Metal roof cost by panel type

The three systems and what they cost

Metal roofing spans $8.25 to $22.25 a square foot installed, and the panel system — how the panel is held down and how the seam is closed — decides where inside that band you land. The metal itself is a second-order question.

Price your own square count on the metal cost calculator, which prices the panels, the trim package and the tear-off as separate lines.

Steel, aluminium, copper and zinc

Almost every residential metal roof in the United States is coated steel, usually 24 or 26 gauge — 24 being the heavier of the two. Aluminium costs more and is chosen within a few miles of salt water, where it does not rust at cut edges. Copper and zinc are architectural metals with architectural prices and hundred-year lives; they turn up on bay roofs, porch roofs and historic work rather than whole houses.

The lines a metal bid forgets

Metal is a system, not a covering, and the parts that are not panels are where bids diverge. Ridge and hip caps with the right closures. Eave and rake trim. Valley metal, which on metal roofs must be wide enough that panel ends do not sit in the water. Wall flashing at every abutment. Clips and the specified fasteners — a metal roof screwed down with the wrong fastener is a warranty problem waiting for its first hot summer.

Cost over a sixty-year roof

A metal roof costs roughly twice an architectural asphalt roof and lasts roughly two and a half to three times as long. Over sixty years the asphalt house buys two or three roofs and pays two or three tear-offs; the metal house buys one and repaints or re-fastens once. The arithmetic favours metal on a long horizon and asphalt on a short one — the side-by-side comparison runs it properly, and the standing seam guide covers the system most people mean when they say metal roof.