About The Fence Calculator

The Fence Calculator started the way most good tools do—out of personal frustration.

A couple of years ago I decided to build a 200-foot cedar privacy fence around my backyard. I spent an embarrassing amount of time standing in the lumber aisle at Home Depot, calculator app open, trying to figure out exactly how many 1×6 dog-ear pickets, 4×4 posts, and bags of Quikrete I needed. Every website I found either gave vague ranges or tried to upsell me on a $5,000 professional installation.

So I built my own calculator. I entered the real numbers—standard 3.5-inch pickets with a 1/4-inch gap, 8-foot post spacing, 2 bags of 60-pound concrete per post—and printed a shopping list. That single afternoon saved me a second trip to the store and roughly $200 in over-buying.

I figured if it helped me, it could help other homeowners too. So I cleaned up the math, added support for chain link, vinyl, split rail, aluminum, and picket fences, and put it online for free.

The Fence Calculator is and always will be 100% free. The site earns a small commission when you click through to Amazon to buy materials—but the calculator works exactly the same whether you click those links or not.

Every number in the calculator is based on real-world building specs, not guesswork. I cross-reference post spacing, picket dimensions, and concrete requirements against manufacturer specs and building codes. If you find an error, I genuinely want to know—accuracy is the whole point.

Thanks for using The Fence Calculator. I hope it saves you a trip to the store.