Concrete & Landscaping
A slab, patio, or driveway order is never just one line item — it's cubic yards and bags, base gravel and bedding sand, quantity and cost. These four calculators output the whole shopping list from one set of dimensions.
How a slab order actually comes together
Every concrete order starts the same way: length × width × thickness, converted into cubic yards (divide cubic feet by 27). But the yardage is only the middle of the story. Below the slab you need a compacted base — typically 4 inches of gravel — and at the store you buy concrete in 40, 60, or 80-lb bags unless you're ordering a ready-mix truck. The concrete calculator runs that whole chain: yards with waste applied, an exact bag count per bag size, and the ready-mix versus bagged cost comparison that decides how the concrete arrives.
The crossover point matters more than most first-timers expect. Mixing a 10 × 10 ft × 4 in slab by hand means moving roughly 56 eighty-pound bags — about 2¼ tons through a wheelbarrow — while a ready-mix truck delivers the same 1.23 yards in one pour. Bagged concrete usually wins on jobs under about half a cubic yard (post holes, small pads, steps); trucks win above a full yard, even with a short-load fee, because your back is a line item too.
Thickness is the number to respect. A patio that holds furniture is fine at 4 inches; a driveway that holds vehicles wants 5–6 inches with reinforcement, and going from 4 to 6 inches raises the concrete volume by exactly 50% — which is why the calculator treats thickness as a first-class input rather than a preset.
Patios and paths: what goes underneath
Pavers fail from below, not above. A paver patio is really a three-layer system — compacted gravel base, one inch of bedding sand, then the pavers themselves with polymeric sand swept into the joints — and the base is usually the biggest bulk-material line on the receipt. The paver calculator counts the pavers by size and pattern, then quantifies both layers under them in cubic yards, plus the polymeric sand bags for the joints.
For loose-fill projects — gravel driveways, walkway bases, French drains, decorative rock beds — the math shifts from pieces to weight. Suppliers sell bulk gravel by the cubic yard or the ton, and the conversion depends on the material (crushed stone runs about 1.4 tons per yard; lava rock barely half that). The gravel calculator handles area × depth → yards → tons for the common materials, and compares bulk delivery against bagged pricing so you know when the delivery fee pays for itself.
One trap worth naming: compaction is not waste. Gravel compacts roughly 10–15% when plate-compacted, so a "4-inch compacted base" needs more than 4 loose inches of material. Our calculators size that in — and the waste factors guide explains which percentage applies to which material and why.
Run the quantity first, then price the job
The tools in this category come in pairs on purpose. The quantity tool answers "what do I buy?"; its cost twin answers "what will the whole job run?" using the same dimensions. After sizing a slab in the concrete calculator, the concrete slab cost calculator prices the complete assembly — concrete, base gravel, rebar or mesh, forms, and labor — as low/typical/high ranges you can hand-edit with local quotes.
Every price default on this site is an editable national average with a visible review date (July 2026), and every cost output carries the same disclaimer: estimates, not quotes. The five-step method behind all of it — measure, convert, divide by coverage, add waste, round to retail packaging — is written up in how to estimate materials.