$6 to $11 per square foot is the installed range for standard vinyl, against $9 to $15 for fiber cement in the same grade, and insulated vinyl closes some of that gap at $10 to $13. Both of these materials got more expensive in 2026, and they did not get more expensive in the same way or at the same time. Vinyl makers announced increases through April and May; fiber cement makers announced them in January, again in late May, and again at the end of June. That matters because almost every cost guide on this subject still quotes a fixed premium for fiber cement over vinyl, and a fixed premium is exactly the thing that stops being true when two materials move on different schedules. Here is what each one costs installed right now, and why the gap between them depends far more on which grade you are comparing than on which material you pick.
The Short Answer
Standard vinyl siding runs about $6 to $11 per square foot installed in 2026, with most straightforward re-sides landing between $7.50 and $8.50. Fiber cement runs about $9 to $15 per square foot installed. On a house with 1,600 square feet of exterior wall area, that is roughly $9,600 to $17,600 for vinyl and $14,400 to $24,000 for fiber cement, before tear-off, house wrap, permits, and any sheathing repair.
Those are installed numbers, meaning material and labor together. Labor is close to half the bill on a vinyl job and a little more than half on fiber cement, because fiber cement is heavier, has to be cut with dust control, and generally needs two people on the wall where vinyl does not.
| Grade | Installed cost per sq ft | 1,600 sq ft wall area |
|---|---|---|
| Standard vinyl | $6.00–$11.00 | $9,600–$17,600 |
| Insulated vinyl | $10.00–$13.00 | $16,000–$20,800 |
| Fiber cement, site-painted | $9.00–$15.00 | $14,400–$24,000 |
| Fiber cement, factory finish | $12.00–$18.00 | $19,200–$28,800 |
What Actually Changed in 2026
Siding pricing does not drift. It steps, on announced dates, when manufacturers publish increases to their distributors, and those announcements are public. Reading them is the fastest way to tell whether a cost guide you are looking at is current or is quoting last year’s numbers with this year’s date on the headline. Tracking those announced step increases, rather than guessing at a drift, is part of how we keep a range current – the full process is in How We Estimate.
On the vinyl side, the increases clustered in spring. CertainTeed’s took effect at the start of April at up to six percent. Westlake Royal’s vinyl siding and accessories followed in late April and again in mid-May, in the range of six to eight percent. Associated Materials and the Cornerstone and PlyGem lines took effect on May 1, at five and up to six percent respectively. PlyGem announced another in July. Aluminum accessories moved harder than the vinyl itself, at around fifteen percent.
On the fiber cement side the pattern was different: earlier, and repeated. James Hardie took increases effective at the start of January, again at the end of May, and again at the end of June, with the June increase split into a national and a Southwest regional announcement. Nichiha took one in January, added a fuel surcharge in April, and took another effective July 1. Allura’s landed at the start of February.
The practical upshot is that a quote written in February and a quote written in August are not describing the same market, and fiber cement quotes are the more perishable of the two. If a contractor’s number is more than about sixty days old, ask them to re-confirm it rather than assuming they will honor it.
Vinyl: What You Actually Pay
Material alone is roughly $3.50 to $7.50 per square foot depending on panel thickness, profile, and colour. The cheap end is builder-grade panel in a stocked colour; the top end is a thicker profile in a dark or custom colour, which costs more both because the resin package is different and because dark vinyl is more prone to warping and gets a more expensive formulation. Labor adds roughly $2.50 to $5.00 per square foot.
Insulated vinyl sits in its own bracket at about $10 to $13 per square foot installed. The foam backing does two things worth paying for: it stiffens the panel so the wall reads flatter and less wavy, and it adds a modest amount of R-value. It does not add enough R-value to pay for itself on energy savings alone in most climates, so treat the rigidity and the improved impact resistance as the reason to buy it and the insulation as a bonus.
Vinyl’s real cost advantage is not the material, it is the labor. It hangs light, cuts with a utility knife or shears, and one crew member can handle a full-length panel. That is why the labor half of the bill stays low even when material prices step up.
Fiber Cement: What You Actually Pay
Fiber cement material alone runs roughly $4.50 to $9.00 per square foot for plank, with factory-applied colour adding about $1 to $2 per square foot on top. Labor runs roughly $4.50 to $7.00 per square foot, which is where most of the premium over vinyl actually lives.
The labor number is higher for concrete reasons rather than as a market premium. The board is heavy enough that long planks are a two-person lift, cutting releases crystalline silica so the crew needs shears or dust-collecting saws and respirators, fasteners have to be placed accurately into studs rather than hung on a nailing hem, and site-painted product needs its cut ends sealed before it goes up. Every one of those is time on the wall.
