Foundation Repair Cost

Last updated: October 31, 2026 · Prices checked October 31, 2026

Foundation repair cost averages about $5,174, with typical projects running $2,225–$8,133 (Angi). But foundation repair cost is the least average-shaped number in home repair: a sealed crack is a few hundred dollars, a piered house is five figures, and two companies can bid the same house $15,000 apart — a spread documented in the forum threads this page checks. The unit that decides everything is the pier, so this page prices piers first, then works through the actual bids homeowners are asking about.

Foundation repair cost by method

There is no single job called "foundation repair." Here is each method at published prices — find the one on your bid before you look at its total.

“One bid says 37 piers for $21,000. The other says 13 piers for $5,900.”

This is the defining foundation question on the forums — a DFW-area buyer on Houzz, mid-purchase, holding two bids for the same 2005 house: 37 piers across the front and garage at $21,000 from one company, 13 piers at $5,900 from another. Do the division first: $21,000 ÷ 37 is about $568 a pier, and $5,900 ÷ 13 is about $454 a pier. Both per-pier rates sit below Angi's national band of $1,000–$3,000 — plausible for Texas pressed-concrete piers — so neither company is gouging on unit price. They are disagreeing about the diagnosis: how much of the house actually needs support. A 24-pier disagreement is not a pricing dispute, and it cannot be settled by a third foundation company's free inspection, because foundation companies sell piers.

It is settled by the one professional who doesn't: an independent structural engineer, at $200–$800 (Angi) for the inspection and report. The poster had already hired one — the correct move, and the cheapest line in the entire story either way: if the engineer backs 13 piers, the buyer saves roughly $15,000; if the engineer backs 37, the $5,900 bid was a plan to under-support a house. On any pier bid over a few thousand dollars, the engineer's report is not an extra cost. It is the quote-checking tool the whole purchase should run through.

“How much did y'all pay per pier?”

A TexAgs forum poster asked it directly, and the answers — $220, $225, $250 and about $400 per pier — look impossibly cheap next to Angi's $1,000–$3,000 national band, until you read the fine print: those are Texas pressed-concrete pier prices, several of them a decade old, for the least expensive pier type on the market. Angi's own per-pier ladder explains the whole spread: concrete piers average about $1,000 each, steel push piers about $2,000, and helical piers about $3,000 (HomeGuide's helical band runs higher still, at $2,000–$4,000). Per-pier quotes are only comparable pier-type to pier-type — a $250 concrete pier and a $2,000 steel pier are different products that happen to share a noun, and a contractor quoting one should say which.

“I got 4 quotes ranging from 'you don't need anything' to $7,000”

The pier-and-beam version of the same story, from the Mr Money Mustache forum: four quotes spanning "do nothing" to $7,000 for one house. The poster hired an independent engineer for $400, who specified two lifts; when the repair company balked at the second, the engineer's report is what forced the issue. Another reply in the same thread priced 12 piers under a slab at $4,800 — $400 a pier, the pressed-concrete pattern again. Angi's pier-and-beam data frames the whole thread: repairs typically run $6,000–$14,000 (average $10,000), reshimming alone runs $1,200–$4,000, and the full range spans $800–$25,000 from shims to full underpinning. A $0-to-$7,000 quote spread is wide, but every number in it exists inside the published range for some scope of work — which is exactly why the diagnosis has to come from someone who isn't selling the cure.

The small jobs: a porch, and a building two companies refused to quote

Not every pier job is a whole house. A Practical Machinist forum poster needed only the sagging porch lifted — "I only need 4 piers on the outside edge of the porch. Steel piers will run me $600 each" — about $2,400 for a scoped, single-side job, well inside the published map for partial work. And on BiggerPockets, an investor weighing a two-story structure on a thin 3–4 inch slab got four foundation companies out: two refused to quote at all, the engineer's fix priced 7 piers at $4,000–$6,000, and the lift itself risked cracking the slab. Both threads carry the same lesson from opposite ends: a refused quote is information (the job's risk exceeded its price), and a small pier count with a clear scope is the cheapest foundation work there is.

What moves a foundation quote up or down

• Pier count. The whole ballgame: $1,000–$3,000 of swing per pier of disagreement. It is set by the diagnosis, which is why the diagnosis should come from an engineer ($200–$800), not a bidder.
• Pier type. Concrete ≈$1,000, steel ≈$2,000, helical ≈$3,000 per pier (Angi), chosen by soil and load — ask which type is in the bid before comparing per-pier prices.
• Interior vs. exterior. Interior piers mean breaking through floors or tunneling under a slab; exterior-only plans are cheaper per pier and cover less of the house.
• The problem underneath. Drainage, plumbing leaks and expansive clay cause movement; piers under a house whose water problem survives are a subscription, not a repair.
• Cosmetic vs. structural. A non-structural crack is $250–$800 of injection (HomeGuide). Stair-step cracks, sticking doors on one side and sloping floors are the pattern that justifies five figures — and an engineer can tell you which house you have.

Foundation bids are the largest quotes most homeowners ever check, but the checking method is the same one this site applies everywhere: sewer line replacement cost is priced per foot for the same reason foundation work is priced per pier, and our methodology page shows how every figure here was compiled.