Resin driveway cost calculator
Enter the size of your drive and what is on it now. You get an itemised range, every line labelled with the published guide its rate came from. No email, no phone number, no gate.
Work out what your resin driveway should cost
Put in the size of your drive and what is there now. You get a range built from published UK cost-guide rates, with every line itemised and sourced — not a number invented to get you on the phone.
That is the full spread of what the four main UK cost guides publish for a resin bound driveway, materials and labour included. They disagree by more than a factor of three, so any single figure quoted to you as the resin driveway cost is one guide's opinion rather than a market rate.
This is an estimate built from published UK cost guides. It is not a quote and not an offer. We do not install driveways and we have not seen your site. The real number depends on your ground, your existing base, access and the aggregate you choose, which is what a site survey is for.
Edging is estimated from the area by treating the drive as a square, which is as close as anyone can get without a site plan. A long thin drive needs more edging than this; a drive with walls on three sides needs far less.
How this calculator works
Most driveway calculators are a lead form with arithmetic attached: you answer six questions, and the number arrives by email after someone has your phone number. This one shows you the result on the page and shows you how it got there.
The method is deliberately boring:
- Surface. Your area multiplied by the published per-m² rate for your size band. Small drives use a higher rate than large ones, because that is what the guides publish.
- Groundwork. Excavation and sub-base are added per m² if your base needs replacing, and left out entirely if it does not.
- Edging. Estimated from the perimeter, at the published per-linear-metre rate, scaled by how many sides of the drive are open.
- Drainage. Added only if you say it applies. Never assumed.
Every rate carries the name of the guide it came from. Nothing is averaged, smoothed or adjusted.
What it deliberately does not do
It does not guess at drainage. If you answer “I do not know” on drainage, the line is left out of the total and flagged, rather than quietly added. An estimate that silently inflates itself is worse than no estimate.
It does assume the worst on the base. If you do not know the condition of what is under your drive, it prices a full excavate and re-base. That is the asymmetric risk: being wrong in the optimistic direction is how people end up £2,000 short halfway through a job.
It does not know your site. Access, levels, the state of the ground, how far a grab lorry has to reverse — none of that is in here, and all of it is in a real quote.
About the edging estimate
Edging is charged by the metre, and area alone does not tell you a perimeter. The calculator treats the drive as a square and works the perimeter from the area, which is as close as anyone can get without a site plan.
That will be roughly right for a typical rectangular frontage, low for a long narrow drive down the side of a house, and high for a wide shallow bay. If your drive is an unusual shape, take the edging line as indicative and ask installers to price it separately.
Read the range, not the middle
The output is a range, and the range is wide on purpose — the published sources are that far apart. The bottom of it is a straightforward overlay onto a sound base using standard aggregate. The top is a full excavation and rebuild priced at the dearest guide’s rates.
Where you land inside it is decided almost entirely by the base and the edging, which is why those are the two questions worth answering carefully.
Then get three quotes. This is a sanity check to walk into that conversation with, not a substitute for it.
Published rates, by driveway size
Three of the four guides sit inside that band. Checkatrade is the outlier above it, and HomeHow, a year older than the rest, is the outlier below.
Small drives cost the most per m². The fixed parts of the job — mobilising, mixing, edging, making good — are spread over very little area.
- MyBuilder — £40–£70 per m²
- stated range for resin bound, not size-tiered
- HomeHow — £50–£65 per m²
- £1,000–£1,300 for a 20m² one-car drive
- MyJobQuote — £60–£100 per m²
- £1,800–£3,000 for 30m²
- Checkatrade — £140 per m²
- £2,800 for 20m² — £70 material plus £70 labour per m²
The size most UK front drives actually are, and the size the published guides have the most data on.
- MyBuilder — £40–£70 per m²
- £2,400–£4,200 for a 60m² drive
- HomeHow — £43–£50 per m²
- £2,150–£2,500 for a 50m² two-car drive
- MyJobQuote — £58–£92 per m²
- £3,500–£5,500 for 60m²
- Checkatrade — £120 per m²
- £6,000 for 50m² — £70 material plus £50 labour per m²
The rate per m² drops on bigger jobs: materials are bought in bulk, and labour per m² falls once the team is set up and laying.
- HomeHow — £35–£40 per m²
- £3,500–£4,000 for 100m²
- MyJobQuote — £56–£89 per m²
- £5,000–£8,000 for 90m²
- MyBuilder — £60–£100 per m²
- £6,000–£10,000 for 100m²
- Checkatrade — £100 per m²
- £10,000 for 100m² — £70 material plus £30 labour per m²
MyBuilder publishes both a headline rate of £40–£70 per m² and a worked example of £6,000–£10,000 for 100m², which is £60–£100 per m². Those two numbers do not reconcile. We have used the worked example for the large band and the headline rate for the smaller ones, and flagged it here rather than quietly picking one.
Groundwork and extras
These are the lines that decide whether a resin drive costs £2,000 or £6,000. Only MyBuilder itemises them; the other guides fold them into the per-m² rate or leave them out entirely.
| Item | Published cost | Source | What drives it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Excavate and remove the existing surface | £10 – £20 per m² | MyBuilder | Varies with site conditions and how easily a machine and a grab lorry can reach the drive. |
| New Type 1 MOT sub-base | £15 – £30 per m² | MyBuilder | Needed whenever the existing base is broken up, or there was never one. Resin laid on a bad base fails at the edges first. |
| Removing an existing resin driveway | £800 – £1,800 whole job | MyJobQuote | Quoted as a whole-job figure rather than per m². |
| Edging or borders | £15 – £40 per linear metre | MyBuilder | Resin bound has to be laid up to a firm edge. With walls or an existing kerb you may need none of this; an open drive needs it all the way round. |
| Drainage improvement | £300 – £1,000 whole job | MyBuilder | Only needed where the ground does not take water away on its own. |
| Soakaway installation | £660 – £1,200 whole job | MyJobQuote | MyJobQuote puts a typical soakaway at around £850, smaller systems from £660 and larger ones at £1,000–£1,200. HomeHow gives £700–£1,000 for the same job. Most likely on clay ground, or when laying over a non-permeable base. |
| Dropped kerb | £370 – £2,000 whole job | HomeHow | The widest disagreement of any figure on this site. HomeHow says the work starts from £300 plus a £70–£100 council application; MyJobQuote puts the average at around £2,000. It is council-dependent, and it is a separate job from the driveway. |
Where these prices come from
Four published UK cost guides. We read them on 27 September 2026, recorded what each one says, and cite them per figure rather than blending them into an average that belongs to nobody.
- Guide updated:
- Cost tables dated April–June 2026; page dated 02/2026
- Read by us:
- 2026-09-27
- Guide updated:
- 26 August 2026
- Read by us:
- 2026-09-27
- Guide updated:
- 21 August 2026
- Read by us:
- 2026-09-27
- Guide updated:
- 29 August 2025
- Read by us:
- 2026-09-27
Ready to get real numbers?
Send us the drive and your postcode and the enquiry goes to installers covering your area. A published range is a sanity check, not a price.
Get resin driveway quotes
Tell us the drive and where you are. Your details go to installers who cover your postcode — we publish costs, we do not lay driveways, and nobody gets your number until you send this.
- We are a cost guide, not an installer — so we have nothing to gain from talking the price up.
- Your postcode decides who hears about it. No postcode, no route.
- Three quotes is the standard advice, because the same job varies 20 to 30 per cent between firms.
- No number is a quote until someone has stood on your drive.
Estimates on this site are arithmetic on published cost-guide rates. They are not quotes, not offers, and not based on seeing your property.