How Much Does a Driveway Cost? (2026)

Updated September 2026

A new driveway costs $7–$15 per square foot installed for asphalt or $9.86–$12.11/sqft for concrete — on whole-job terms, about $5,000+ for a ~600-sqft asphalt drive (NerdWallet: “a little over $5,000 on average”) versus just under $6,500 for concrete. The budget path is gravel at $600–$1,800 per job; the premium path is pavers ($5.35–$43.35/sqft — with an honesty flag below) or stamped concrete at $10–$15/sqft. Maintenance is its own layer: sealing $355–$600 per job, resurfacing $3–$7/sqft, repair $3–$25/sqft. Prefer numbers sized to your inputs? The driveway cost calculator runs the same bands against your area.

Cost by material, per square foot and per job

Every band verbatim from the dataset, unit shown per source:

Asphalt: the value install

Asphalt is the most-searched driveway material for a reason the numbers show: $7–$13/sqft new, $8–$15 as a replacement (Angi [2026 Data], union $7–$15). Replacement runs about a dollar more per foot because demo and haul-away sit underneath (removal: $2–$6/sqft, single-source row). NerdWallet's split shows labor at $5–$7/sqft with materials on top — and its whole-job anchor is the useful one: a ~600-sqft asphalt drive runs “a little over $5,000 on average.” Note the dataset flag: Angi's figures are SERP-captured (Cloudflare-walled live) — re-verified at build.

Concrete: the durable standard, two finish tiers

Concrete's live number comes from Homewyse's September 2026 calculator: $9.86–$12.11/sqft, phrased “starts at” — the low end is a floor, not a quote. The dataset honestly records an in-cycle movement flag: Homewyse's own May 2026 capture read $9.59–$11.78, roughly a +2.8% shift between reads — both recorded, neither averaged away. Whole-job, NerdWallet books concrete at “just under $6,500” versus ~$5,000 asphalt; a residential SERP capture spans $4,000–$10,000 for standard pours.

Stamped/decorative concrete is a finish tier, not a competitor: $10–$15/sqft (TX guide, SERP-captured) sits atop the Homewyse basic-pour band — same driveway, priced by finish. The dataset keeps the rows separate and never averages them.

Gravel: the budget path that scales with length

Gravel is priced per job, not per square foot, because it scales with driveway length: ~$600 for a single car, $1,500 the two-car national average, $2,000 for three cars (LawnStarter, live). The honest extremes: $300 for a very small single and $60,000 for very large properties — the dataset records the $60,000 figure but excludes it from every headline band, because at 33× the typical top it's an estate-scale outlier, not a residential quote.

Pavers: the honest premium

TheSpruce's paver band runs $5.35–$43.35/sqft — but that span covers patio-grade basics through premium stone. Driveway-grade pavers sit mid-to-high in it, and the dataset's $14 “typical” is an explicit assumption pending human review — not a published figure. The honest statement: driveway-grade paver pricing needs a dedicated source before this band can be quoted tighter; treat $5.35 as the patio-grade floor and $43.35 as premium stone, and get a real quote between them.

Sealing, resurfacing, repair: the maintenance layer

The dataset's repair midpoint ($9/sqft) and the pavers midpoint are the two assumptions pending human review — everything else in this table is a published band.

Size math: what 400–800 square feet actually costs

Worked arithmetic on the cited rates (labeled as such — this is multiplication, not new data). At the common range for a residential drive:

• 400 sqft: asphalt $2,800–$6,000 (typ ~$4,000); concrete $3,944–$4,844 (typ ~$4,396).
• 600 sqft: asphalt $4,200–$9,000 (typ ~$6,000 — the NerdWallet “a little over $5,000” whole-job anchor sits inside it); concrete $5,916–$7,266 (typ ~$6,594 — near the “just under $6,500” anchor).
• 800 sqft: asphalt $5,600–$12,000 (typ ~$8,000); concrete $7,888–$9,688 (typ ~$8,792).

