If you are comparing mudjacking vs. polyjacking quotes for a sunken driveway, patio, garage floor, or slab, the price gap between the two methods is real, and so is the confusion around it. Most comparisons online come from companies that sell one of the two methods. We at DeVooght House Lifters sell neither. We lift and stabilize entire structures, including slab-on-grade homes, so we can walk you through the mudjacking cost picture, the polyjacking premium, and the situations where injecting anything under your slab is money wasted.
Key takeaways from this article:
- Mudjacking costs less upfront: Expect roughly $3 to $8 per square foot, with most residential projects landing between $500 and $2,000.
- Polyjacking costs more but lasts longer: Prices run $5 to $25 per square foot, and a properly installed foam lift often holds 10 to 15 years or more.
- Per-square-foot pricing misleads: Void depth and lift height drive your final bill more than the surface area of the slab.
- Material weight matters on weak soil: Mudjacking slurry weighs around 100 pounds per cubic foot; polyurethane foam weighs 2 to 4 pounds.
- Neither method fixes failing soil: When settlement is structural, repeated jacking becomes the most expensive path of all.
- Soil and water conditions should pick the winner: Wet, sandy, or coastal ground treats the two materials very differently.
What Do Mudjacking and Polyjacking Actually Cost?
Mudjacking, also called slab jacking, pumps a slurry of soil, sand, cement, and water through drilled holes to lift sunken concrete. It runs about $3 to $8 per square foot. Polyjacking injects two-part polyurethane foam that expands under the slab, and it runs $5 to $25 per square foot. Most contractors for either method carry minimum job fees of $300 to $700, so a single sidewalk section costs far more per foot than a full driveway.
Here is what most cost articles leave out: square footage is the least reliable predictor of your final invoice. Contractors price the job on the depth of the voids under the slab and the amount of lift required, because those two factors decide how much material gets pumped. A small patio sitting over a deep washout can cost more than a large driveway that settled one inch. That is why two quotes for the same slab can differ so widely, and why any estimate given without measuring the settlement deserves skepticism.
The cost factors that move your quote the most:
- Void depth below the slab: Deeper voids swallow more slurry or foam, and the material is the bill.
- Lift height: Raising a slab four inches costs far more than correcting a one-inch drop.
- Access: Slabs boxed in by landscaping, fences, or tight lot lines add 20 to 50 percent in labor.
- Slab condition: Cracked sections may need stabilization or patching before any lifting starts.
Once you understand what drives the number, the next question is whether the polyjacking premium buys anything you will actually use.
Why Does Polyjacking Cost Two to Four Times More?
The premium comes from the material, not the labor. Polyurethane foam is a manufactured product injected through 5/8-inch holes, while mudjacking slurry is mixed from cheap local materials and pumped through holes one to two inches wide. What you get for the extra money shows up after the crew leaves. Foam cures in about 15 to 30 minutes, so you can drive on the slab the same hour. Mudjacking slurry needs 24 to 72 hours before the concrete takes traffic.
Longevity separates the two even further. Polyurethane resists moisture, will not wash out, and holds for 10 to 15 years or longer when installed correctly. Mudjacking warranties commonly run only two to five years because the water-heavy slurry shrinks as it cures and erodes when groundwater moves under the slab. The weight difference compounds the problem: slurry adds roughly 100 pounds per cubic foot on top of soil that already failed once, while foam adds 2 to 4 pounds.
“When a homeowner tells us a slab was lifted twice in six years, we already know what was pumped under it. Paying half price for a repair you buy twice is not a discount.” – Jason DeVooght
So the honest math compares total cost of ownership, not the per-foot rate. A $900 mudjacking job repeated every five years costs more over fifteen years than one $1,800 polyjacking job, and that is before you count the disruption of each repeat visit. Whether that math applies to your slab depends almost entirely on the ground underneath it.
Which Method Wins for Your Soil and Water Conditions?
