Termite treatment cost dataset

Method against species

The expensive one is not the effective one. A soil barrier stops termites coming up out of the ground, which is nothing to a drywood colony that lives inside a beam and never touches soil. Fumigation reaches every void on the day and leaves no residue, so a subterranean colony living outside the house walks back in the week after. ⚠️ EPA, Termites: how to identify and control them (retrieved 2026-08-25) puts the native subterranean termite as the commonest form in most of the United States, and names soil barriers and baits as its two usual treatments — so the $5,813 option on this table is the wrong one for most American houses.

The linear foot, and the bond

⚠️ Two structural decisions in this dataset, and both explain why quotes seem uncomparable. Barrier work is priced by the linear foot of foundation, so two houses with the same floor area and different shapes differ by $630; and concrete next to the foundation has to be drilled and injected rather than trenched, which is what makes a slab dearer than a crawl space. Second, the renewal: the treatment alone is $1,938 and ten years of it is $4,313. That also swaps the methods over: a bait system installs cheaper and costs $5,598 over ten years against $4,313 for a barrier, because an unmonitored station does nothing and somebody has to keep opening them. An earlier version of this model priced both renewals identically, which understated bait — corrected with a separate monitoring line.

Why the product is not on a shelf

⚠️ People ask what smell termites hate, and the answer is a regulation rather than an opinion. Termiticides used for barrier treatment carry directions for use that are part of their federal registration — 40 CFR 156, Labeling requirements for pesticides and devices (read 2026-08-25) — and that part sets out what a label must carry, including the directions for use and the use classification, with the “Restricted Use Pesticide” statement required on the front panel where it applies. A restricted-use classification limits application to a certified applicator or somebody working under one. So the hardware store version is not a weaker version of the professional product: it is a different product, because the other one cannot legally be sold to you. That is also why the labour in this dataset is priced at pest control worker rates rather than at general labourer rates — it is a licensed trade.

Line items

73% of the reference total comes from estimated rather than official figures — there is no federal price series for a gallon of termiticide. The reference job is a soil barrier against subterranean termites on a 180-foot perimeter with a crawl space, 40 feet of it concrete to drill, one attached porch and no bond renewal counted: 13 trade hours at $10.76 a linear foot. Methods that are not selected sit at zero quantity, so the table below is all four rather than one job.

The reasoning behind each figure

Inspection and graphing the structure before treatingestimated, ±57%

• A drawing of the building with the conducive conditions, the entry points and the treatment marked on it. Every legitimate treatment starts here, and the drawing is what a warranty is written against.
• ⚠️ Frequently waived or folded into the treatment price by companies that sell treatment, which is exactly why our termite inspection page prices it separately: a survey that is free because it comes with a quote is a sales visit, and it is not the same product as a signed report.

Termiticide for the treated zoneestimated, ±47%

• ⚠️ Priced by the LINEAR FOOT of foundation, which is the unit this trade actually works in and the reason two quotes on the same house can differ so much. A long narrow house has far more perimeter than a square one of the same floor area, and anybody quoting from square footage alone is guessing.
• To estimate yours: pace the outside of the house and add up the sides, including any attached garage and any porch that sits on its own foundation. A 2,000 square foot single-storey house is usually somewhere near 180 linear feet.
• Termiticides used for barrier treatments must be specifically labelled for that use, and the label is not advice — 40 CFR 156 makes the directions for use part of the registration. Many are Restricted Use Pesticides, which is why the product a professional applies is not sold to the public.

Trench, treat and backfill — labour

• One hour per 22 linear feet of trench, plus two hours of set-up and mixing. A continuous treated zone means a continuous trench: a gap is a door, and the commonest reason a barrier fails is that somebody skipped the awkward six feet behind the air conditioner.
• Rate from BLS wage data for pest control workers rather than for labourers. ⚠️ That distinction is deliberate: applying a restricted-use termiticide requires a certified applicator, which is a licensed trade rather than a pair of hands.