Gravel at the same sizes reads per job: $600–$1,800 typical regardless, with the size tiers ($600 single / $1,500 two-car / $2,000 three-car) doing the scaling.

Resurfacing vs replacement

Resurfacing runs $3–$7/sqft — roughly 40–60% cheaper than replacement — but only when the existing base is sound. The band's own source (an asphalt-overlay guide) is explicit that this is an overlay job: the old surface stays, the new layer bonds to it. A cracked or sunken slab disqualifies the shortcut, and full replacement then carries the demo line: removal runs $2–$6/sqft (single-source dataset row, flagged) underneath the new install's per-foot band. On a 600-sqft drive, the demo line item alone spans $1,200–$3,600.

Sealing cost and cadence

Sealcoating an asphalt driveway runs $355–$600 per job (national average $468), or $0.88–$2.10/sqft by sealer type and surface condition (Fixr live; trade pricing at $0.75–$2.00/sqft corroborates the band). [GATED on k5dB1qQDP4kC: re-seal cadence claims held — the dataset records the recurring-maintenance keyword (3,600/mo) but no publisher cadence figure; the convention flag stays until the context facts land.]

Repair or replace?

Repair runs $3–$25/sqft (NerdWallet, severity-dependent — the dataset's $9 midpoint is an assumption pending review, so the spread is what's honest). The decision line the bands draw: crack-filling and patching sit at the low end and defer the big job; when damage is structural (sunken slabs, failed base, alligatoring across the drive), repair spend stops being incremental and the replacement math takes over — new install $7–$15/sqft plus demo $2–$6/sqft. Asphalt patch pricing was not captured this pass and is flagged single-source in the dataset.

DIY or hire a pro?

[GATED on k5dB1qQDP4kC: this section is held open — the dataset carries no DIY-boundary facts, and the cluster rule is that no boundary guidance is drafted from assumption. Placeholder until the context facts land.]

When to schedule the work

The cluster is spring-summer seasonal — that much is demand data (the GO scoring records freeze-zone demand dropping sharply off-season, with asphalt keyword volume peaking May–Jul). [GATED on k5dB1qQDP4kC: specific scheduling claims (e.g. a named −60–80% freeze-zone figure as a pricing/availability effect) are held — the seasonality benchmark is scoring-doc demand data, not a dataset price row, and the context-facts file has not landed.]

FAQ

Sources

Every figure comes from the driveway cost dataset (9 products / 38 price points / 7 sources / 6 flags, retrieved 2026-09-26, merge 685eec3/99ab8ec):

• NerdWallet — Asphalt vs. Concrete Driveway Cost (2026) — www.nerdwallet.com/home-ownership/home-improvement/learn/asp (fetched live)
• Homewyse — Cost to Install Concrete Driveway (Sept 2026 calculator) — homewyse.com/services/cost_to_install_concrete_driveway.html (fetched live)
• LawnStarter — How Much Does a Gravel Driveway Cost — lawnstarter.com/blog/cost/gravel-driveway-price/ (fetched live)
• Fixr — Cost to Seal Asphalt Driveway — www.fixr.com/costs/asphalt-driveway (fetched live; page dated Jan 31, 2025 — staleness flagged)
• Angi — asphalt driveway cost [2026 Data] — www.angi.com/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-install-asphalt- (SERP-captured via GO scoring; re-verify at build)
• SERP-captured guides (TheSpruce pavers; NJ asphalt overlay; TX stamped concrete; pavecon trade pricing; samtheconcreteman residential pours) — www.thespruce.com/new-driveway-cost-8601273 (search-served; re-verify at build)

Estimate only — get local written quotes. Bands are per-source, never averaged: in-cycle Homewyse movement, the pavers and repair-midpoint assumptions, single-source rows, and the gravel outlier are carried as the dataset flags them. Hub: driveway installation & replacement costs; calculator: driveway cost calculator. Related exterior trades: garage doors (the driveway ends at the garage door) and roof replacement for the exterior envelope above it.