what the 20% covers that the labor line does not

Notice what the table does not say. It does not say what the roof should cost. Two lines are above what the public parts add up to, two lines cannot be checked, one line may not be needed, and one line may be counted twice. That is enough to write four specific questions to the contractor, and a contractor with a good reason for each number will answer them in a minute.

What to do with these numbers

Ask for the quote itemized: crew size and days for labor, squares and product name for shingles, squares and layers for the tear-off, and the permit jurisdiction. A quote that stays a single number cannot be checked, and the Federal Trade Commission's advice is to get several written estimates that describe the work, the materials, the completion date and the price (FTC, How To Avoid a Home Improvement Scam).
Multiply the stated crew hours by $43.34 and by $59.83 (BLS OEWS, TxDOT loading) and compare to the labor line.
Multiply the squares by $82 and by $89 (Census IMDB, Census AIES) and compare to the shingle line, remembering that freight and brand sit on top.
Check whether an overhead line is added to labor that is already loaded.
Get a second and third quote for the same scope, then compare line by line, not total by total.

Or upload the quote and we do the arithmetic, print every source and formula beside every number, and give you the questions in a letter you can forward. We are paid by homeowners only and take no fee from any contractor, so we have no reason to find a difference that is not there and no reason to hide one that is. Check a quote from $39, or run the free Quick Estimate on the same page.

Questions

Is there an average price for a roof replacement in Austin?

Not from public data. Government sources publish wages, import values, margins and permit rules, not finished roof prices. Any single "average" for Austin comes from a private price list or from quotes collected by a party with an interest in the result. Public data can check the parts of a quote you have; they cannot give you a total in advance.

What does a roofer's loaded hourly rate come to in Austin, TX?

About $43.34 at the BLS mean wage and $59.83 at the 90th percentile, using the May 2025 metropolitan wage for roofers ($24.08 and $33.24) and the TxDOT loading of 1.80 (25% labor markup plus 55% insurance and taxes on base wages).

Why is the shingle figure called a floor and not a price?

Because it is built from the import landed value, the wholesale gross margin and a contractor markup, and it leaves out freight to the site, brand premium and any extra distribution tier. Each of those adds cost, so a real shingle line will usually sit above the floor. The floor tells you how far above, and lets you ask why.

Which lines on a roofing quote cannot be checked against public data?

Tear-off and disposal, underlayment, flashing, vents and similar accessories, and overhead and profit. For those the useful move is to get quantities and product names in writing and to check whether overhead is being added to labor that already carries a loading.

Sources

Every figure above links to the public record it comes from. The wage, import, margin and markup figures are the ones our reports use, published as USCCDB v1.0 under CC BY 4.0. Statutes and city pages are quoted as published on September 27, 2026; check the source for changes.

How we work: HORIZON SHIELD is paid by homeowners only. We take no referral fee, listing fee or commission from any contractor, distributor or insurer, so the only way we earn is by finding what is in the quote. Every report prints the source and the formula beside every number, and a sha256 receipt so the contractor can confirm the report was not altered. About the service.