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Concrete or Asphalt, by How Long You Are Staying

Most comparisons argue about which material is better. The more useful question is how many years you need it to serve, because the honest answer changes with the horizon.

Updated August 2026 · Burlington Concrete

We pour concrete, so read this with that in mind. What follows is organised around the one thing you know about your situation and a contractor does not, which is how long you expect to own the house. On the shortest horizon our own material is the wrong buy, and the page says so first.

The three numbers that decide it, and they are all about time

Money aside for a moment, HomeGuide publishes three facts that matter more than the price gap:

• Asphalt needs resealing every three to five years. Sealing concrete is described as optional
• Asphalt's lifespan is about half that of concrete
• Asphalt cures in one to three days; concrete wants a week before vehicles

As a cost reference point, their installed rates come out at $5 to $12 a square foot for asphalt and $6 to $15 for concrete. Hold that difference loosely. The three facts above will shape your total more than it will.

Horizon one: three to five years

Asphalt, clearly.

You pay less at the start, you are parking on it inside a few days rather than a week, and critically you reach at most the first resealing before the house is somebody else's problem. The recurring cost that undermines asphalt over decades barely registers across a handful of years.

Concrete's advantage is entirely back-loaded. On this horizon there is no back end. Paying a premium for a service life you will not be present for is not a good trade, whatever we would prefer to sell.

One qualifier worth stating. If you are selling, a fresh driveway of either material shows well, and concrete does read as the more permanent finish to a buyer. Whether that converts into money depends entirely on your street, and we would not put a figure on it.

Horizon two: about a decade

Genuinely close, and it turns on the resealing cycle.

Ten years of asphalt means two or three sealing visits at the three to five year interval. That is real money and real Saturdays, and it is the point where the entry-price saving starts being handed back.

Ten years is also roughly where asphalt begins reaching the end of its service life while concrete is barely middle-aged. You may not need to replace it, but you will be thinking about resurfacing toward the end of that window.

What tips it either way here is your ground and your habits. If the soil moves, asphalt's flexibility is worth having, because it deforms with a heaving subgrade where concrete fractures. If you keep a trailer or a camper standing in one place, concrete wins, because asphalt softens in summer heat and takes the imprint of anything on a small footprint.

Horizon three: this is the house you are staying in

Concrete, and this is where the higher entry price finally earns out.

At roughly double the service life, concrete plausibly sees out the period in which asphalt would have been laid, resealed six or eight times, and then replaced. Compounding a maintenance cycle across twenty-five years is what makes the difference, far more than the gap on day one.

There is also the thing nobody mentions on either side: you have to keep doing the resealing. Not intending to is a perfectly common decision, and unsealed asphalt does not reach the lifespan it is credited with. Concrete's advantage on a long horizon is partly that it asks nothing of a homeowner who would rather not think about the driveway. If that is you, the build and the Public Works paperwork are set out on our concrete driveways in Burlington page.

The honest marks against concrete, on any horizon

Salt scales it. Deicing chemicals attack concrete surfaces and leave asphalt largely alone, which in this state is not a small point and is the reason the aftercare advice on this site is as insistent as it is.

Repairs cost more and stay visible. An asphalt patch can be blended until the surface reads as one; a concrete patch cannot, since fresh material beside weathered material remains a permanent difference in tone.

And it takes longer to build and longer to open. Seven days without parking is a real nuisance when there is nowhere else to leave the car.

What outranks the whole question

Whatever your horizon, a poor foundation defeats both materials equally. Frost does its work underneath, and when we get asked to inspect a driveway that has failed, the cause sits in how the site was prepared far more often than in what was laid over it. The same is true of every other slab on the property, which is why a shed or garage slab quote lives or dies on what goes under it as well.

So if a concrete bid only fits the budget by thinning the slab or skimping on what goes under it, take the asphalt instead and have it built properly. That is the recommendation regardless of how long you are staying, and it is the one we would give a neighbour.

For concrete pricing here, including the tier table and the city's kerb rules, see concrete driveway cost in Burlington. If you are weighing up an existing driveway, the measurable replacement test comes first.