How Much Does It Cost to Build a Shed?

How much does it cost to build a shed? For our own plans we can answer to the cent. The shed designer works out every board, sheet, bundle and box a shed needs, and on Sep 30, 2026 we read the shelf price of each item at Home Depot. Multiply one by the other and you get the figures on this page.

Four rules hold throughout. A price was read on a named day at a named store, so it is a snapshot, not a national average. Most lines come from one store, Bronx Terminal; the Z-flashing and the 16 ft skids, which had no usable price there, come from a second store, Hamilton Mill (ZIP 30011), read the same day, and every sum that uses them says so. Nothing is estimated to fill a gap. And the headline figure is shed materials: lumber, sheet goods, siding, roofing, trim, fasteners, hardware and the foundation parts (skids or blocks, anchors, landscape fabric). The gravel pad under the shed is site prep, priced on its own line, because how you buy it changes its cost more than anything else on the list.

The cost by size

Each row is one of our free plans. Shed materials is every line on the list except the gravel base, which has its own column.

The four lean-to plans, priced the same way:

The 8x10 gable came to $2,346.60 in shed materials on all 34 of its lines, and the 10x12 to $3,080.73 on all 33. On both, the Z-flashing is the Hamilton Mill line. From 10x14 up, the 16 ft skids are too: Bronx Terminal showed no price for a 16 ft 4x6.

One shed, line by line

Here is the whole list for the 8x10 gable shed, with the price of each line. It is the list the designer prints for that plan, including the treated floor frame, the studs cut from 8 ft boards, the roof, the siding, the trim and every box of nails, then the gravel base under the total.

By group, the 8x10 splits like this:

The siding panels are $514.58 of the sheet goods: 11 panels of 4x8 T1-11 at $46.78, 10 for the walls and 1 for the gable ends. The 2 pieces of Z-flashing add $11.96. At the designer’s 88-3/4 inch wall one 4x8 panel covers the floor frame and the wall in one piece; the store sold the panel in 4x8 only.

The trim is bought in 8, 12 and 16 ft boards, and short pieces share a board when they fit whole, with no joint. On the 8x10 the four rake boards, 60-3/8 inches each, go three on one 16 ft 1x4 and one on an 8 ft, instead of four 8 ft boards: $9.28 less.

The gravel base: bags or bulk

The designer counts the pad in cubic yards: 1.5 for the 8x10, a 4 inch pad a foot wider than the shed on every side. The bag with its volume on the page was Pavestone paver base, 0.5 cubic feet for $6.47 at Home Depot’s Hamilton Mill store. At 27 cubic feet to the yard that is 81 bags, $524.07. The same page showed $5.82 a bag at 64 bags or more, which would make it $471.42.

Bulk from a landscape or building supplier is typically cheaper. On the same day, East Coast Lumber & Building Supply in East Hampstead, New Hampshire listed 3/4 inch crushed stone at $69.95 per cubic yard, delivered in loads of 3 to 8 yards. Even the 3 yard minimum is $209.85 before its delivery charge, which the page does not show. That is one supplier in one region, so call a yard near you, but it shows why the base is not in the shed total: before delivery, the same pad came to well under half the bag price.

What moves the price

Size moves it most, and not in a straight line. The 16x20 has 4 times the floor of the 8x10 and its shed materials are about 2.3 times as much, $5,388.75 against $2,346.60.

The foundation matters next. The same 8x10 on precast deck blocks instead of skids came to $2,414.92 in shed materials, $68.32 more. The deck blocks add $125.64 and the 4x4 beams cost $0.90 more than the skids, while the ground anchor kit, $58.22, drops off the list. The gravel base stays under both.

The roof type changes what you can price. With a metal roof the 8x10 priced at $2,106.72 on 32 of 33 lines, because the designer lists metal panels cut to length, and the 36 inch panel at the first store showed as unavailable in New York. That lower sum is not a cheaper roof. It is a roof with its biggest line missing.

The framing choices are smaller. Studs and rafters at 24 inches instead of 16 take $96.31 off the 8x10’s frame, and buying 50 boards of 8 ft 2x4 instead of the 49 on the list reaches the store’s 50 board price and saves $17.15. Our cheapest way to build a shed guide goes through each of those.

Cost per square foot

The per square foot column in the table falls from $49.14 on the 6x6 to $16.84 on the 16x20, on shed materials. A small shed still needs a door, four corners, two gable ends and a full set of roof edges, so each square foot carries more of them. Use a per square foot figure only to compare sizes you already priced the same way, never to price a shed from scratch.

What these numbers leave out

Shed materials are the shed itself, before sales tax and delivery. The gravel base is shown on its own line.

Where the prices come from

• Bronx Terminal (Home Depot, Sep 30, 2026): every shed line except the two below.
• Hamilton Mill (Home Depot, ZIP 30011, the same day): 5/8 inch x 10 ft galvanized Z-flashing at $5.98, for the horizontal joint where the gable-end siding meets the wall siding, which LP’s panel siding instructions call for with a 3/8 inch gap; and the 16 ft 4x6 treated skid at $42.78, which Bronx Terminal showed as delivery only with no price. The bagged gravel base is also a Hamilton Mill price.
• East Coast Lumber & Building Supply (East Hampstead, NH, the same day): the bulk gravel reference, $69.95 per cubic yard. It is shown next to the bag price and never added to a total.

Costs that are not on the list

• The door and window units, and their hardware. The designer frames the openings; it does not list a door leaf.
• Primer and paint or stain for the siding and trim.
• Sales tax and delivery.
• A permit, if your town requires one. Our shed permits guide covers when it does.
• Tools you do not own, and your time.

Where not to cut

Keep the skids and the floor frame in lumber treated for ground contact. The treatment category for wood in contact with the ground is UC4A; lumber treated only for use above ground is a different category and is not meant for skids. Keep the fasteners the list names, and keep the Z-flashing: a horizontal seam without it lets water behind the siding, and it is $5.98 a piece. Save on the gravel instead, by buying it in bulk.

Price your own shed

The numbers above are one day’s shelf prices. The shed cost calculator takes the same list for any size and lets you type your own store’s price over each line, and the shed material list shows the full counts for the most common sizes. For every gable size in one place, see the gable shed plans. If you are weighing a built shed against building one, the Tuff Shed cost page sets the makers’ published prices next to these lists.