Price per foot, per pound, per hundredweight and per ton — four readings of one rate
← Back to the calculatorRebar is sold by the pound, counted by the bar and pulled as a stick, so the same steel gets quoted in whichever unit the person at the counter happens to use. That is why “how much is rebar per foot” has no single answer: a price per foot only means something once you name the bar size, because a foot of #8 holds four times the steel of a foot of #4. The unit that does compare across bar sizes and across suppliers is dollars per pound.
The basis for every figure on this page: the published 2026 national retail average of $12.00 for a 20 ft stick of #4 bar, and the ASTM nominal weight of 0.668 lb per foot for that bar. Both are dated and sourced at the foot of the page. These are published market figures, not our prices, and not a quote.
Four units show up on rebar quotes, and they are all the same money in different clothes. Once you know which one you are holding, the conversion is a single multiplication:
| Unit | Who quotes it | What it contains | To dollars per pound |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per foot | Retail guides, some yards | Weight of that bar size | ÷ lb per foot |
| Per bar | Home centres, retail yards | Weight and the stock length | ÷ (lb/ft × length) |
| Per pound | Distributors | Nothing else — the pure rate | — already there |
| Per cwt | Mills, big yards | 100 lb of steel | ÷ 100 |
| Per short ton | Mills, invoices | 2,000 lb of steel | ÷ 2,000 |
Swipe the table sideways for more columns →
The last two columns of that table are the whole page in one line. Every unit collapses to dollars per pound — and dollars per pound is the only one of the five that carries no hidden variable. A price per foot hides the bar size. A price per bar hides the stock length. A price per cwt or per ton is just a scaled pound price. The weight page supplies the pounds these conversions divide by, and the size chart lists the nominal weight of every bar from #3 to #18.
Here is the trap, and it costs real money. Take one rate — $0.898 per pound, the retail average above — and apply it to six bar sizes. The price per pound is identical on every row, and the price per foot is not:
| Bar | lb per ft | $ per ft | 20 ft stick | $ per lb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #3 | 0.376 | $0.34 | $6.75 | $0.898 |
| #4 | 0.668 | $0.60 | $12.00 | $0.898 |
| #5 | 1.043 | $0.94 | $18.74 | $0.898 |
| #6 | 1.502 | $1.35 | $26.98 | $0.898 |
| #7 | 2.044 | $1.84 | $36.72 | $0.898 |
| #8 | 2.670 | $2.40 | $47.96 | $0.898 |
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The per-foot price moves by a factor of seven across the table. The per-pound price does not move at all. So a #8 bar is not “expensive rebar” — it is four times as much steel in the same length, at the same rate. Two consequences follow, and they are the reason this page exists:
The development length and hook and bend pages carry the same logic from the other end: bending a bar changes its shape and its cut length, but it does not add or remove steel, so a bent bar costs the same per pound as a straight one. Pay for the cut length, not the shape.
Four conversions cover every rebar quote you will be handed. All of them land on one number, and that number is what you compare:
Run the retail average through all four. The stick is 20 ft of #4, which weighs 20 × 0.668 = 13.36 lb:
One rate, four quotes. The reverse direction is just as quick: a yard that quotes $0.72 per pound — a published 2026 trade figure for reinforcing steel at mill or contractor level — is quoting $72.00 per cwt and $1,440 per short ton, and on a #4 bar that is $0.48 per foot and $9.62 for the same 20 ft stick. Retail and trade are different markets, roughly 25% apart on this comparison, which is why a single “rebar costs X per foot” claim is not worth much without a source and a date.
If you only ever read retail price guides you may never meet the hundredweight. In the supply chain it is the normal unit, and it is exactly defined. NIST Handbook 44 Appendix C, the US general tables of units of measurement, gives it as a chain of definitions:
The arithmetic that makes the shorthand safe is the ×20 relationship, and there is a clean public example of it. In its rebar price announcement of May 2026, the mill Gerdau raised “the transactional price of Concrete Reinforcing Bar Products in the United States by $1.50/cwt ($30 per net ton).” One and a half dollars per hundredweight, times twenty hundredweights to the ton, is thirty dollars per ton. The mill is not quoting two prices; it is quoting one price in the two units its customers use. And $1.50 per cwt is $0.015 per pound — which is how a mill-level price change reads once you put it in the unit this page is about.
A 20 ft × 20 ft slab on grade in #4 bar at 12 in o.c. both ways with a 1 in edge takes 20 bars each way: 40 bars, 800 ft and 534.4 lb. That is the same takeoff the quantity page works in full. Here it is priced, at the retail average and at the published trade figure, in all four units:
| Basis | Per lb | Per ft | 40 bars | 800 ft | 534.4 lb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retail average | $0.898 | $0.60 | $480.00 | $480.00 | $480.00 |
| Trade figure | $0.720 | $0.48 | $384.77 | $384.77 | $384.77 |
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Every column in a row gives the same total, which is the check that the units are being used correctly: 40 bars × $12.00, 800 ft × $0.60 and 534.4 lb × $0.898 all land on $480.00. The two rows differ by 24.7% because they are two different markets, not two different calculations. In short tons, that slab is 534.4 ÷ 2,000 = 0.267 short tons of takeoff steel, and at $1,796.41 per ton it is the same $480.00 again.
