Concrete Patio Cost: The Pour, the Joints and the Finish

Concrete patio cost is a slab plus four lines

Four things separate a patio from a pad. A small load fee. A slope the code names. Joints on a published spacing. A finish with almost no public pricing. Pavers are the other material, and our paver patio cost guide prices that job. This page is poured concrete.

SimplyWise Cost Estimator turns a photo of the yard into an itemized estimate in about 6 seconds.

The ready mix price, and the fee patios trip

We use only prices a supplier publishes and is bound by. Gehring Ready Mix in Columbus, Nebraska posts a card effective January 1, 2026: six bag 3,000 psi mix, $148.00 a yard. Townsend Concrete in Vacaville, California, updated August 22, 2026, lists 4,000 psi at $170. Two plants, two states, so read them as what a real plant charges, not a national average.

A 12 by 16 patio is under three yards at 4 inches. Gehring bills $50.00 a load under four yards. Townsend bills up to $100, on thresholds of three to six yards. Townsend delivery adds $120 to $350. Gehring publishes no delivery fee inside twenty miles, then $3.00 a mile. Townsend also bills a minimum concrete charge, up to five yards by city.

Thickness, base, and the slope

A patio carries furniture, not a truck, so the steel is yours to set. Drainage is not. The 2021 IRC section R401.3 wants the ground to fall 6 inches in the first 10 feet. Its exception covers the patio: where a wall or a lot line blocks that fall, impervious surfaces within 10 feet of the foundation slope at least 2 percent away. That is a quarter inch a foot, so pitch the forms. No trowel fixes it later.

NRMCA CIP 4 adds the base: strip topsoil, compact the fill, slope the subgrade like the slab. No publisher states a national base stone price, so this page prints none.

Control joints decide where the patio cracks

NRMCA CIP 6 puts maximum joint spacing at 24 to 36 times slab thickness. That is about 10 feet on a 4 inch slab, capped at 15 feet.

Same sheet: panels stay square or nearly so, no longer than 1.5 times their width. Grooves run at least a quarter the slab thickness, never under an inch.

CIP 6 also names the isolation joint, separating patios from sidewalks, garage slabs and stairs. A Quikrete 4 inch by 5 foot expansion joint lists at $6.79 on Do it Best. One seller, so single source.

The finish is the real price variable

Broom finish adds no material at all. Sealing is priceable. Do it Best lists a Quikrete gallon at $29.99. EMI Supply lists a Euclid Diamond Clear five gallon pail at $153.93, about $30.79 a gallon. Euclid's data sheet puts new concrete coverage at 300 to 350 square feet a gallon. The second coat runs 350 to 400.

Integral color has one published number. Gehring bills $50.00 a load to wash a colored drum. The pigment is quoted.

Stamped and exposed aggregate are what buyers ask about most, and we cut both. Nobody we read publishes a price. Inventing one off the broom figure is fabrication.

What the labor side pays

In May 2025 cement masons and concrete finishers averaged $28.87 an hour nationally, median $27.41. That is 206,170 workers. Laborers averaged $25.02. Those are wages employers pay, and the survey skips the self employed. Your billed rate sits above them.

Price a concrete patio in four steps

1. Set the footprint and fall

   Length, width, thickness, and fall: 2 percent under the IRC exception.

2. Add waste, then round up

   CIP 31 calls for 4 to 10 percent over plan; short buys a second truck.

3. Ask for the fee line

   Small load, mileage and washout fees are published. They hit small pours.

4. Lay the joints out first

   Ten feet on a 4 inch slab. Panels near square, isolation joints at the house.