Compare STL Roofers · The price gap
Where the price gap legitimately comes from
Suppose you have done the hard part and both quotes now describe the same roof. There will still be a difference. Here is where it actually comes from, in rough order of size.
This page deliberately does not publish price ranges. A dollar per square figure without a scope attached is the least useful number in the trade, it is stale within a season, and quoting one would undercut everything else on this site. What follows is the structure of the cost instead, which does not go out of date.
1. Overhead, which is most of it
Two companies can pay their crews similarly and still be thousands apart, because a roof does not only cost what it costs to install. It carries the office, the estimator's time, the sales commission if there is one, the general liability and workers compensation premiums, the warranty reserve, the service department that answers the phone in year four, and the vehicles. A company with none of those things is genuinely cheaper to run. It is also genuinely less likely to answer the phone in year four.
This is the single biggest legitimate driver, and it is invisible on the quote. It is why the question is never simply who is cheapest, it is what you are buying alongside the roof.
2. The cost of getting to your front door
Every company here pays something to find you: advertising, a canvassing team, lead purchases, sponsorship, a sales force on commission. That cost is real, it is paid per job, and it lands in the price. It is not corruption, it is arithmetic, and it is one reason a company that knocked on your door after a hailstorm is not automatically cheaper despite the volume.
A quote that arrives with an expiring discount is telling you the price was never fixed. Roofing materials and labour do not become cheaper because you signed on a Tuesday. A time limited price is a sales instrument, and its presence on the page should make you slower rather than faster.
3. Crew model and season
An employed crew costs money in February whether or not it rains. A subcontracted crew costs nothing until it is on a roof. Both models price that differently, and both are legitimate. The full comparison of the two. Season matters too: capacity in this metro tightens sharply after a hail event and in the autumn rush, and a quote written in a busy month is not the same quote as one written in a slow one.
4. Complexity, waste and access
The same square footage can be very different work. Pitch decides whether the crew walks or stages. Cut up roofs with hips, valleys, dormers and multiple chimneys waste far more material than a plain gable, because every cut throws away part of a shingle, and they take longer because every penetration is hand detailed. Access decides where the dumpster goes and how far material is carried.
5. Materials, and the parts nobody photographs
The shingle itself is a smaller share of the total than most homeowners expect. The rest of the material bill is underlayment, ice and water barrier, starter course, ridge cap, flashing, drip edge, fasteners and ventilation, and it is entirely possible for two quotes to name the same shingle and differ substantially on everything under it. That is a specification difference, and it belongs on the sheet rather than in the price column.
6. Disposal, and the weight of the old roof
Tear-off waste is billed by weight. Three layers of asphalt on an older St. Louis house is a great deal of weight and several dumpster loads, and a quote that assumed one layer has under-costed disposal as well as labour. This is a common source of a mid-job conversation, and it is avoidable by asking in advance. The lines that move.
7. The priced unknown
The most honest quotes are sometimes the highest, because they carry an allowance for what might be found under the shingles rather than deferring it. A decking unit price and a stated assumption about layers are not padding, they are a company telling you what it does not yet know. Compare those quotes against each other on the assumption, not on the total.
What is not a legitimate difference
- A discount that disappears when the salesperson leaves your kitchen.
- A price that changes when you mention you have another quote, without the scope changing.
- A large deposit requested before any material has been ordered or delivered.
- A total with no square count, no material named and no exclusions listed.
- Anything at all offered about your insurance deductible, which Missouri law bars a roofing contractor from advertising.
When the difference survives all of this, it is real, and at that point you are choosing between companies rather than between numbers. That is a much better problem to have, and it is the one this whole site is trying to get you to.
If you want a written scope that lines up against the two you already have, that is a phone call. The measurement, the photographs and the written scope are yours to keep whether or not you hire anybody.
Ask any company to account for its own gap
Once two quotes genuinely describe the same roof, what is left of the price difference is overhead, crew model, disposal, complexity, and the cost of having found you at all.
Keys will answer that question about its own number. This site is part of what it costs us to find you, and you are entitled to count that in.
Straight through to the Keys Roofing office. If you would rather talk it through than type it out, this is the line.
Ask for the third scope
Roof replacement. St. Louis metro only.
This goes to Keys Roofing and nowhere else. No company named anywhere on this site receives it, and none of them pay to be mentioned.