Factory-finished product costs more per square foot but removes a painting trade from the schedule and comes with a much longer finish warranty than a site paint job. If you are pricing site-painted fiber cement, add the painting cost to your comparison or you are not comparing the two options honestly.
The Premium Is a Grade Comparison, Not a Material Comparison
Cost guides routinely state that fiber cement costs forty to sixty percent more than vinyl. Run the numbers above and that turns out to be an artifact of which two products got compared rather than a fact about the materials.
Compare like grades and the gap is narrower than the headline. Mid-range vinyl at $8.50 against mid-range fiber cement at $12.00 is a premium of about forty percent. At the top of both ranges, $11.00 against $15.00 is closer to thirty-five percent. At the bottom, $6.00 against $9.00 is fifty percent, because the cheapest vinyl is genuinely cheap in a way the cheapest fiber cement is not.
Compare across grades and you can produce almost any number you like. Builder-grade vinyl against factory-finished James Hardie is $6.00 against $18.00, which is a premium of two hundred percent and is the comparison that generates the alarming figures. Insulated vinyl against site-painted fiber cement is $10.00 to $13.00 against $9.00 to $15.00, which overlap so heavily that the material is close to a wash and the decision should be made on maintenance and appearance instead.
So the useful question is not what fiber cement costs relative to vinyl. It is which two specific products you are choosing between, and whether the cheaper one is cheap because it is a worse product or cheap because it is genuinely less work to install.
The Line Items Quotes Leave Out
Tear-off is the one most commonly understated, including by this guide in its previous version. Removal on its own runs about $0.25 to $1.00 per square foot for vinyl, and that is the number most sources quote — but it is removal, not disposal. Once container rental and landfill tipping fees are included, a realistic combined tear-off and disposal figure is about $1.00 to $2.50 per square foot. On 1,600 square feet that is $1,600 to $4,000, not the few hundred dollars the removal-only rate implies.
Asbestos changes the picture entirely. Siding on a house built before roughly 1990 may be asbestos-cement, and if it is, removal is a licensed abatement job at $7 to $20 per square foot rather than a tear-off. Test before you budget, not after the first panel comes off.
House wrap and a weather-resistive barrier run $0.50 to $1.00 per square foot and are not optional on a full re-side. A bid that does not name the barrier is a bid that may be planning to reuse whatever is already on the wall.
Permits run $150 to $500 in most municipalities and can reach $1,500 in jurisdictions with design review or historic overlay.
Sheathing repair is the classic mid-project surprise, because nobody can price it until the old siding is off and the wall is open. Get the per-sheet rate written into the contract in advance so the number is agreed while you still have leverage.
Estimate Your Project
Enter your exterior wall area and pick the grade you are actually being quoted. The estimate includes materials, labor, house wrap, and a typical permit fee, and adds tear-off and disposal if you are replacing existing siding. It is a planning range, not a quote.
Which One to Choose
Choose vinyl if the budget is the constraint, if the house is a rental or a flip, or if you are in a climate without hail and without wildfire exposure. It is genuinely good at what it does, and the modern thick profiles look far better than the reputation vinyl earned in the nineties.
Choose fiber cement if you want the wall to read as painted wood, if your area has hail or wildfire risk, or if you intend to own the house long enough for a fifty-year product to matter against a thirty-year one. It is also the better choice on any elevation that takes direct afternoon sun in a hot climate, where dark vinyl can distort.
If you are torn, price insulated vinyl against site-painted fiber cement specifically. That is the comparison where the two overlap on cost, so the decision comes down entirely to what you want and not to what you can afford.
Practical Tips
Get itemized quotes, not lump-sum numbers. Ask each contractor to break out material, labor, tear-off and disposal, house wrap, and trim separately. Lump-sum bids make it easy to hide a skipped step, and house wrap is the step most often skipped.
Ask how sheathing repair is billed and get the per-sheet rate in writing before work starts.
Ask when the quoted material price was last confirmed with the distributor. Given how many increases both materials took in 2026, a stale quote is a change order waiting to happen.
Get three quotes, and be suspicious of the low one in a way you would not be with a smaller job. On a re-side, the cheapest bid is frequently cheap because it assumes no tear-off surprises, no barrier, or no trim replacement.
The headline comparison for 2026 is that fiber cement costs roughly thirty-five to fifty percent more than vinyl when you compare equivalent grades, not the forty to sixty percent that gets quoted, and not the two hundred percent you get by comparing the cheapest vinyl to the most expensive Hardie. Decide which grade you actually want first, then compare the two materials at that grade — that is the only comparison that tells you anything useful about your own project.
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