How Much to Charge for Fence Installation, Per Foot and Gate

Short answer: How much to charge for fence installation is a per-foot number you calculate, never one you copy. Cost the two things that actually consume money — one bay and one post — then divide the total by the run length. On 184 feet of 6-foot pressure-treated privacy at 8-foot spacing, that is 23 bays and 26 holes. Gates, slope work, utility locates, demolition, and spoil haul-off sit outside the per-foot rate as their own units.

Customers ask for a price per foot, and giving them one is fine. Building your price from one is not. Two back yards can measure the same 184 feet and differ by eight holes, twenty bags of mix, and most of a day, purely because one has more corners and a drive gate in the wrong place. The foot is a way of quoting. The bay and the post are what you are actually selling.

Why is the linear foot the wrong place to start?

Because cost does not accumulate by the foot. It accumulates in discrete events: a hole gets dug, a post gets set, a bay gets built, a gate gets hung.

What changes	Effect on linear feet	Effect on cost
Adding a corner	None	One more post, one more hole, one more bag run
Tightening spacing from 8 ft to 6 ft	None	Roughly seven more posts on 184 feet
Adding a 10 ft drive gate	Ten feet of fence removed	Two 6x6 posts, deeper holes, heavy hardware, a brace, and hours
A 22-inch fall across one run	None	Racking or stepping, and every picket cut to grade
Rock at 18 inches	None	The auger stops and the day changes

Every one of those is invisible in a dollars-per-foot quote, which is why the quote that wins on price is so often the quote that loses on the job. Post spacing and hole geometry are worked out in detail in the fence installation estimate template; this page is about turning them into a number.

What does one bay and one post actually cost?

Price them as two separate assemblies. Here is a 6-foot pressure-treated privacy fence, side-by-side 1x6 dog-ear, three rails, 8-foot maximum spacing.

One bay, 8 feet wide:

Item	Quantity	Rate	Amount
1x6 pickets — 8 ft ÷ 5.5 in actual = 17.5, round up	18	$4.10	$73.80
2x4x8 rails	3	$8.15	$24.45
Ring-shank picket nails, rail screws	1 bay	$3.40	$3.40
Bay material			$101.65

One standard post, 4x4 in a 10-inch by 30-inch hole:

Item	Quantity	Rate	Amount
4x4x8 pressure-treated post	1	$14.20	$14.20
Concrete — 1.15 ft³ net after the post displaces its own volume, at 0.45 ft³ per 60 lb bag	2.6 bags	$5.65	$14.69
Drainage gravel at the hole bottom	1	$0.60	$0.60
Post cap	1	$1.85	$1.85
Post material			$31.34

Two numbers fall out of that immediately. Pickets and rails are $12.71 per linear foot before anyone picks up a shovel, and a post costs about a third of what a bay costs. That second figure is why spacing is a pricing decision and not a habit.

What does an hour of the crew cost?

Time the two operations separately, because they happen on different days and often with different weather.

Operation	Crew hours, two-person crew
Dig, set, plumb, brace, and mix concrete for one standard post	0.62
Dig and set one oversized gate post	0.95
Build one 8 ft bay — rails, pickets, level	0.45
Layout, string lines, verify the line against locate paint	2.4 per job
Cut tops to line, cap, clean up, load spoil	2.8 per job

Layer	Calculation	Per crew hour
Wages plus burden	($27.00 + $20.00) × 1.31	$61.57
Equipment	Auger, mixer, saws, compactor, truck and trailer: $18,600 ÷ 1,700 crew hours	$10.94
Operating cost		$72.51
Overhead	Insurance, phone, software, advertising, licensing, uninvoiced admin: $47,000 ÷ 1,700	$27.65
Fully loaded		$100.16

What do slope and dig conditions do to the hours?

Racking means the rails follow the grade and pickets stay plumb. Stepping means each bay stays level and drops at the post, leaving a triangular gap. Wood racks well; vinyl and welded aluminum panels rack only within a manufacturer’s stated limit and often not at all, which forces stepping and a conversation about the gap.

