Home Cost Kit

Fence Installation Cost Calculator

Fence installation cost for a typical 150 ft wood privacy fence, six feet high with four corners, two end posts and one gate, runs about $6,535 in Atlanta — roughly $43.57 per foot, in a range of $4,480 to $8,590. But the per-foot price is not a constant: the same fence at 40 ft works out at $84.21 a foot and at 400 ft at $34.50, because corners, gates and getting the crew to your house are paid once whatever the length.

Estimate the cost for your home

Estimated cost to install a fence

$6,655

typical · range $4,595 to $8,714 · 150 ft of wood privacy at 6 ft · about $44.37 per foot

Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 69% of this figure comes from modelled material, equipment and disposal prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.

Priced from bls.gov Aug 2026how every line is sourced

The one input that changes the answer for you.

The whole run, gates included. Walk the boundary with a tape: pacing it out is where most homeowner estimates go wrong.

Material rises with height and the post hole rises with its square, because a taller fence needs a hole that is deeper and wider at once.

Solid boards, no gaps. The most common fence in American back yards and the default here.

The shape of the enclosure

This is the part that does not scale with length, and it is why a short fence costs so much more per foot. A corner takes pull from two directions and braces in two planes; an end post takes pull from one. They are not the same post and they are not the same money.

Gate openings take 4 ft out of the run — 4 ft for a walk gate, 12 ft for a double — so the fence itself is 146 ft, not 150. Their posts and their concrete are still charged, because those exist.

The rest of the job

The first two are what separates a cheap quote from a complete one, and neither of them is visible in a price per foot.

Before any of these holes is dug, have the buried utilities located. Every post hole on the list below is another chance to find a gas service, an irrigation main or the lateral to the street. The public locate call is free in most of the country, it is not optional, and no figure on this page assumes anyone skipped it.

1 / 6

The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.

The per-foot price is not a constant

Your 4 corners, 2 end posts and 1 gate, the same material and the same height — only the length changes across this row. Corners, gates and getting the crew to your house are paid once whatever the length, so the price per foot falls as the fence gets longer.

40 ft of fence
$85.74 /ft
$3,430 in total
100 ft of fence
$51.29 /ft
$5,129 in total
200 ft of fence
$40.57 /ft
$8,115 in total
400 ft of fence
$35.14 /ft
$14,058 in total

A contractor quoting one flat rate per foot is averaging that curve, and the average favours them on the short jobs.

What is labour here, and what is not

Trade labour, 45 hours
$2,089
Material, equipment and tipping
$4,566
Labour as a share of the bill
31%

The first figure is the only part a homeowner can replace with their own weekends, and it is priced at the published wage for the trade in your area rather than at an opinion. The second is the same money whoever carries the bags.

If this fence encloses a pool, tick the box

A fence that encloses a pool stops being a fence and becomes a safety barrier, and that changes the height you choose, the gate hardware and the price. What yours has to be is set by your local code and answered by your local building department, before you build — not by this calculator and not by any national figure. CPSC, Pools and Spas is where to start reading, and nothing on this page is attributed to it.

Cost breakdown by line item
Line itemQtyCostSource
Material delivery and small-order freight1 delivery per job, regardless of length1lot$90–$280estimated±51%
Crew mobilisation: load, travel, set out the line, unload4 crew-hours per job, fixed (modelled)4hour$179–$193sourced
Wood privacy fence material: line posts, rails, boards and fastenersrun length excluding gate openings × height ÷ 4, on wood privacy fences219linear ft at 4 ft high$1,533–$3,285estimated±36%
Corner, end and gate posts: heavier section, bracing and capscorners × 1 + ends × 0.7 + 2 per gate, minimum 27.4terminal-post equivalent$222–$1,184estimated±68%
Fence erector: dig, plumb, brace and set the terminal posts0.9 h per corner-post equivalent, ×1.4 in difficult ground (modelled)7hour$314–$337sourced
Bagged concrete for the post holes(1.3 per line post + 2.4 per terminal post) × (height ÷ 4)²87bag (50 lb)$500–$914estimated±29%
Post caps for a wood fenceone per post, on wood fences only23each$46–$138estimated±50%
Fence erector: set line posts, hang the run and pull it truerun length excluding gate openings × hours/ft by material × height × ground × kickboard (modelled)29hour$1,299–$1,396sourced
Labourer: spread or barrow away the spoil from the post holes0.06 h per post hole, minimum 1 h (modelled)2hour$88–$95sourced
Walk gate leaf, hinges and latchone per walk gate1each$190–$750estimated±60%
Fence erector: hang and adjust the gates2.5 h per walk gate, 5 h per double, +0.6 h per gate on a pool barrier (modelled)3hour$134–$144sourced
Total$4,595–$8,714±31%