Put the whole method to work on the question that actually matters — which supplier is cheaper. Two yards quote the same #4 bar for the same slab:
| Quote as received | Convert | Dollars per lb | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yard A: $0.64 per foot | ÷ 0.668 lb/ft | $0.958 | — |
| Yard B: $12.40 per 20 ft bar | ÷ 13.36 lb | $0.928 | B is cheaper |
| Yard C: $91.00 per cwt | ÷ 100 | $0.910 | C is cheapest |
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Three different-looking quotes, one comparable number, and a clear winner — which you could not see at all from the units as quoted. Two checks belong on the end of it:
For #4 bar, the size used in most residential slabs and footings, the published 2026 national retail average is about $0.60 per linear foot, which is $12.00 for a standard 20 ft stick. The per-foot price is not one number, because rebar is priced by weight and bar sizes weigh different amounts per foot: at the same rate per pound, #3 is about $0.34 per foot, #5 about $0.94, #6 about $1.35 and #8 about $2.40. A contractor or mill level rate is lower than retail; a published 2026 trade figure of $0.72 per pound works out to about $0.48 per foot for #4. Always get a dated local quote.
From the same 2026 national retail average, #4 bar at $12.00 for a 20 ft stick is 13.36 lb, which is $0.898 per pound. The price per pound is the number that stays put: at that rate a #3, #5, #6, #7 and #8 bar are all $0.898 per pound, even though their price per foot ranges from $0.34 to $2.40. Published trade figures for 2026 put reinforcing steel in the $0.72 per pound range at mill or contractor level, or about $1,440 per short ton.
Neither is cheaper — they are the same price read in two units. Price per foot = price per pound × lb per foot, so at $0.898 per pound a #4 bar is $0.60 per foot and a #8 bar is $2.40 per foot, both still $0.898 per pound. The practical difference is comparability: a price per pound compares directly across bar sizes and suppliers, while a price per foot only compares two bars of the same size. Convert everything to dollars per pound before you compare quotes.
A hundredweight, abbreviated cwt, is 100 pounds. NIST Handbook 44 Appendix C defines 100 pounds = 1 hundredweight and 20 hundredweights = 1 ton = 2,000 pounds, and notes that when the terms are used unmodified they mean the 100-pound hundredweight and the 2,000-pound ton. That makes the conversion exact: price per hundredweight × 20 = price per ton, and price per hundredweight ÷ 100 = price per pound. Gerdau's rebar price announcement of May 2026 illustrates it by raising prices $1.50 per cwt, which it states as $30 per net ton — and 1.50 × 20 is 30. Do not use the 112-pound long hundredweight; it is a US commercial rarity and would inflate a price by 12%.
At the 2026 national retail average of $0.898 per pound, a 20 ft stick costs about $12.00 in #4, $18.74 in #5, $26.98 in #6, $36.72 in #7 and $47.96 in #8, because the stick weights differ: 13.36 lb, 20.86 lb, 30.04 lb, 40.88 lb and 53.40 lb. A 20 ft stick price is really a weight price in disguise, so divide the stick price by its weight to compare two suppliers. Stock lengths of 20, 30, 40 and 60 ft are common, so a quote per bar means nothing until the length is stated.
Because there is four times as much steel in a foot of it. A #4 bar weighs 0.668 lb per foot and a #8 bar weighs 2.670 lb per foot, four times as much, so at one rate per pound the #8 costs four times as much per foot. That is not a markup for size — the price per pound is identical. This is why bar size belongs on every price comparison: a per-foot quote that does not name the bar size is not a price at all.
Price the order weight, which is what leaves the yard: the whole stock lengths you actually buy, times their nominal weight per foot. The takeoff weight is the steel in the finished grid and is always the smaller figure, because laps and cutting remainders are not in it. The gap runs from nothing to about 20% depending on how your run lengths divide into the stock length, and every pound of it is invoiced. The rebar estimator page works the takeoff-to-order step, and the rebar tonnage page converts the order weight to short tons.
Only after you divide the per-bar price by that bar's weight. A per-bar quote already contains the stock length, so it is a weight price plus a length: $12.00 for a 20 ft #4 stick is $0.898 per pound, but $24.00 for a 40 ft #4 stick is the same $0.898 per pound, not a doubling. Ask for the bar size and the stock length, convert both quotes to dollars per pound, and then compare. A per-pound quote still needs one more check: whether the supplier bills the calculated nominal weight or a scale weight.