Pergola cost

A pergola costs $20 to $65 per square foot installed, so a 100 square foot structure runs $2,000 to $6,500 with most professional installations landing near $4,250. A kit you assemble yourself is $1,200 to $4,000.

Material drives it more than size. Aluminum runs about $20 per square foot, cedar around $37, and fiberglass or a motorized louvered roof $60 and up.

Cost by material

Cost by size

Attached pergolas, which use the house for one side, cost roughly 15% to 25% less than freestanding ones because there are fewer posts and footings. They also require flashing where the ledger meets the wall, which is a detail worth confirming is in the quote.

What a pergola actually does

A traditional pergola with open rafters gives dappled shade, roughly 40% to 60% depending on rafter spacing and the sun angle. It does not keep rain off and it does not make a space usable in a downpour.

If what you want is shade and rain protection, you want one of these instead:

A louvered pergola with rotating slats that close. $75 to $150 per square foot, and it is the version most people actually want once they understand the difference.

A retractable canopy on a standard pergola frame. $500 to $2,500 added, and much cheaper than louvers.

A solid roof, which makes it a pavilion rather than a pergola, $60 to $120 per square foot, and usually requires a permit because it is a roofed structure.

Plantings. A mature wisteria or grape vine over an open pergola gives dense summer shade and drops its leaves in winter, which is exactly what you want in both seasons. It takes three to five years and costs almost nothing.

Kit against custom

Kits are $1,200 to $4,000 for the material, in standard sizes, delivered cut and drilled. Assembly is a weekend for two people with basic tools. Professional assembly of a kit is $500 to $1,500 on top.

Custom-built is $3,000 to $15,000 and gets you any size, larger timber sizes that look substantially better, and attachment to an awkward house.

The visual difference is mostly post and beam dimensions. Kits use lighter timber because it ships cheaply, and a pergola with undersized posts looks flimsy in a way that is hard to unsee. If you buy a kit, look at the post dimension: 6x6 reads as solid, 4x4 does not.

Footings, and the thing kits leave out

A pergola is a large sail. Wind load on the roof structure is real, and pergolas do blow over.

Freestanding pergolas need concrete footings below the frost line, or post anchors bolted into an existing slab or deck rated for uplift. Many kits ship with brackets that assume a concrete surface and say little about what happens on soil.

If the pergola is going on grass, budget $150 to $400 per footing and expect four to six of them. This is the most commonly omitted line in a cheap quote.

Permits

It depends on whether the structure is roofed and how large it is. Open-rafter pergolas under a certain size, often 100 to 200 square feet, are frequently exempt. Anything with a solid roof, anything attached to the house, and anything over the size threshold usually needs a permit.

Setback rules apply either way: most jurisdictions require a structure to sit a minimum distance from property lines, and an HOA may have its own rules about height, color and visibility from the street.

Frequently asked questions

How long does installation take?

Two to four days for a professional build of a standard freestanding pergola, plus concrete cure time before the structure goes up. A kit assembled by two people is a weekend.

Can it be attached to my house?

Yes, and it costs less than freestanding. The ledger has to be through-bolted into the framing, not just the sheathing, and flashed properly. That flashing detail is the same one that matters on a deck ledger and for the same reason.

Does it add value?

Modestly, as part of a coherent outdoor living space. A pergola over an existing patio adds more perceived value than one standing alone in a lawn, because it makes an existing space usable rather than adding an isolated feature.

Aluminum or wood?

Aluminum if you want to build it once and never think about it, and modern powder-coated aluminum in a wood-grain finish is convincing from a few feet. Wood if you want the material to look and weather like wood and you accept restaining every few years.

Will it shade my patio enough in summer?

An open pergola reduces direct sun by roughly half, which takes a patio from unusable to pleasant in the morning and evening but not at midday in July. Closer rafter spacing, running the rafters east to west, and a canopy or plantings all help. If you need real shade at midday, plan for a louvered roof or a canopy from the start.