How much does window screen replacement cost?

Two averages, and then something better

This Old House is $117 higher, our subtraction, and attributes its figure to its team's research rather than to a survey.

Our note, marked as ours, and it is a reversal worth flagging. On the main pages of this section, This Old House's surveyed figures come in below Fixr's modelled ones, which we set out on our window replacement page. Here the order is flipped. That is a reason to treat neither average as settled and to look at what sits underneath them, which on this subject This Old House actually publishes.

The distribution, which is the real answer

This Old House reports the price points from its 2025 Windows Survey of 1,000 homeowners. Most answers clustered between $100 and $500 per window, with peaks at:

Our reading, marked as ours, and this is the whole point of the page. The single most common answer was $500, with more responses than any other figure listed. The average printed at the top of that same page is $317.

That is not a contradiction. It is what an average does to a spread that has clusters at both ends: it lands between them, at a value that fewer people actually paid than paid $500.

Our arithmetic: those four peaks account for 286 responses, and their own weighted mean is $278. So even inside the clusters, the centre sits below the most popular single answer.

What to do with it. Do not read $317 as "what a screen costs". Read the distribution as two realities: a cheap end around $100 to $250 where most jobs sit, and a substantial group paying around $500. Which one you are in depends on the next section.

What puts you in the $500 group

This Old House gives the span of the product itself: basic screens start from $50, while custom options go up to $1,188 or more, depending on quality, material and size.

Our reading, marked as ours. That span, from $50 to over $1,188, is wider than either published average suggests and it explains the two clusters. A standard-size screen in a stock frame is a cheap, almost commodity item. A screen that is non-standard in size, shaped, or specified in a heavier mesh is a made-to-order product, and made-to-order is where the $500 answers come from.

So the question to settle before pricing is not how much a screen costs, but whether yours is a stock size. If it is, the lower cluster applies and Fixr's $200 is a sensible expectation. If it is not, budget for the upper one.

Fixr notes its own lower bound at $65 for the simplest case.

Repair before replacement

A torn screen in a sound frame is not the same job as a new screen. Rescreening keeps the frame and replaces only the mesh, and it is the cheapest thing on this page.

Our view, marked as ours. Neither of our sources prices rescreening as a separate line, so we are not putting a figure on it. What we will say is that it is worth asking for, because a quote that jumps straight to replacement has skipped a step, and the frame is usually the part that survives. Our window repair page covers the same logic for the window itself, where small repairs start far below any replacement figure.

What to take from this

1. Ignore the headline average. The survey behind it shows a spread, not a centre.
2. $500 was the most common single answer, with more responses than any other price.
3. Stock size or not is the question that decides which cluster you are in.
4. Basic screens start at $50. If your windows are standard, that end is real.
5. Ask about rescreening before replacing the whole screen, since the frame usually survives.