How much does gutter installation cost?

Q: How much does gutter installation cost?

Gutter installation costs about $3,200 for a typical home, and this is the rare figure where two independent sources land in the same place: This Old House (October 9, 2026) gives $600 to $5,800 for a 2,000 square foot home with an average of $3,200, and Fixr (January 31, 2025) gives $2,320 to $4,222 with a national average of $3,223. What moves your own number is the material, which This Old House prices from $3 to $29 per linear foot.

The headline, and why we trust it

Source	Range	Average
This Old House, October 2026	$600 to $5,800 for a 2,000 sq ft home	$3,200
Fixr, January 2025	$2,320 to $4,222	$3,223

The averages differ by 23 dollars, from two guides published twenty months apart with different methods. On most topics we are flagging disagreements between sources; here the agreement is the finding. Treat roughly $3,200 as a real central figure.

The ranges differ because This Old House includes the cheap end of the market, a small house in vinyl, while Fixr's band describes the middle.

Note added 14 October 2026. This Old House has since published a dedicated seamless gutter guide, updated 13 October 2026, which puts the same 200 linear feet at $1,984, not $3,200. Seamless is the common way gutters are fitted today, so that is not a side case. We have not changed the figures above, because they are what the installation guide and Fixr publish, but you should read seamless gutter cost before treating $3,200 as the price of a normal aluminum job. That page works through which of the two figures applies to you.

The material decides almost everything

This Old House prices gutter materials at $3 to $29 per linear foot, with vinyl and aluminum the cheapest at $3 to $8. Their figures by material:

Material	Total installed
Vinyl	$571
Aluminum	$1,535
Galvanized steel	$1,604
Steel	$1,716
Copper	$5,749

Copper costs about ten times vinyl. Fixr puts the same gap another way: high-end metal gutters cost $10 to $20 more per linear foot than PVC.

What you get for the extra money

This Old House cites InterNACHI on service life:

Material	Lifespan	Their note
Vinyl and PVC	around 25 years or more	prone to cracking and warping in extreme temperatures
Aluminum	20 to 40 years or more	the industry standard, but dents from hail or branches
Galvanized steel	around 20 years	stronger than aluminum, heavier to install

Our arithmetic, marked as ours. Aluminum at $1,535 over 20 to 40 years is $38 to $77 a year. Vinyl at $571 over 25 years is $23 a year. Copper at $5,749 would need to last far longer than either to compete on cost alone, which is why it is bought for appearance rather than economics. This Old House publishes the prices and the lifespans separately; the division is ours, and it ignores repair costs, which our repair page shows are also higher for premium materials.

The costs that are not in the headline

From Fixr, and these are the ones that turn a quote into a bigger quote:

Removing the old gutters: $1.31 to $2.38 per linear foot. This applies when you are replacing rather than fitting to a house with none. On 200 feet that is $262 to $476.
Downspouts: $7.43 to $13.51 per linear foot. Taller houses need longer ones, so storey count hits you twice. Our downspout page sorts out why four published downspout figures are not comparable.
Heat tape: around $5 per linear foot for the material, more fitted. This is the electrical cord that melts ice and prevents ice dams.

This Old House names the same drivers in general terms: home size, chosen materials, installation complexity, and local labor rates.

Our cost per linear foot page sets this average against the two other averages This Old House publishes for the same 200 feet, and against every material table in the cluster.

Our gutter cost calculator builds this from your own numbers, and our 2,000 square foot house page collects every published figure for the benchmark house.

Working out your own footage

Fixr's rule of thumb, which we also use on the cleaning page: every 100 square feet of house has about 10 linear feet of gutter. A 2,000 square foot home needs around 200 linear feet, which This Old House confirms from the other direction when discussing guard coverage.

A labelling note, added 14 October 2026. This Old House introduces that table as the total installation cost for a 200-foot system and then heads the column "Material Cost". The page does not settle which it means, so treat the column as the figure it publishes rather than as a definite total. Our copper page sets the $5,749 copper row against four other published copper figures.

Our arithmetic, marked as ours. 200 linear feet at This Old House's $3 to $8 for vinyl or aluminum is $600 to $1,600 in material, and at $29 for copper is $5,800. Both ends match their published totals, which is a reasonable check that the per-foot figures and the totals describe the same thing.

Could you do it yourself

What you would save is the labor line, and only on some jobs: seamless gutters are cut on site by machine and half-round needs skills rather than tools. Our do-it-yourself page prices the labor you would be saving and sets out where our sources draw the line.

If the gutters are failing rather than absent

Replacing an existing system is its own question, with its own disagreement between sources. See gutter replacement cost. If only a run or two is damaged, repair starts at a tenth of the price. And if you are considering guards at the same time, note that installers generally want new gutters underneath them first.

Sources

Price figures are national US ranges from the sources above as of the date shown. Your local price depends on labor rates, permits and site conditions. Read how we get our numbers.