How the Pergola Price Index is built

What the index measures

The price of a pergola kit as sold, divided by its covered area in square feet. It is a product price, not an installed cost: labor, foundations, permits and electrical work are not included. The Q4 2026 edition is the baseline, set at 100 for every type.

Which prices count

• A price counts only if the seller’s own page shows it with a way to buy. Prices that appear only in a data feed, or only on request, do not count.
• The price is the one a US buyer would pay that day, including any sale. The regular (pre-sale) price is recorded separately and reported on its own.
• Where a kit cannot be bought without a required option, such as posts, the cheapest option that completes the kit is added. Where a configurator shows a total, the total is used.
• Prices are in US dollars. A price in another currency, or for another market, is kept out.
• Nothing is estimated. If a price could not be read, it is left blank and the product is not counted.
• Within one product family, a price more than three times the price of the next-smaller size is treated as a listing error and left out, with a note.

Which products count

• Pergolas are grouped by roof first: louvered (manual or motorized), fabric, open slat (wood or metal), vinyl, and hardtop. Frame material comes second.
• For covered roofs (hardtop and fabric), the product’s own name decides, because the same covered structure is sold as either a pergola or a gazebo. Only the page title, the H1 and the product name count; descriptions do not. Named a pergola, it counts. Named only a gazebo, it is left out. Named both, it moves to a “sold as both pergola and gazebo” comparison for its roof type, outside the headline figures.
• Louvered and open-slat roofs are pergolas by construction, so they count whatever the listing calls them: their names often add “gazebo” as a search term. The table further down this page shows each affected median with those products left out.
• A product counts as a hardtop pergola only if its maker consistently calls it a pergola. Hardtops named gazebos, or named both ways, are reported as a separate comparison.
• Products the maker sells as awnings, sunrooms, carports, patio covers, tents, sheds or greenhouses are left out. So are installed-only products and discontinued ones.
• One design is one product family, whatever the number of colours or listings. The same kit sold under two storefront names counts once.
• Fabric is two markets, so sizes are shown in two segments and never as one blended figure. Premium shade systems (pergola sold with a retractable canopy) are complete pergola kits sold with the maker’s own retractable canopy (Trex Pergola by StructureWorks (Windsor, Atlas, Trex Pergola + ShadeFlex); Pergola Kits USA (Serenity cedar, Serenity vinyl and Fiberglass kits + Retractable Canopy); Outdoor Living Today (Breeze Pergola & Retractable Canopy)): most are wood or vinyl pergolas, the rest fiberglass or aluminum. Roof first puts them in fabric, because the roof as sold is the canopy. Where the same frame is also sold without a canopy, that version is counted in open-slat wood or vinyl. Every other fabric family is a canopy kit. The segment is set by the product line, never by the price.

Which sellers count

• Brand-direct prices from the maker’s own store are the core of the index.
• Specialty dealers count where they run their own store with fixed prices and a checkout. Brands with no store of their own enter through the best-seller lists of the big retailers.
• Storefronts that sell other makers’ designs under their own name count; the louvered medians are also published without them. The wood and vinyl medians are also published without CedarStore, the largest single seller of its own designs.
• Amazon and Walmart best-sellers are reported as a separate benchmark, compared size for size, and never enter the main figures.

How prices were captured

Every price in this edition was captured in one window, Sep 24, 2026 to Sep 27, 2026, and a copy of each page was saved. Where a retailer prices by location, the reference is Dallas, TX 75201 (Walmart store 75204). A sample re-read at New York and Los Angeles ZIP codes showed no price differences.

How prices were checked

Verification was dual independent extraction plus automated live-page checks. Prices read from saved pages were read twice, separately: the two reads agreed on 5,196 of 5,198 prices. A third read settled one of the other two, and a documented ruling the last. Automated checks then compared 243 script-read prices with the live product pages, re-read 138 unusual prices against their saved pages, and checked a random sample of 20 against both.

How the figures are calculated

• Price per square foot uses the maker’s nominal size, the size it names the product by.
• Each product family first gets its own median. The published figure is the median across families, so a brand with fifty sizes does not outweigh one with five.
• The middle 50% is the range between the 25th and 75th percentiles of the family medians.
• A row from fewer than 5 companies or 8 families is published with a “limited sample” label and its counts.
• A type with fewer than 5 product families gets no median: its products are shown one by one, labelled “too few products to publish a median”.
• A size is published only where at least 5 families from at least 3 companies sell it. A size band needs 3 families from 3 companies.

Shipping

The index uses the listed price. Every price records what the seller says about shipping: included or free, extra (with the amount where it is stated), or not stated. Three sellers include freight in a price with no separate amount: Western Timber Frame, The Luxury Pergola and Cedarshed. They are counted, and this table shows each median without them.

Products named both pergola and gazebo

Louvered and open-slat products whose names also say “gazebo” are counted. This table shows each affected median with them left out.

What is not covered

Brands that sell only by quote are listed as checked, never estimated. Sites that blocked automated access, or were blocked from every connection used, are named on the edition page. One brand, Patiowell, was missed in this edition and will be in the next.

Editions and corrections

The index is updated quarterly. Each edition keeps its own permanent page and is not edited after publication; a correction is added as a dated note. When the method changes, the change is stated with the edition that introduces it.