Fall across a run	What happens	Effect on that run’s labor
Under 6 in	Absorbed in the bottom gap	Baseline
6 to 18 in	Rack wood, step panel systems	Add 10 to 20 percent
18 to 36 in	Step every bay, cut pickets to grade	Add 30 to 50 percent, and get the gap approved in writing
Over 36 in or terraced	Step-downs, taller pickets, sometimes retaining	Walk it before quoting anything

Dig conditions do the same to post hours. An auger hole is four minutes; the same hole through shale, roots, or an old footing is twenty-five with a bar and a shovel. And utility locates are a legal step before digging, not a courtesy — OSHA’s trenching and excavation requirements have underground installations located before any digging starts, and inside the tolerance zone around a mark you hand dig, which can convert half your holes to manual work on a single job. Price that as a conditional hourly line with a stated rate rather than absorbing it.

What never belongs inside the per-foot price?

Five things, always separate, always their own unit.

Line	Unit	Why it must stand alone
Gates	Each, with the hardware named	A walk gate and a drive gate are different builds and different warranty risk
Demolition of existing fence	Linear feet, plus footings extracted separately	A 1974 footing comes out slower than a new post goes in
Disposal	Per load, by material	Treated wood, chain link, and concrete go to three different places
Utility locates and hand digging	Per job, then hourly inside the tolerance zone	Legally required and it changes the digging method
Site restoration	Per job	Spoil from 26 holes has to go somewhere

Gates deserve the most attention because they are where callbacks come from. A 10-foot double drive gate needs 6x6 posts in deeper holes, heavy hinges, a drop rod, a cane bolt, and usually a diagonal cable brace to keep it from sagging in year two. Bundling that into a per-foot rate means the customer who wants two gates pays the same as the one who wants none.

What does the math look like on a real back yard?

A back yard in three runs — 62, 78, and 44 feet — totaling 184 feet, with one 4-foot walk gate and one 10-foot double drive gate. Picketed fence after the gate openings comes to 170 feet, which rounds up to 23 bays once the short bays at run ends are counted. Holes: 22 line and corner posts on 4x4s in 10 × 30 holes, two walk-gate posts on 4x4s in 12 × 36 holes, and two drive-gate posts on 6x6s in 12 × 42 holes — 26 in all.

Material	Quantity	Rate	Amount
Bay assemblies	23	$101.65	$2,337.95
Line and corner posts	22	$31.34	$689.48
Walk-gate posts, 4.7 bags each	2	$43.21	$86.42
Drive-gate posts, 6x6, 4.5 bags each	2	$77.73	$155.46
Walk gate — frame stock, hinges, latch	1	$118.00	$118.00
Drive gate — frame, heavy hinges, drop rod, cane bolt, brace	1	$412.00	$412.00
Stakes, string, blades, gravel, consumables	1	$86.00	$86.00
Material total			$3,885.31

Labor	Crew hours
Layout and line verification	2.4
Set 22 standard posts at 0.62	13.64
Set 4 gate posts at 0.95	3.80
Build 23 bays at 0.45	10.35
Build and hang the walk gate	1.60
Build and hang the drive gate with brace and drop rod	3.40
Cut tops, cap, clean up, haul spoil	2.80
Total	37.99

Cost	Calculation	Amount
Operating	38.0 × $72.51	$2,755.38
Overhead	38.0 × $27.65	$1,050.70
Material		$3,885.31
Spoil haul and dump	1 load	$140.00
Total cost		$7,831.39
Price at 24% margin	$7,831.39 ÷ 0.76	$10,304.46
Quoted	Rounded	$10,300.00

Now pull the gates back out to get an honest per-foot rate. The two gates carry $771.88 in material and 8.8 crew hours, which is $1,653.29 of cost or $2,175.38 of price. Fence-only price is $8,129 across 184 feet — $44.18 per linear foot. That figure is an output of these particular wages, lumber prices, and overhead, not a rate to copy; run the same two assemblies through your own numbers and you will land somewhere else. Whatever comes out, publish it only for straight runs at this height and material, and quote gates separately every time.

How do markup and margin change the per-foot number?

They are different arithmetic on the same cost, and on a fence the gap shows up per foot where you can feel it.

