PourGaugeHow much concrete you actually need, and what to mix into it.

Cost

What a pour actually costs where you live, built from published trade pay rather than a national average.

A concrete price is two numbers that behave completely differently, and a national average hides both.

Material barely moves. Labour moves a lot.

Ready-mix is a commodity delivered from a local plant. Its price varies with haul distance and mix design, and that variation is modest across the country.

Labour is a wage, and wages are regional. Published trade pay for concrete finishers differs by more than a factor of two between the lowest and highest states — and on a typical residential slab, labour and finishing is the larger half of the bill.

That is why these pages are built state by state from published trade pay rather than by quoting one national figure with a range wide enough to be useless.

Line Scales with Regional spread
Ready-mix Volume (yd³) Modest
Placing and finishing Area (ft²) Large
Reinforcement Area Modest
Sub-base and forming Perimeter and area Moderate
Pump or wheelbarrow access Site, not size All or nothing

Volume is the one you can check yourself

yd³ = length(ft) × width(ft) × thickness(ft) ÷ 27

A 20 × 20 slab at 4 inches is 20 × 20 × 0.333 ÷ 27 = 4.9 yd³. Order 5.5 — sub-grade is never perfectly flat, and running short mid-pour costs far more than the extra half yard.

What turns an estimate wrong

Access. A truck that can back to the forms and a truck that needs a pump are the same concrete and a different job, and pumping is a fixed cost that lands hardest on small pours.

Thickness is the other one. Going 4 to 6 inches adds half the concrete again, and it is a decision made by the load, not the budget.

2 articles

How much does a 400 sq ft concrete slab cost in Federal Way, WA?

A poured concrete slab in Federal Way, WA
$3,202
400 ft² of slab · typical range $1,971 – $5,420
Typical total$8.01 per ft² of slab$3,202
Range you should see in bidsthree bids on the same scope normally land inside this$1,971 – $5,420
Labor portion50% of the job — this is the part that moves by city$1,601
Material portion50% — bought at national prices$1,601
Cement Masons and Concrete Finishers pay near Federal Wayabout $42/hr · Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA metro$87,880/yr
U.S. mean for the same tradeSOC 47-2051$60,050/yr
Versus the national pricetrade pay here runs +46.3% against the U.S. mean+$602

Notes

  • Where the number comes from. The national price for a poured concrete slab is $6.50 per ft² of slab — poured slab pricing published for 2026, $4–$11 per ft² for a 4-inch slab on grade. Labor is about 50% of that. Cement Masons and Concrete Finishers near Federal Way, WA average $87,880 a year against a U.S. mean of $60,050 — a factor of 1.463 — so the labor half is scaled by that and the material half is not. Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA metro area, SOC 47-2051.
  • Why the city matters, not just the state. Trade pay moves inside a state as much as it does between states. Crews do not commute across a state to bid a job, and materials ship at national prices either way — so a metro wage is the honest input here and a state average quietly rounds four different cities into one number.
  • What is in the price: excavation to grade, a compacted gravel base, forms, wire mesh or fibre, the concrete itself, placing, screeding, a broom or trowel finish, and labor.
  • What is not: thickened edges for a load-bearing wall, a vapour barrier under a heated slab, rebar mats where an engineer calls for them, saw-cut control joints past the standard spacing, and any grading or drainage work around the pour. These are the lines that turn a $3,202 quote into a $4,003 invoice, so ask about each one before signing.
  • Use this as a bid check, not a quote. It prices an average job in average condition. Difficult access, the state of what is being replaced, the season, and a crew booked out three months all move the real number, and none of them are in a per-unit average.

Open the full page for this calculation →

Concrete slab cost by city

1,494 calculations · browse all

Concrete slab cost by state

153 calculations · browse all