Match the method to the failure, then price it
Eight repair methods cover essentially all residential foundation work in the US. Each one answers a specific failure, and the reason to learn the map is that it makes a contractor's recommendation checkable. When someone proposes piers, you should be able to say what evidence would justify piers — and notice when that evidence is absent.
Failures sort into four families. Concrete has cracked, but the wall is holding its shape. A wall is being pushed inward by soil. A footing has lost the soil that carried it and dropped. Or water is arriving where it should not be. Those four call for entirely different work, and the price gap between the cheapest and the most expensive correct answer runs from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands.
One method is missing from most sales conversations and belongs at the top of yours: measuring first and doing nothing yet. Cracks that have stopped growing and floors that stopped moving years ago are a finished event. Pencil-marking crack ends with dates and re-checking after a full wet-and-dry season costs nothing and regularly turns a five-figure quote into a $1,000 – $5,000 cosmetic job.
Sealing and reinforcing cracks
Polyurethane injection fills a crack through drilled ports with an expanding resin that stays flexible after curing, which lets it tolerate the small seasonal movement every foundation has. It sets in a damp crack, so it is the default where stopping water is the goal. $350 – $900 per crack, done in hours; a DIY kit is $60 – $150 and is a fair match for a clean, accessible, non-structural vertical crack in poured concrete.
Epoxy injection uses the same ports and a structural adhesive that cures harder than the surrounding concrete, welding the two faces into a single element that carries load across the crack again. Same price band. Its limitation is rigidity: on a crack that is still moving, the concrete simply cracks again alongside the repair, so epoxy is specified when an engineer wants load transfer restored on a stable crack.
Carbon fiber straps are epoxy-bonded fabric strips run floor to ceiling every 4 – 6 feet, $400 – $800 each. They add tensile strength to a wall that is bowing, and they belong in the wall category more than the crack category — they hold what exists rather than restoring alignment.
Holding a bowing wall
A basement wall bows because saturated soil, expansive clay or frost is pushing laterally on it. Measure the bow first, with a taut string floor to ceiling and a ruler at mid-height. That single number steers the method.
Under about 2 inches, carbon fiber straps generally do the job at $2,500 – $7,000 for a wall. Beyond that, mechanical restraint takes over: wall anchors at $700 – $1,900 each, which connect an interior plate by a rod to a plate buried in your yard and can be tightened over seasons to recover some movement, or steel I-beams at $500 – $1,200 each where yard access is unavailable. Excavating and rebuilding the wall sits at the far end and is genuinely a last resort.
Any of these leaves the soil pressure in place. Correcting drainage, grading and downspouts belongs in the same project, and it is the cheapest line on the invoice.
Underpinning with piers
Piers answer settlement: the footing has dropped because the soil below it can no longer carry the load. All three pier types bypass that soil and transfer weight to competent ground at depth, and they differ in how they get there.
Push piers are steel tubes driven to refusal using the house's own weight as the reaction force, $1,250 – $2,400 each, typically 15 – 30 feet down and best on heavy structures. Helical piers are shafts with welded helix plates screwed in until installation torque confirms capacity, $1,400 – $3,100 each, 10 – 30 feet typical, and the right answer on light structures, additions and new construction where there is no building weight to push against. Concrete pressed pilings are stacked segments pressed to $900 – $1,700 per pier at typically 8 – 12 feet — cheaper, with a long regional track record, and covered in detail on steel vs concrete piers.
Whichever type, the total is set by pier count. Piers sit 6 – 8 feet apart along the affected footing: a settled corner is 4 – 6 piers ($5,000 – $14,000), one side is 8 – 12 ($10,000 – $30,000), a full perimeter is 20 or more ($25,000 – $60,000). Pier count is the number contractors disagree about most, which is why an independent structural engineer at $450 – $600 is worth buying before any bid above roughly $5,000.
Lifting a sunken slab
When a slab drops because a void opened beneath it — washed-out soil, poorly compacted fill — the repair is to fill the void and float the concrete back up, through holes about the size of a coin.
Mudjacking pumps a cement slurry at $3 – $6 per square foot, roughly $700 – $2,100 for a typical section. Polyurethane foam costs $5 – $25 per square foot, cures in minutes, uses smaller holes, is waterproof, and weighs a fraction of slurry, so it adds almost no load to soil that already failed.
Foam is the sounder choice for a slab attached to the house. For a driveway, patio or sidewalk over stable soil, mudjacking is genuinely adequate and costs a fraction of the alternative — worth saying plainly, because the cheaper method here is often the right one. Lifting of either kind fills a void; it leaves the erosion or leak that created the void for you to address separately.
Drainage — the category people skip
Water causes a large share of the failures above, and water work is the cheapest category on the list. Regrading soil away from the wall and extending downspouts runs $100 – $600 and resolves a surprising number of chronic damp basements outright.
Above that sits interior drain tile with a sump, $65 – $130 per linear foot, which collects water that reaches the wall and pumps it away. Exterior excavation and membrane, $95 – $210 per linear foot, stops water at the wall itself and is the answer where hydrostatic pressure is damaging the structure. Try the cheap end first; it fails cheaply and quickly if it was going to fail.
Every method, priced
| Method | Typical range | Unit | What drives it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crack injection (epoxy or polyurethane) | $350 – $900 | per crack | Cracking with no ongoing movement |
| Carbon fiber strap | $400 – $800 | per strap | Wall bowing under 2 in., spaced 4 – 6 ft |
| Wall anchor | $700 – $1,900 | per anchor | Larger bow; needs yard access |
| Steel I-beam brace | $500 – $1,200 | per beam | Interior-only alternative to anchors |
| Push pier | $1,250 – $2,400 | per pier | Settlement under a heavy structure |
| Helical pier | $1,400 – $3,100 | per pier | Settlement under a light structure |
| Concrete pressed piling | $900 – $1,700 | per pier | Shallow stable soil, regional practice |
| Slab jacking (a section) | $700 – $2,100 | per section | Void under a sunken slab |
| Mudjacking | $3 – $6 | per sq ft | Cement slurry; driveways, patios, walks |
| Polyurethane foam lifting | $5 – $25 | per sq ft | Light, fast, waterproof; slabs near the house |
| Interior drain tile + sump | $65 – $130 | per lin. ft | Chronic water entry at the wall-floor joint |
| Exterior membrane + excavation | $95 – $210 | per lin. ft | Stopping water at the wall itself |
| Pier and beam shimming | $150 – $400 | per pier | Reachable framing over a crawl space |
| Structural engineer’s report | $450 – $600 | per visit | Diagnosis with nothing to sell you |
Source: Compiled from published 2025–2026 national contractor pricing datasets across crack repair, underpinning, slab lifting and waterproofing categories, normalized to installed cost including labor. · Last reviewed July 30, 2026 · Reference data · How we compile these figures
Read the table by failure mode rather than by price. A method that costs more than another is only relevant if both address your actual problem — an expensive correct repair beats a cheap irrelevant one, and a cheap correct repair beats both.
Where to go next
- How foundation repair works — the process, stage by stage, with timelines.
- Pier and beam vs slab — why your foundation type changes the repair bill.
- Signs of foundation problems — the walk-around that tells you which family you are in.
- Foundation repair cost — the full itemized cost guide.
- Cost calculator — a free estimate for your inputs, with no email required.