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Sump Pump & French Drain Cost Calculator

A French drain costs $10–$100 per linear foot installed, and the spread is not about quality — it is about where the drain runs. Inside the basement under the slab costs $40–$100 a foot; the same pipe in open ground outside costs $10–$50. The sump pump is a separate, largely fixed cost on top. Price both halves on your own run below.

Sump Pump & French Drain Cost Calculator

Educational calculators — always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.

What are you pricing?

A drain, a pump, or the two working together as one system.

The usual wet-basement fix. The drain collects the water, the pump lifts it out and sends it away from the house.

Where does the drain run?

This is the single biggest cost factor — bigger than the length.

$40–$100 per linear foot. HomeAdvisor, Fixr and Bob Vila all publish this exact band. The price is concrete work, not pipe.

How long a run of drain?

In feet. For a basement perimeter, measure the walls you want drained.

Tap to edit

10200

Which kind of pump?

The motor either sits down in the water or up above it.

$90–$1,000 for the unit. Sits in the pit, quieter, can be covered. The usual choice for a finished basement.

No pit yet — one has to be formed

Add a backup pump?

A sump pump is useless in the storm that cuts your power.

$150–$250. Runs the pump off a sealed battery for a few hours of outage.

Where does the discharge line run?

The pipe that carries the water away from the house.

$150–$400. Cheapest and easy to check, but visible and can freeze in a hard winter.

Total installed cost

$3,140 – $8,650

60 ft of interior basement drain (under the slab) · with a sump pump

French drain$2,400 – $6,000

Sump pump, installed$740 – $2,650

The drain is 71% of this estimate. The pump is close to a fixed cost — it does not get more expensive as the run gets longer — so on a run this size, the length and the placement of the drain are what move the bill, not which pump you buy.

Drain rate applied

Interior basement drain (under the slab) is priced at $40–$100 per linear foot, applied to 60 ft.

Where the money goes

Where Your Money Goes

Interior basement drain (under the slab) — 60 ft71%

$2,400 – $6,000

Submersible (motor inside the pit)9%

$90 – $1,000

Installation labour11%

$350 – $1,000

Battery backup3%

$150 – $250

Above-ground discharge line5%

$150 – $400

Interior basement drain (under the slab) — 60 ft$2,400 – $6,000

Submersible (motor inside the pit)$90 – $1,000

Installation labour$350 – $1,000

Battery backup$150 – $250

Above-ground discharge line$150 – $400

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Interior and exterior drains are not the same job at a different price

This is the distinction that makes published French drain pricing look incoherent. Search for a cost and you will find figures from $10 a foot to $100 a foot quoted as though they describe one job. They do not. They describe two jobs that happen to use the same gravel and the same perforated pipe.

An interior drain means breaking out a channel around the inside perimeter of your basement slab, laying pipe and stone into it, and re-pouring concrete over the top. You are buying concrete demolition and concrete finishing; the drainage material is close to a rounding error. That is why it runs $40–$100 per foot — a band HomeAdvisor, Fixr and Bob Vila all publish identically.

An exterior run is a trench in open ground, and it costs $10–$50 per foot. A shallow curtain drain intercepting water uphill of the house is cheaper still at $10–$25. Only when an exterior drain has to be excavated all the way down to the footing does it approach interior pricing, at $80–$100 per foot.

The pump is a fixed cost. The drain is a per-foot cost. That is the whole decision.

A sump pump costs roughly the same whether it serves twenty feet of drain or a hundred and forty. A drain costs strictly by the foot. Those two facts pull in opposite directions, and which one dominates your bill depends entirely on how much drain you are actually laying.

On a short run — one wall of a basement, say — the pump and its installation can be most of the project, and upgrading to a better pump or adding a backup moves the total far more than another ten feet of drain would. On a full interior perimeter, the drain is the overwhelming majority of the bill and the pump choice barely registers. The calculator above reports that split as a percentage for exactly this reason.

This is also why the two halves are added here rather than blended. Fixr publishes a combined “sump pump with a French drain system” rate of $65–$75 per linear foot. That figure is real, but applying it hides the fixed cost inside a per-foot number, which makes a twenty-foot job look cheap and a hundred-foot job look expensive in precisely the wrong proportion.

What a sump pump is made of, in dollars

Line item	Cost	Notes
Pump unit	$80–$1,500	Pedestal $80–$800, submersible $90–$1,000, combination $500–$1,500.
Installation labour	$350–$1,000	Setting and connecting the pump in a basin that already exists.
Forming a new basin	+$500–$1,200	Only when there is no pit yet. Added on top of the labour above.
Backup	$150–$900	Battery $150–$250; water-powered $200–$900. Already included in a combination pump.
Discharge line	$150–$2,000	Above ground $150–$400; buried $250–$2,000.

Adding the plainest set of those — a submersible pump in an existing basin with an above-ground discharge and no backup — gives $590–$2,400, a midpoint of $1,495. This Old House's own published national average for sump pump installation is $1,400 on a $500–$4,000 range. The parts reproduce the whole without being fitted to it, which is the check that they are being combined correctly.

What this calculator assumes, stated plainly

One drain type per estimate. If your job mixes an interior run with an exterior one, price them separately and add the results — the two rates are too far apart to average honestly.
A “yard drain” is priced as an exterior perimeter run. HomeAdvisor publishes $30–$90 per foot for a yard drain and Bob Vila publishes $20–$40 for the same thing. Those bands overlap only partially and there is no honest way to merge them, so shallow yard work is quoted at the two-source exterior band of $10–$50 instead of an invented middle.
The footing-drain band rests on one source. Every other band here is published identically by at least two independent guides. Fixr's $80–$100 footing figure is the only per-foot footing-drain price any of the four sources publishes, so treat it as the least certain number on this page.
Concrete floor drilling is not modelled. This Old House prices it at $2,500–$5,000, while the same publisher's basement waterproofing page prices a whole professional sump installation including pit excavation at $1,200–$2,500. Those cannot both be right, and the larger figure would put a routine new pit above the top of the same page's own whole-project range. New-basin work is priced from the $500–$1,200 basin-labour line instead.
Not modelled: rock excavation, exterior waterproofing membrane applied while the foundation is open, landscape restoration over an exterior trench, and electrical work to bring a circuit to the pit. Each is a genuine cost that no cited source prices in a form that can be applied to a specific job, so none is guessed at here.

