Fence is priced by the foot, and the foot is where bids go wrong — the run is easy, and then gates, corner posts, tear-out and a slope that eats an extra hour per hole all land somewhere nobody measured. Put a real job in below. It prices the run at your own per-linear-foot rate, carries gates and posts as their own per-each lines the way a quote actually reads, and hands back the bid total and what that works out to per foot. The starting numbers come from BidTorch's own starter fence catalog — they are a placeholder for your rates, not a claim about what fence costs in your market.
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The values below are starting points. Replace every one of them with your own — the answer is only as good as what you put in.
Linear feet of fence, gates excluded — measure the run, not the property line. The 320 is a placeholder; put in a job you actually bid.
What you CHARGE per foot installed, not what it costs you — posts, rails and pickets folded into the foot. The 32 is BidTorch's starter-catalog rate for 6-ft wood privacy; chain-link 4' starts at 18, aluminum ornamental 4' at 38 and vinyl privacy 6' at 42. Replace them with yours.
Slope, rock, clay or tree roots — anything that makes every post hole slower. This rides the fence run only; a gate does not get harder because the ground did. Leave at 0 for flat, clean dirt.
Counted, not measured into the run. A gate is hardware and labor, not a stretch of fence.
Starter-catalog rate for a 4-ft walk gate. Yours will move with material and hardware.
Wider opening, heavier posts, drop rod. Priced per each like the walk gate.
Starter-catalog rate for a 10-ft double drive gate.
The posts that take load and need more concrete than a line post. Count the corners, the ends and either side of every gate.
Starter-catalog rate. This is the line most bids forget entirely.
Feet of existing fence coming down, including haul-off. Often the whole run — and it is not in your per-foot install rate.
Starter-catalog rate for tear-out and haul. Old posts set in concrete cost more than panels.
Where the jurisdiction requires one. A pass-through, but it belongs on the bid rather than in your pocket.
Material plus labor per foot — what the run actually costs YOU, before margin. The calculator reads your margin back out of the run; it never marks the bid up a second time, because the rate above is already a sell rate. The 18 is a placeholder, not a claim about your costs. Set it to 0 and the run reads as 100% margin, which is simply what the arithmetic says when a job costs you nothing.
$11,470
Run plus gates plus extras. This is the number on the quote.
The bid divided by the run. Useful as a sanity check against your own past jobs — it is YOUR number, not a market rate, and it climbs when gates and tear-out are carrying weight.
Linear feet at your rate, plus the hard-digging surcharge if you set one.
What the slope, rock or roots added. Shown separately so you can defend it or drop it.
Walk and drive gates as per-each lines — the way they read on the quote, and the way they get forgotten when a bid is one price per foot.
Corner and terminal posts, tear-out and haul, and the permit. The margin leak on most fence bids lives in this line.
Measured on the run alone — the only line you gave a cost for. Gates, posts and tear-out are excluded, so this is not the margin on the whole job.
Gross profit as a percentage of what you charge for the run. Margin, not markup — if that distinction is fuzzy, the markup-vs-margin calculator is the one to read first.
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A fence quote that is one rate times one length is a fence quote that loses money on the parts that are not fence. Gates are hardware and hanging labor, and they are counted, not measured. Corner, end and terminal posts take more concrete and more time than the line posts between them, and there are more of them than people remember once you count both sides of every gate. Tear-out is its own job with its own haul-off. None of that is inside your per-foot install rate, and all of it is inside the price the homeowner pays. The calculator keeps them apart on purpose, because that is how the quote has to read if you want to defend it.
The difference between a flat backyard and a slope with tree roots is not material, it is hours — the same post hole takes longer, and it takes longer on every single one. That is why it rides the run as a percentage rather than as a flat add: it scales with the number of holes, which is what actually drives it. It deliberately does not touch the gates, because hanging a gate does not get harder because the ground did. If you would rather carry it as its own visible line on the customer's quote, that works too — the point is that it is priced somewhere instead of absorbed.
The rate you enter is what you CHARGE per foot, so your margin is already inside it. That is why entering your cost per foot at the bottom changes the margin readout and does not change the bid by a cent: cost is there to tell you what the run leaves you, not to mark the price up again. Marking up a sell rate is the most common way a bid quietly drifts above the market without anyone deciding to raise prices. If you want to work the other direction — from cost to the price a target margin needs — that is the markup-vs-margin calculator, and the two agree by design.
What the calculator lays out is the shape of a line-item quote: the run at a rate per foot, gates and posts as per-each lines, tear-out by the foot. In BidTorch that is exactly how a fence catalog is built — rows carry their own unit, so a 320-foot run prices as quantity times your per-foot rate while a gate sits beside it priced per each. Then you can hold the run constant and swap the material to send the same job three ways — pressure-treated, cedar, vinyl — on one branded link, and let the homeowner pick a rung instead of picking between you and two other bids.
No. Measure the run without the gate openings and price each gate per each. A gate is hardware and hanging labor, and folding it into a per-foot average hides what it costs you — which is exactly how a bid with three gates ends up underwater against one with none.
There is no honest single answer, because the two biggest drivers are local labor and what the fence is made of. What this calculator does instead is let you put YOUR rate in and see what the whole job bids at — including the gates, posts and tear-out that the per-foot figure never covers. If you are trying to set that rate from scratch, work from your own cost per foot and a target margin rather than from a number off the internet.
Not proportionally — a taller fence needs deeper posts and more material per foot, so the rate moves by more than the height alone would suggest. Rather than apply a multiplier we cannot source for your market, the calculator asks for the rate you charge at the height you are actually building, which is the number you can defend.
On the bid, as its own line by the foot, never inside the install rate. Old posts set in concrete are slower to pull than panels are to unscrew, and haul-off is a real cost. Quoting tear-out invisibly is how a re-fence job earns less than a new one.
Yes — fence is line-item work in BidTorch, not area work. Catalog rows carry their own unit, so the run prices per linear foot and gates and posts price per each, which is the same structure the calculator uses. The starting rates here are BidTorch's own starter fence catalog.
Build this same bid as a sendable quote: the run by the foot, gates and posts per each, three material options on one branded link, e-signature and a deposit from the homeowner's phone.
Quoting these jobs for customers? See quoting software for fence contractors.
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