	Amount	Per linear foot
Job cost	$7,831.39	$42.56
Cost plus 24% markup	$9,710.92	$52.78
Cost ÷ 0.76 for a 24% margin	$10,304.46	$56.00
What the markup mistake costs	$593.54	$3.22

Markup is added to cost; margin is taken out of price. Convert with markup = margin ÷ (1 − margin), so a 24 percent margin needs a 31.6 percent markup. Three dollars and change per foot sounds survivable until you count the four thousand feet you install in a season.

Is my per-foot rate in the right neighborhood?

Compare against your own jobs first, using three figures: fence-only dollars per linear foot, crew hours per 100 feet, and material dollars per linear foot. The third one is the early-warning system — when lumber moves, material per foot moves within a week and your published rate does not follow unless you make it.

Published installed fence prices swing enormously by region, by material, and by season, and most quoted ranges quietly assume flat ground, no demolition, and no gates. Use them only to catch a decimal-point error. If your calculated number lands well above local pricing, look at crew hours per post and per bay before touching the rate; if it lands well below, check whether your bay material cost is current and whether the gates are actually paying for themselves.

What do I write down before I leave the site?

Actual holes dug against holes quoted, actual bags of mix used, actual crew hours by phase, and photographs of the locate paint before you dug. That last one has settled more disputes than any contract clause.

Keel keeps that record on the phone that is already in your pocket. Lumber yard and rental receipts get photographed at the counter and read on the device by Apple Intelligence, so the material cost behind your per-foot rate stays current instead of being a number you remembered from spring. The final invoice goes out from the truck with your own numbering, your logo, and a payment link rendered as a QR code the customer scans while the gate is still swinging, and bays, posts, and gates each get their own line rather than collapsing into one per-foot figure — which is the whole point of what to include on an invoice. Trips to the yard and back log as mileage, a deduction fencing crews routinely undercount; what the record has to look like is in IRS mileage log requirements. No account, no bank connection, no cloud, and an App Store privacy label that reads Data Not Collected. Keel is free with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase rather than a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate a price per linear foot for a fence? Cost one bay and one post as separate assemblies, count how many of each the job needs, add the per-job labor for layout and cleanup, then add overhead and margin. Pull the gates and their oversized posts out of the total before dividing by the run length. The result is a per-foot rate that holds for that height, material, and spacing only.

Should gates be included in the per foot fence price? No. A walk gate and a 10-foot double drive gate can differ by several hundred dollars in hardware alone, and drive gates need oversized posts, deeper footings, and a diagonal brace. Price each gate as a unit with the hardware named on the estimate. Bundling them into the per-foot rate makes the customer with no gates subsidize the one with two.

How much concrete does a fence post need? Depends on hole geometry, not on fence length. A 10-inch by 30-inch hole with a 4x4 in it holds about 1.15 cubic feet of concrete once the post displaces its own volume, which is roughly 2.6 bags of 60-pound mix or 1.9 bags of 80-pound. A 12-inch by 42-inch hole with a 6x6 runs about 2.0 cubic feet. Multiply by your hole count and buy accordingly.

How does a sloped yard change fence pricing? It changes labor, not length. A fall of six to eighteen inches across a run adds roughly 10 to 20 percent to that run’s hours through racking or stepping; a fall over eighteen inches means cutting pickets to grade and can add half again. Panel systems that will not rack force stepping and a visible gap, which has to be approved in writing before installation.

Do I have to call for utility locates before quoting a fence? Locates are a legal requirement before digging, and the marks change how you price the digging. Inside the tolerance zone around a marked line you hand dig, which turns a four-minute auger hole into twenty-five minutes of shovel and probe work. Quote the fence with a conditional hourly line for hand digging rather than discovering the marks after the price is signed.

Why is tighter post spacing more expensive if the fence is the same length? Because cost lives in the post, not the foot. Going from 8-foot to 6-foot spacing on 184 feet adds about seven posts, seven holes, roughly eighteen more bags of mix, and the hours to dig, set, brace, and clean up after each one. Present it as a priced option on the estimate so the customer chooses it rather than you absorbing it.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.