Where these numbers come from

Labour rates by area
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for fence erectors, construction labourers, heavy truck drivers and painters in your metropolitan area. Retrieved 2026-08-20. Benefit load from BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation. Worth knowing about this trade in particular: BLS publishes a fence erector wage for only a minority of its 530 areas, and where yours is not one of them the model falls back to the construction-and-extraction group for your area rather than inventing a number. Nine lines on this page are hours; everything else is goods, and goods do not move with your ZIP code.
Machine and haulage rates
Where rock, hardpan or roots defeat a two-man auger, the machine hours and the dump truck that takes an old fence away are priced from the FEMA, Schedule of Equipment Rates 2025 (in effect for declarations on or after 1 July 2025), the published federal reimbursement rates that cover fuel, maintenance and depreciation but explicitly not the operator. The operator and the driver are separate lines at BLS wages, so nobody is hidden inside a machine rate. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
Pool barriers: what this page will not tell you
A fence that encloses a pool is quoted as a safety barrier, and the two lines that switch on here — closing the gaps and self-closing, self-latching gate hardware — are priced work, nothing more. What your barrier has to be is set by your local code and answered by your local building department, before you build. CPSC, Pools and Spas and CPSC, Pool Safely safety guide are linked as federal publishers of guidance and as a place to start reading. Retrieved 2026-08-22. No height, no spacing, no ground clearance and no gate specification on this page is attributed to them, because we hold no verified wording for any such figure and this is the one subject on the site where the failure mode is not financial.
The per-foot curve, and what in it is ours
Three things in this model do not scale with length: the delivery, the crew mobilisation, and the corner, end and gate posts, whose number follows the shape of the enclosure rather than its size. That is the whole reason the price per foot falls as the fence gets longer, and it is calculated line by line rather than asserted. The wages behind it are BLS data; every hour per foot, every material band and the four feet of run a walk gate occupies are our estimates, labelled as such on each line of the breakdown. This is one of the tools on this site with the largest share of modelled figures, and the result card says so on every recompute.
Before the first hole
A fence job is a row of holes dug blind along a boundary, which is exactly where gas services, irrigation mains and the lateral to the street live. The public locate call is free across most of the country and it is not optional; no figure on this page assumes anyone skipped it, and none of them prices the repair if somebody does. The property line is the other one: a survey is excluded below because it is a professional service no postcode predicts, and a fence built over the line is a fence that comes down.
Material prices
Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.

Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-22.

What this figure does not include

Permit fees and homeowner association approval
Most jurisdictions require a permit for a fence over a certain height, and many enforce a setback from the property line, a maximum height at the front of the lot and a rule about which side the finished face has to point. An association may add its own approval on top. Fees and rules vary with no national source and are excluded rather than averaged.
A property line survey
A fence built six inches over the line is a fence that comes down, and the only thing that establishes where the line is, is a licensed survey. It is a professional service priced by the local market and by how bad the existing records are, and it is not something a postcode predicts.
Whether your pool barrier complies
This page prices the extra work and the extra hardware a pool enclosure needs. It does not tell you what your code requires. Height, spacing between elements, ground clearance and gate specification are set by your local code and answered by your local building department, and they are the only authority on whether what you build passes. The CPSC publishes guidance on residential pool barriers and it is linked on this page as a starting point, not as the source of any figure here.
Locating buried utilities
Every post hole is a hole in ground that may have a gas line, a service lateral or an irrigation main in it. The public locate call is free in most of the country and is not a cost line, but it is not optional either, and no figure on this page assumes anyone skipped it.
Clearing the fence line
Removing trees, grinding stumps, cutting back a hedge or moving a shed so the crew can get a truck and a string line down the boundary is separate work. Difficult ground on this page means what is under the surface, not what is standing on it.
Retaining walls and regrading
Where the ground falls steeply the fence either steps down or racks with the slope, and sometimes the real answer is a retaining wall first. That is structural work priced by the square foot of wall, not the foot of fence.
Gate automation and electricity
An operator for a drive gate, its safety loop, its keypad and the power to reach the end of a driveway are a separate trade and a separate permit. The drive gate line here prices a gate that a person opens.
Hauling the hole spoil away
The soil that comes out of the post holes is modelled as being spread on the plot, which is what happens on most jobs. Where there is nowhere to put it, it goes in a trailer and out to a fill site, and that is a haulage cost this page does not carry.

Questions people actually ask

How much does it cost for 200 feet of fencing?

Around $4,239 for 200 ft of four-foot chain link with two corners, two end posts and one walk gate in Atlanta, which is $21.20 a foot, and about $7,969 for the same 200 ft built as a six-foot wood privacy fence with four corners and two ends, which is $39.85 a foot. The material decides most of that spread. What matters just as much is that a 200-foot job gets a per-foot rate a short one never will: the same wood privacy fence works out at $50.40 a foot over 100 ft and $84.21 over 40 ft, because the corners, the gate and the trip out are paid once either way.

How much does it cost to install a 40 ft fence?

About $2,838 for 40 ft of six-foot wood privacy fence with one corner, two end posts and a walk gate in Atlanta, in a range of $1,837 to $3,839. That is $70.95 a foot. Keep the shape of the 150-foot job on this page instead, with four corners and two ends, and the same 40 ft comes to $3,368, or $84.21 a foot against $43.57 a foot at 150 ft. Nearly all of that gap is fixed cost: the delivery, four hours of mobilisation, the gate, and the corner and end posts, of which a forty-foot fence needs as many as a long one.

How much does Lowe's charge to install a fence?

We do not publish anyone else’s price list and we will not guess at one, so the honest answer is that only a quote from them says what they charge. What can be said is that a retailer installation programme subcontracts the work to a local crew, which means the same two things drive the price as drive the figure here: the published wage for fence erectors in your metropolitan area and the shape of your enclosure. This model keeps those apart. On the 150 ft wood privacy fence in Atlanta, $1,969 of the $6,535 total is 45 hours of trade labour and $4,566 is material that costs the same wherever it is bought. Comparing any quote against that split tells you more than comparing two totals.

Is it cheaper to install a fence yourself?

In dollars yes, and the model says by how much rather than offering an opinion. On the 150 ft wood privacy fence in Atlanta, trade labour is $1,969 of a $6,535 total, about 30 per cent, and it is 45 hours priced at the published wages for fence erectors and construction labourers in your area. The other $4,566 is material and it costs the same whoever buys it. So the question is not whether you save money but whether 45 hours of your own weekends is worth $1,969, and whether you want to carry the 87 bags of concrete this job needs. Two things do not change either way: the locate call before the first hole, and the fact that a fence six inches over the boundary comes down.

Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 22 August 2026, not invented.

Other cost calculators

The first of these are the jobs closest to this one — the ones that turn up in the same quote, or instead of it.