Drill and inject through concreteestimated, ±49%

• Where the ground next to the foundation is a slab, a patio, a driveway or a garage floor, the treated zone has to go underneath it: holes about a foot apart, injected, then plugged.
• ⚠️ This is the line that makes a slab house dearer than a crawl space, and it is the one most often missing from a phone quote, because whoever gave it has not seen how much of your perimeter is concrete. Count the patio and the driveway before you compare two prices.

Drilling — labour

• One hour per 14 linear feet drilled, plugged and made good. Slower than trenching because every hole is a hole in somebody’s concrete and it has to be closed properly.

Bait stations, supplied and installedestimated, ±46%

• Stations set into the ground around the house at roughly ten-foot spacing, so the count follows the perimeter rather than the floor area.
• The point of a bait system is that the foragers carry the active ingredient back, so the colony is the target rather than the boundary. It is slower to work than a barrier and it does not create a protected zone on day one.

Install and commission the bait system — labour

• Three hours of set-up plus one hour per twelve stations, mapped and recorded so the monitoring visits know where they are.
• ⚠️ A bait system that nobody comes back to monitor is a row of plastic tubes in the garden. The annual figure below is not an upsell on this method: it is the method.

Local treatment of the infested timbersestimated, ±58%

• Drilling and injecting each infested member, or treating it with heat or cold. Priced per treatment area rather than per house, because that is the whole idea of it.
• ⚠️ It is the right answer for one visible gallery in one beam and the wrong one for a house with pellets in three rooms — and the honest difficulty is that nobody can be certain which of those they have. A local treatment that misses a second colony has bought you nothing except time.

Local treatment — labour

• Three and a half hours per treatment area: finding the extent of the gallery is most of it, and it is done by sounding and probing rather than by looking.

Fumigant, tarpaulins and sealingestimated, ±49%

• ⚠️ Priced by the cubic foot under the tent, not by floor area — which is why a house with high ceilings or a second storey costs disproportionately more than its square footage suggests.
• The dose and the exposure period are set by the fumigant label, which is a legal document rather than a guideline: 40 CFR 156 makes the directions for use part of the product’s registration.

Tent, fumigate, aerate and clear — labour

• Modelled at eight hours to tent and seal, plus four to aerate and clear, plus an hour per storey for the extra height. It runs over about three days end to end.
• ⚠️ The clearance reading at the end is the step that matters and the one to ask about by name: nobody goes back in until the concentration measured inside is below the re-entry level on the label.

Preparing the house and moving out for three daysestimated, ±55%

• ⚠️ The cost of a fumigation that never appears in the quote, because it is not the company’s cost — it is yours. Everybody and every pet leaves for two or three nights, and food, medicines and anything else that is not sealed has to be double-bagged in special bags or taken out.
• Modelled as somewhere to stay and the bagging materials. Plants near the house get watered and sometimes come out; a roof that a tent has to be dragged over occasionally needs a repair afterwards, which is on our roof repair page rather than this one.

Working in the crawl spaceestimated, ±55%

• Protective clothing, lighting, a respirator where the label calls for one, and the time lost to working on your back in eighteen inches of clearance.
• ⚠️ A crawl space is a confined space, and OSHA treats it as one: restricted entry and exit, poor ventilation, and the possibility of something in the air. It is the part of this job with a real safety dimension, and a technician who goes under a house alone with no ventilation and no second person is doing it wrong.

Attached porches, garages and outbuildingsestimated, ±56%

• Each one is its own perimeter with its own soil contact, and each one is a way in that the main treatment does not cover. A detached garage with a slab floor is a separate small job.
• ⚠️ The commonest gap in a cheap quote: the house is treated and the porch it is attached to is not, which leaves the termites a covered bridge.

