Metal gazebos

Every listing on this page says metal twice, once for the posts and once for the roof, and the two are separate choices. The posts are aluminum or steel. The roof is galvanized steel panels on most kits, a fabric canopy on six, polycarbonate in the roof on four, and adjustable louvers on one. Sunjoy sells the same steel roof on timber posts, and those kits are wood gazebos, not metal ones. Read the frame line in the listing before the roof line.

The frame decides what the gazebo asks of you and how much of the roof’s weight it holds up. The roof decides what the gazebo can do: keep off rain and snow, or shade a summer. This page sorts the kits by frame. The hardtop page sorts them by roof and carries the snow loads.

Aluminum and steel hold the same roof, and at the same size the gap between them is under two hundred dollars, with aluminum not always the dearer one. Aluminum does not rust, so a scratch during assembly is a mark and not a problem, and it is the lighter post to carry across a lawn. Steel is the heavier post and the cheaper one, and Sunjoy’s warranty says in plain words that oxidation where the coating is scratched is not a defect. Neither maker publishes a strength figure for the posts, so a claim that steel is stronger is a claim, and this page does not make it.

The mixed kits are the three Vista lean-tos: an aluminum and steel frame under a steel, polycarbonate or fabric roof, fixed to a wall. They are metal gazebos by frame and lean-tos by shape. Buy aluminum near salt air or on a deck you will not repaint. Buy steel where the budget rules and the gazebo sits on a slab you can reach with a paint pen.

The gap between the hardtops and the canopies is not a quality gap within one product. It is two products on the same posts. A steel hardtop stays up all year, takes rain and snow, and is the roof most of this page carries. A fabric canopy shades a summer, comes down before the weather, and costs a fraction as much. The Erommy lean-to is the third kind, a set of adjustable roof panels on an aluminum frame, and it is the only metal kit here with a roof that opens.

Decide which product you are buying before you compare posts. If the gazebo stays up through October, it is a hardtop, and the hardtop page compares the roof tiers and skylights in detail.

Two things move the price on a metal frame, and the post material is not one of them. The roof moves it most. At 11×13 the fabric-canopy Premium costs a third less than the aluminum-post hardtop, and at 10×10 the Chatam canopy costs a seventh of the aluminum Kingston. The footprint moves it next. Price per square foot falls as the roof grows, because four posts and a rail cost the same under a hundred square feet as under two hundred and forty. Buy the size the patio takes, not the best ratio.

The common sizes tell you where to look. 10×10 is a table for four. 10×12 is the size Sunjoy sells most of and the cheapest full-size hardtop on the site. 12×14 and 12×16 seat six with room to walk. 12×20 is a dining table and a sofa together. Below all of that sit the grill shelters, the same steel two-tier roof shrunk to five by eight over a barbecue.

The roof is the same galvanized steel on both, and Sunjoy prices its timber-post Kingston within a few dollars of the aluminum one. So the choice is about the posts and nothing else. Metal posts want a hose, or a paint pen if they are steel. Timber posts want a coat of stain every few seasons and a dry footing, and they are thicker, so the clear space under the same roof shrinks by about a foot. Aluminum and steel posts are thinner, lighter to carry, and come with anchor plates or pre-drilled feet more often than timber ones do.

Buy metal if the gazebo goes on a deck, near salt air, or anywhere nobody will stain it. Buy metal if you want a fabric canopy, because no timber kit offers one. Buy wood if the look is the reason you are here and the stain goes on the calendar. If you have not decided between a gazebo and a pergola at all, the gazebo vs pergola guide prices both at the same footprint.