Related calculators

Drainage is usually the first line of a bigger below-grade budget. If the reason you are fixing the water is that you want to use the space, the basement finishing cost calculator prices what comes after the basement is dry. If the water is arriving from the roofline rather than the water table, fixing that is far cheaper than drainage — the gutter installation cost calculator covers moving roof runoff away from the foundation in the first place. And if a plumbing line rather than groundwater turns out to be the source, the sewer line replacement cost calculator prices that by the foot in the same way.

Methodology & sources

The cost figures on this page are generated from a single, sourced cost-data file (Residential basement and foundation drainage. The French drain is priced per linear foot of drain run installed, covering trenching, perforated pipe, gravel and backfill; where the drain runs — inside the basement under the slab, or outside in the yard — sets the rate. The sump pump is priced separately as a pump, the labour to install it, an optional backup and a discharge line, because none of those scale with drain length. National figures for 2026.). Interior and exterior French drains are not the same job at a different price, and conflating them is the most common error in this category: an interior drain means cutting and re-pouring the basement slab, which is why it costs several times an exterior run. The $40-$100 interior band is published identically by HomeAdvisor, Fixr and Bob Vila. The $10-$50 exterior band and the $10-$25 curtain-drain band are each published identically by HomeAdvisor and Bob Vila. The $80-$100 footing-drain band is single-source (Fixr) and is the only band here that rests on one publisher. HomeAdvisor puts the national French drain average at $9,250 on a $500-$18,000 normal range; Fixr and Bob Vila both put it at $5,000 on that same $500-$18,000 range. Last verified September 2026.

This Old House — How Much Does Sump Pump Installation Cost? (2026 Guide) (page updated 11 Mar 2026) — retrieved 2026-09-01
HomeAdvisor — How Much Does a French Drain Cost in 2026? (page updated 20 Jun 2026) — retrieved 2026-09-01
Fixr — French Drain Installation Cost (page updated 31 Jan 2025) — retrieved 2026-09-01
Bob Vila — French Drain Cost (page updated 27 Jun 2024) — retrieved 2026-09-01

Frequently asked questions

How much does a French drain cost?+

French drains cost $10–$100 per linear foot installed, and where the drain runs matters far more than how long it is. An interior basement drain under the slab runs $40–$100 per foot — HomeAdvisor, Fixr and Bob Vila all publish that same band. An exterior perimeter or yard run costs $10–$50 per foot, a shallow curtain drain $10–$25, and an exterior drain excavated all the way to the footing $80–$100. HomeAdvisor puts the national average project at $9,250 on a $500–$18,000 normal range, while Fixr and Bob Vila both put it at $5,000 on that same range.

Why does an interior French drain cost so much more than an exterior one?+

Because you are paying for concrete work, not for pipe. An interior drain means breaking out a channel around the inside perimeter of the basement slab, laying perforated pipe and gravel in it, and re-pouring the floor. An exterior run is a trench dug in open ground. That is why the interior band is $40–$100 per foot and a shallow exterior run is $10–$50. Quoting one at the other's rate is the single most common mistake made when reading published drainage prices, and it is why this calculator refuses to offer a blended "French drain" rate.

Do I need a sump pump with a French drain?+

Only if the water cannot leave by gravity. A drain has to discharge somewhere lower than itself. If your lot slopes away from the house, an exterior drain can often daylight downhill and no pump is needed at all. An interior basement drain almost always needs one, because the drain sits at the lowest point in the house and the water has to be lifted out. This calculator lets you price either half on its own for exactly that reason.

How much does it cost to install a sump pump?+

This Old House puts sump pump installation at a national average of $1,400 on a $500–$4,000 range. Broken into parts, the pump itself runs $90–$1,000 for a submersible or $80–$800 for a pedestal, installation labour into an existing basin is $350–$1,000, forming a new basin where there is not one adds $500–$1,200, a battery backup adds $150–$250, and the discharge line runs $150–$400 above ground or $250–$2,000 buried. A plain submersible replacement with an above-ground discharge therefore comes to roughly $590–$2,400, whose midpoint of $1,495 lands within 7% of the same publisher's own $1,400 average.

Is the sump pump or the drain the bigger cost?+

It depends entirely on the length of the run, and this is the thing most published pricing hides. The pump is close to a fixed cost — it does not get more expensive as the drain gets longer. The drain is purely a per-foot cost. So on a short run the pump dominates the bill, and on a long interior run the drain dominates it and the choice of pump barely registers. That is why this calculator adds the two halves rather than using a single blended per-foot rate; Fixr publishes a combined $65–$75 per linear foot figure, and applying it would make a short job look cheap and a long one look expensive in exactly the wrong proportion.

Should I get a battery backup for my sump pump?+

For a finished basement, yes. The worst flooding happens during the storms that also take the power out, which is precisely when a mains-powered pump stops. A battery backup costs $150–$250 and runs the pump for a few hours of outage. A water-powered backup costs $200–$900, needs no electricity at all, but only works on municipal water supply and uses a great deal of water while running. A combination pump packages a primary and a backup in one unit for $500–$1,500, in which case you should not be charged for a separate backup on top.