Resin driveway cost per m²
£35 to £120 per m² installed. The rate is not one number — it changes with the size of the drive, whether groundwork is included, and which cost guide you happen to be reading.
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.
The short answer
Resin driveway cost per m² in the UK is £35 to £120 installed, covering materials and labour.
Three of the four guides tracked here sit between £40 and £100. Checkatrade is the outlier above — £120 per m² for a medium drive, reviewed by RICS and CIOB estimators. HomeHow is the outlier below at £35 to £50, and its guide is a year older than the others, which matters in a market where aggregate and haulage have not got cheaper.
The rate falls as the drive gets bigger
This is the part single-figure answers always miss. A per-m² rate is not a constant — it is a total divided by an area, and the fixed costs of the job do not scale.
Checkatrade shows it most clearly, because it publishes material and labour separately:
- 20m² — £70 material + £70 labour = £140 per m²
- 50m² — £70 material + £50 labour = £120 per m²
- 100m² — £70 material + £30 labour = £100 per m²
Material stays flat; labour per m² more than halves. HomeHow shows the same shape from a different starting point, dropping from £50–£65 per m² at 20m² to £35–£40 at 100m².
So if you have a small drive, the honest expectation is the top of the range, not the middle. A one-car drive costing more per m² than a three-car one is not an installer taking advantage — it is a crew, a mixer and a day on site divided by twenty square metres instead of a hundred.
What is usually not in a per-m² rate
The per-m² figure almost always describes the surface. These come on top, and they are the reason quotes land so far apart:
| Item | Published cost | Applies when |
|---|---|---|
| Excavate and remove existing surface | £10 – £20 per m² | The old drive has to come out |
| New Type 1 MOT sub-base | £15 – £30 per m² | The base is broken up, or there never was one |
| Edging or borders | £15 – £40 per linear metre | The drive is open-sided |
| Drainage improvement | £300 – £1,000 | The ground does not take water away |
| Soakaway | £660 – £1,200 | Clay ground, or a non-permeable base |
All of the per-m² figures above are MyBuilder’s — it is the only one of the four guides that itemises groundwork at all. The other three fold it into the headline rate, or leave it out, and do not say which.
That single fact explains most of the £35-to-£120 spread. A guide quoting £40 per m² and a guide quoting £120 per m² may be describing the same driveway, with one of them including a full excavate-and-rebuild and the other assuming a sound base.
Getting from a rate to a number
Multiply the rate by your area, then add the groundwork lines that apply to you. That is exactly what the calculator on this site does, and it shows every line it used.
The one input worth getting right is the base. If you genuinely do not know whether the existing surface is sound, price it as though it is not. That is the answer that protects your budget, and any installer can tell you the truth in ten minutes on site.
Resin driveway cost per m², by source
The same job, priced by four published UK cost guides. Nothing here is averaged and no favourite has been picked — this is what each one actually says.
| Source | Small (about 20–30m²) | Medium (about 50–60m²) | Large (about 90–100m²) | Guide updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HomeHow | £50 – £65 per m² | £43 – £50 per m² | £35 – £40 per m² | Aug 2025 |
| MyBuilder | £40 – £70 per m² | £40 – £70 per m² | £60 – £100 per m² | Aug 2026 |
| MyJobQuote | £60 – £100 per m² | £58 – £92 per m² | £56 – £89 per m² | Aug 2026 |
| Checkatrade | £140 per m² | £120 per m² | £100 per m² | Apr–Jun 2026 |
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. |
Resin driveway cost by size
Per-m² rates only tell you so much. These are the whole-job numbers for the sizes UK drives actually come in, with the published figures behind each one.
20m²
one carabout 4m wide by 5m deep — a single bay in front of a terrace or semi
20m² cost breakdown →40m²
one car with turning room, or two nose to tailabout 5m wide by 8m deep — a standard semi-detached frontage
40m² cost breakdown →50m²
two cars side by sideabout 6m wide by 8.5m deep — the standard two-car detached frontage
50m² cost breakdown →60m²
two cars with turning spaceabout 6m wide by 10m deep, or an L-shape round the side of a house
60m² cost breakdown →100m²
three to six carsa wide in-and-out frontage, or a drive plus a turning area
100m² cost breakdown →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.