The material you inject has to live in your soil, so your soil should pick the method. On stable inland ground with minor settling and no drainage problems, mudjacking performs well and the lower price is a fair trade. The calculation changes near water. We work along the Jersey Shore, the Carolina coast, and the Great Lakes, and in those conditions high water tables and storm saturation attack a cement slurry from the day it cures. Polyurethane is hydrophobic, meaning water cannot penetrate or dissolve it, which makes foam the clear winner for coastal slabs, poorly drained lots, and freeze-thaw regions where frost heave works on wet fill every winter.
Sandy soil deserves special mention because so many of our project sites sit on it. Sand shifts under concentrated weight, and a heavy slurry column pressing into loose coastal sand recreates the exact settlement you paid to fix. Lightweight foam spreads its load and compresses the sand around it, which stabilizes rather than burdens the base.
How to match the method to your site:
- Stable clay or loam, minor settling: Mudjacking delivers acceptable service life at the lowest price.
- Sandy, coastal, or high-water-table ground: Polyjacking justifies its premium through moisture resistance and low weight.
- Deep voids from washout: A hybrid approach can fill the bulk void with slurry, then finish the precision lift with foam.
- Slabs you cannot keep out of service: Foam’s same-day cure wins regardless of soil, which is why commercial owners rarely choose slurry.
“We have separated hundreds of slabs from coastal homes, and the ground underneath tells the story every time. Material that fights water survives near water. Material that absorbs it does not.” – the team at DeVooght
Both methods share one blind spot, though, and it is the one that costs homeowners the most: neither can rescue a slab sitting on soil that has genuinely failed.
When Is Neither Method the Right Repair?
Mudjacking and polyjacking are leveling tools for flatwork and lightly loaded slabs. They correct the symptom of settlement by filling the space it left behind. When the settlement is structural, meaning the soil under a load-bearing slab keeps consolidating, washing out, or shifting, injected material only postpones the next drop. We see this pattern often: a slab jacked once, jacked again, and then the owner calls a structural contractor and pays for the deep repair that was needed from the start, plus the two jacking jobs that bought nothing.
Our team has lifted slab-on-grade houses together with their slab floors, including a house and slab floor lift in Marshallberg, NC, and those projects show us what failed jacking looks like from underneath. When soil can no longer carry the load, the repair has to bypass that soil entirely. As a CHANCE Certified Installer, we drive helical piles down to load-bearing strata, which transfers the structure’s weight to ground that will not move. For homeowners, helical pile stabilization costs more than any jacking job, but it ends the cycle instead of renting relief in five-year increments.
Signs your slab problem is structural, not cosmetic:
- The slab carries the house: Settlement in a structural slab foundation, not a detached patio or driveway, calls for an engineering assessment before any injection.
- Repeat settlement after a previous lift: Soil that rejected one fill will reject the next one.
- Cracks that keep widening: Active movement in walls or floors points to ongoing soil failure. Our guide to the common signs of foundation problems covers what to watch.
- Water running under the slab: Until drainage is corrected, every fill material is temporary.
“Nobody who sells concrete leveling gets paid to tell you the soil is the problem. We do not sell either method, so we can. Fix the ground first, then worry about the slab.” – David DeVooght
If your slab passes those tests, jacking is a legitimate repair and this comparison gives you the numbers to negotiate with. If it fails them, you need a structural answer, and we cover the full menu of options in our guide to slab foundation repair methods.
Getting the Right Repair the First Time
After 55 years of lifting, moving, and stabilizing structures across the East Coast, the Gulf, and the Great Lakes, we have learned that the cheapest repair is the one you only pay for once. Mudjacking wins on upfront price, polyjacking wins on lifespan and wet-soil performance, and helical piles win when the soil itself has quit. Our team can assess your slab, tell you honestly which category you are in, and handle the structural work if that is what your property needs, including slab separation home lifts when the whole structure has to come up.
If you need help with slab repair or foundation stabilization, contact the DeVooght team or call us toll-free at 844-203-9912.