What a Concrete Patio Costs
A poured concrete patio costs $6 to $12 per square foot with a broom finish, installed — so a 12 × 16 ft slab is roughly $1,150 to $2,300. A stamped or coloured finish is $12 to $25. The materials are a small part of it: ready-mix is $125 to $165 a cubic yard and a 4 in slab of that size takes about 2.4 yards, or under $400 of concrete in a job priced in thousands.
A concrete patio is one of the few projects where the material is a minority of the cost. The concrete for a typical 12 × 16 patio runs a few hundred dollars; the finished job runs several thousand, and the gap is labour, forming and site preparation.
Start with the volume, not the area
Concrete is sold by the cubic yard, so the first number is volume, not square footage. A 12 × 16 patio at 4 inches thick is 2.37 cubic yards before waste, or about 2.6 with a 10% allowance.
Thickness drives it linearly. Going from 4 in to 6 in — the right call if a vehicle will ever park on it — is exactly 50% more concrete, and it also pushes most jobs past the point where reinforcement stops being optional.
The short-load fee is the hidden line
Ready-mix suppliers price by the yard but charge a short-load fee below roughly three yards, commonly $50–150. On a 2.6 yard pour that fee can be a fifth of the concrete cost.
Below about one yard, bags win on price. Above it, mixing by hand means moving well over a ton of material and racing the set — every joint where one batch meets a hardened one is a cold joint, which is a structural defect rather than a cosmetic one.
Where the rest of the money goes
Excavation and base preparation: the slab needs 4–6 inches of compacted gravel under it, and that gravel has to be delivered and compacted. Forming: lumber and stakes, plus the time to get them level and square. Finishing: screeding, floating, edging and jointing are time-sensitive and skilled.
Control joints are not optional. Concrete cracks; joints decide where. Cutting them at roughly 24–36 times the slab thickness in feet — every 8–12 ft on a 4 in slab — is what separates a patio with straight joints from one with a random crack across it.
What moves the price most
Access. A pump truck adds materially to the job and is required whenever the mixer cannot reach the forms. A wheelbarrow route of any length adds labour hours to every yard.
Finish. A broom finish is the baseline. Stamped, coloured or exposed-aggregate finishes multiply the finishing labour and add material, and they are the difference between the low and high ends of most quotes.
Typical costs, US, 2026
| Item | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Ready-mix concrete, delivered | $125–$165 per cu yd |
| Short-load fee, under ~3 cu yd | $50–$150 per load |
| Gravel base, delivered | $20–$55 per ton |
| Slab, materials and labour, broom finish | $6–$12 per sq ft |
| Slab, stamped or coloured finish | $12–$25 per sq ft |
Excludes permits, demolition of an existing slab, drainage work, and any structural footing. Regional labour rates move the per-square-foot figures more than anything else on this list.
Ranges as of 2026 and indicative rather than sourced from a price index. Use them to sanity-check a quote, not to replace one — regional labour rates move these figures more than any material choice.
Questions people actually ask
- Is it cheaper to pour it myself?
- On materials, substantially — the concrete is a fraction of a quoted job. On outcome, only if you have poured before. A slab has a working time measured in tens of minutes and no second attempt.
- How thick does a patio need to be?
- 4 inches for foot traffic and furniture. 5–6 inches with reinforcement if a vehicle will ever sit on it. Thickness is cheap relative to redoing the slab.
- Do I need rebar?
- Not for a plain 4 in patio on a well-compacted base; fibre mesh in the mix is common instead. Six inches, vehicle loads or poor subgrade all change that answer.
Sources: American Concrete Institute, Portland Cement Association