Extra treatment for a Formosan colonyestimated, ±51%

• ⚠️ The one place where the species genuinely changes the price rather than only the choice of method. A Formosan colony is far larger than a native subterranean one and it can build carton nests above ground inside a wall, so it does not always depend on soil contact — which means a standard barrier can be intact and the colony can still be alive inside the structure.
• Modelled as a heavier application rate along the same perimeter plus the supplementary monitoring a competent contractor adds. It is not an upsell: it is the difference between treating the boundary and treating a colony that does not always need to cross it.

Deeper trench down to a basement footingestimated, ±52%

• ⚠️ Added because a basement wall is not a crawl space wall. The treated zone has to reach the footing, so the trench goes considerably deeper — more termiticide per linear foot to fill the same length, and more time in the ground.
• It is also why a basement sits between a crawl space and a slab on this page rather than being the cheap option people expect: less concrete to drill than a slab, more depth to reach than a crawl space.

Deeper trench — labour

• One extra hour per 40 linear feet of deep trench, on top of the ordinary trenching line.

First year of the warranty, with retreatment coverestimated, ±52%

• The re-inspection and the retreatment guarantee for the first year, which is how this trade sells the work and how it is normally bundled into the headline price.
• ⚠️ Two warranties look identical and are not. A **retreatment** warranty pays to treat again if termites come back. A **repair** warranty also pays for the damage they do in the meantime, and it costs meaningfully more. Ask which one is being quoted, and ask what voids it — a homeowner who alters the treated soil usually does.

Annual renewal of the bondestimated, ±52%

• ⚠️ The line that turns an advertised price into a real one. This work is sold as a bond with an annual renewal, and the figure people quote each other is year one.
• On a bait system it is not optional in any meaningful sense — an unmonitored bait station does nothing. On a barrier treatment it buys the annual inspection and the guarantee, and a lapsed bond is normally very expensive to restart.

Extra monitoring premium on a bait systemestimated, ±47%

• ⚠️ Charged on top of the ordinary bond renewal, because monitoring a bait system is not the same job as re-inspecting a barrier: somebody physically opens every station, reads it and refills what has been taken. It is why bait monitoring is dearer per year than a barrier bond, which the first version of this model missed.
• It is also why the two methods swap places over time. A barrier costs more on day one and less to keep; a bait system costs less to install and is the one you keep paying for. Ten years is the honest horizon to compare them over.

Not included in this dataset

Repairing the damage

⚠️ Treatment kills termites. It does not put back a sill plate, a joist or a stud that has been hollowed out, and that repair is carpentry priced by what has to be opened up to reach it. It is also the reason this page exists at all: the repair is the expensive part, and finding out you need it is what an inspection is for.

What your insurance will pay

⚠️ Asked on both of our termite pages and the honest answer is a principle rather than a number. American homeowners policies distinguish sudden accidental damage from deterioration and lack of maintenance, and an infestation that has been eating for years falls on the second side of that line in practically all of them. Your policy and your state decide it, we do not advise on insurance, and the consequence is worth stating plainly: the downside here is uninsured, which is exactly what changes the arithmetic on prevention.

Fixing what attracted them

Wood-to-soil contact, a leaking hose bib, mulch piled against the siding, a crawl space with no vapour barrier and a downpipe that discharges at the foundation. None of it is priced here and all of it is why they came. Treating a house without fixing the conditions buys a repeat, and several of those fixes are on other pages of this site.

Doing it yourself

⚠️ It is not a question of cost. The termiticides used for barrier treatments carry directions for use that are part of the product’s federal registration, and many are Restricted Use Pesticides — a category that by definition may only be applied by or under the supervision of a certified applicator. That is why the product a professional uses is not on a hardware store shelf.

Home remedies

⚠️ People ask which smells termites hate, and the answer is the disappointing one: nothing you can pour or spray from a supermarket resolves an established colony, because the colony is not where you can reach it — it is in the soil, or inside the timber. Orange oil and heat have genuine narrow uses against drywood termites in specific timbers, applied by somebody who has found the gallery. They are not a substitute for treating a subterranean colony.