Driveway Paving & Sealing Cost Calculator

Asphalt is cheaper to install. That is not the same as cheaper.

On a standard 576 square foot two-car driveway, new asphalt at $7–$13 per square foot comes to roughly $4,000–$7,500. Broom-finish concrete at $8–$12 comes to roughly $4,600–$6,900. Those bands overlap almost completely, and asphalt's top end is higher than concrete's. The install-price gap that everyone treats as decisive is mostly not there.

What is there is the maintenance difference, and it runs the other way. Asphalt has to be resealed every two to five years at $1.25–$1.50 per square foot to reach its stated life — call it $1,400–$4,300 over ten years on that same driveway, which is a meaningful fraction of what the driveway cost in the first place. Concrete can be sealed, and sealing it helps with stains and appearance, but it does not need sealing to survive.

Then there is life expectancy. This Old House puts asphalt at 20–30 years and concrete at 50 or more. Over the life of a house, the material with the higher sticker price and no mandatory maintenance is frequently the cheaper one. The calculator above prices the ten-year sealing bill alongside the install so you can see both numbers at once rather than only the one a contractor quotes.

Resurfacing versus replacing, and how to tell which you need

An asphalt overlay costs $3–$7 per square foot against $8–$15 for a full replacement — less than half. It is the single biggest saving available on this page, and whether you can take it depends entirely on one thing: whether the base underneath is still sound.

• Surface cracking, faded colour, minor crumbling at the edges — the base is fine. Resurface.
• Potholes, sunken or dished areas, alligator cracking (interconnected cracks in a scaled pattern) — the base has failed. Paving over it reproduces exactly the same damage in the new surface within a couple of seasons, and you will have paid twice.
• Drainage that ponds water — a resurface will not fix the grade, and standing water is what destroyed the surface in the first place.

Concrete has no true equivalent of an asphalt overlay. HomeAdvisor prices concrete resurfacing at $5–$10 per square foot, but it is a cosmetic overlay rather than a structural repair, and a cracked concrete slab generally has to be broken out.

Sealing is the one job genuinely worth doing yourself

Professional asphalt sealcoating costs $1.25–$1.50 per square foot. The sealer itself costs $0.06–$0.38. On a 576 square foot driveway that is roughly $720–$865 done for you against $35–$220 in material — almost the entire professional price is labour, and the labour is spreading liquid with a squeegee.

Two caveats worth the money you save. New asphalt must cure for several months before its first seal, so this is never part of the paving contract. And sealer applied too thickly, or over a damp or dirty surface, peels within a year — surface preparation is the part that actually determines whether it works.

Sealing a driveway you already have

If the driveway is already down, choose the sealing option in the calculator. It skips the paving and prices only the sealer and any crack filling. You enter the area, how many feet of cracks you can see, one coat or two, and whether you or a pro will do it.

Asphalt gets sealcoat, a thin black coating that blocks water and sunlight. It is the one that wears off and needs doing again. Concrete gets a clear sealer. That keeps out stains and improves the look, but concrete does not need it to last.

Example. Take a 576 square foot asphalt driveway with 50 feet of cracks and one coat of sealer, done by a pro. Sealing comes to $720–$864, using the $1.25–$1.50 per square foot rate above. Filling 50 feet of cracks adds $50–$150, because pros charge about $1–$3 per linear foot (HomeAdvisor, page updated 2026-06-20, read 2026-10-17). The one-time total is $770–$1,014, or $1.34–$1.76 per square foot. Doing it yourself, the same job is $48–$264 in sealer and crack filler. A second coat on the pro job brings the range to $805–$1,878. The same driveway in concrete, with no cracks, runs $778–$1,440.

Fill cracks first. Sealer is thin. It will not close a crack, and water that gets into one is what widens it. Clean the crack, fill it, let the filler set, then seal over it.

How often. The calculator uses a gap of two to five years between coats, the range the sources we cite print. Sealed every two years, that driveway costs five sealings over ten years. Sealed every five years, two. Counting today's coat, and filling the cracks once, the pro cost over ten years is $1,490–$4,470. Doing it yourself, it is $83–$1,140.

Chip seal is not priced here. We could not find two dated price ranges for it, so the calculator leaves it out rather than guess. For how long each surface lasts and what a new driveway costs, see our driveway paving cost guide.

What this calculator assumes, stated plainly

• Angi and HomeAdvisor are counted as one source. They publish identical figures throughout this topic — the same $5,345 asphalt average, the same $6,400 concrete average, the same finish table. This Old House is the genuinely independent second source. Where this page says two sources agree, it means those two families, not those two sites.
• The $3–$7 per square foot sealing figure is not used. Angi's and HomeAdvisor's asphalt installation pages print it, and it contradicts their own dedicated sealing pages, which print $1.25–$1.50. The dedicated pages reconcile with their own components ($1.15 labour plus $0.06–$0.38 material); the $3–$7 figure reconciles with nothing published anywhere, and This Old House's independent $0.70–$2.10 brackets the lower band.
• Site preparation at $5–$10 per square foot is not modelled. That figure exceeds the cost of the asphalt it prepares for, and Angi's own driveway page prices grading at $1–$2. Only the specific gravel-base figure of $0.50–$1 per square foot is used.
• The ten-year sealing figure is derived, not published. It is the published per-square-foot rate multiplied by the number of sealings that fit in ten years at the published two-to-five-year interval. The arithmetic is this page's; both inputs are sourced.
• Sealing an existing driveway, sources. Pro crack filling at $1–$3 per linear foot is from HomeAdvisor (updated 2026-06-20) and a contractor quoted by Thumbtack (updated 2026-07-10). DIY crack filler at $0.27–$0.91 per foot is price divided by stated coverage: Red Devil 0637 (55 linear feet per 10.1 oz cartridge, maker's data sheet; about $15) and Liquid Rubber ($19.95 for about 22 feet), both prices from OneCrew's buyer's guide (updated 2026-01-07). For two coats, Bob Vila says the price "will double" and also that it "does not double" because prep is done once, so the low end adds only a second coat of sealer and the high end doubles. All read 2026-10-17.
• Not modelled: heated driveways, permeable asphalt, coloured or heated surfaces, tree and stump removal before excavation (Angi puts that at $1,500–$5,100), retaining walls and drainage work, apron and street-cut permits, and regional variation. Asphalt in particular tracks the oil price and moves more between quotes than most trades.

Related calculators

A driveway is usually the largest paved surface on a property, and how it sheds water decides a lot about the house behind it. If water runs toward the foundation rather than away from it, the sump pump & French drain cost calculator prices the drainage side of that problem. If a utility line runs under the driveway, replacing it after paving is far dearer than before — the sewer line replacement cost calculator shows exactly how much a concrete or asphalt surface adds to that job. And for the other large outdoor surface people price at the same time, see the deck building cost calculator. A patio is a different job from a driveway, priced by its surface — pavers, brick, stone or concrete — so for a patio use the paver patio cost calculator.

Frequently asked questions