How much does an interlock driveway cost in Ottawa?

What does an interlock driveway cost per square foot?

The published figures price three different jobs. A turnkey price includes digging out the ground, hauling it away, the fabric, the compacted stone base, the pavers and the joint sand. A surface price covers the paving and leaves the digging out. A materials price is the stone on a pallet.

RenoQuotes publishes the first two, on two different pages. Its interlocking paver guide (updated 2026-05-19) prices a driveway or vehicle parking area at $22 to $35 a square foot, or $220 to $350 a square metre, for materials and installation with deeper excavation, a reinforced granular base and heavy-duty pavers. Its driveway paving guide (updated 2026-08-26) gives paving stones at $10 to $30 a square foot and says its totals cover the paving surface only, with excavation, old driveway removal, drainage and permits quoted separately. Quote the second number as a driveway price and most of the job is missing.

Techo-Bloc, which makes pavers, surveyed contractors for its July 2026 report on Canadian landscaping costs. Its Canadian range for a two-car paver driveway of about 24 by 24 feet (576 square feet) is $14,500 to $32,000, averaging $23,250, for a mid-range residential job. Techo-Bloc's post on the same survey says the range covers complete installation, from excavation and base preparation to the pavers, jointing sand and edge restraints. Divided by 576, that is about $25 to $56 a square foot.

The stone on its own costs far less. HomeStars' Ottawa landscaping price guide (updated 2026-08-21) lists interlocking paver materials at $5 to $8 or more a square foot. Techo-Bloc's report gives $4 to $20 for standard interlocking concrete pavers, materials only.

Source: RenoQuotes, Interlocking Paver Installation in Canada (updated 2026-05-19) · RenoQuotes, Driveway Paving Cost in Canada (updated 2026-08-26) · Techo-Bloc, Landscaping Costs in Canada: 2026 Overview · Techo-Bloc, How Much Does a Paver Driveway Cost in 2026? · HomeStars, Landscaping Costs in Ottawa (updated 2026-08-21)

Why is there no Ottawa-only price on this page?

We looked for one. HomeStars' Ottawa paving guide (updated 2026-08-21) gives an average of $4,443 for paving work in Ottawa, but that average comes from 120 homeowner reviews as of March 2022 and covers asphalt, concrete, gravel and repairs together. It is not an interlock driveway figure.

The Ottawa directory Ottawa Contractors does price interlock driveways, on four pages, with four different ranges: $15 to $25 a square foot on its driveway paving cost guide, $18 to $30 on its driveway paving costs page, $15 to $30 on its concrete versus interlock comparison, and $20 to $40 on a second driveway paving cost guide. All four were live on 2026-10-06. We cannot tell which one is current, so we use none of them.

Several Ottawa interlock companies publish their own prices, and we do not quote a competitor's price list. The figures on this page are national and labelled national. The Ottawa part is what no national guide covers: the ground, the permits, and the City's rules on width and curbs.

Source: HomeStars, Paving Contractors Cost Guide Ottawa (updated 2026-08-21)

How much does a 20x20 paver driveway cost?

A 20 by 20 foot driveway is 400 square feet, the size RenoQuotes uses for a standard two-car driveway. On the figures above it comes to $8,800 to $14,000 turnkey, or $4,000 to $12,000 for the paving surface alone.

Source: RenoQuotes, Driveway Paving Cost in Canada (updated 2026-08-26) · Techo-Bloc, Landscaping Costs in Canada: 2026 Overview · HomeStars, Landscaping Costs in Ottawa (updated 2026-08-21)

What does a 20x20 cost with the old driveway out and the tax in?

The Techo-Bloc row in the table above is the survey's 576-square-foot price divided down, which assumes the rate per foot holds at a smaller size. Some costs do not shrink with the driveway: the City's $208 access permit is the same for any size.

If the 20x20 replaces an asphalt driveway, there is a tear-out to pay for. RenoQuotes puts removing an existing asphalt driveway at $1.50 to $4 a square foot, $600 to $1,600 for 400 square feet, and says removal often accounts for 20% to 30% of a full replacement quote. Worked from RenoQuotes alone, turnkey interlock at $8,800 to $14,000 plus $600 to $1,600 to take out the asphalt comes to $9,400 to $15,600. None of the publishers on this page says whether its figures include HST, which is 13% in Ontario. Added on top, that is $10,622 to $17,628. It is arithmetic on published ranges, not a quote.

Check the width before you price it. Section 606 of Ottawa's Zoning By-law (No. 2026-50) caps a driveway at 6 metres in the Downtown Core, Inner Urban and Outer Urban transects. Twenty feet is 6.1 metres, so a full 20-foot-wide driveway is over the cap there; 6 metres is 19 feet 8 inches. In the suburban transect the cap is 50% of the lot width, and every walkway leading to the front lot line counts inside the same 50%. A 20-foot driveway there needs at least 40 feet of frontage, more if a walkway runs beside it.

Source: City of Ottawa, Zoning By-law No. 2026-50, Part 6 (parking and driveways) · Canada Revenue Agency, Charge and collect the GST/HST

What are you paying for under the pavers?

Most of a turnkey price is in the ground. Each spec below puts more stone under a driveway than under a patio, and every inch of that stone is an inch dug out and hauled away first.

The Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute's Tech Spec 2 sets the base for a residential driveway at 6 inches (150 mm) or more on well-drained soil, and says that in colder climates, continually wet or weak soils need bases at least 2 to 4 inches thicker. It puts driveway pavers at 2 3/8 inches (60 mm) thick. Techo-Bloc's FAQ recommends 12 inches of stone base under a driveway on a setting bed at least 1 inch thick (another answer in the same FAQ gives a minimum of 8 inches), and strongly recommends a filter fabric, especially over clay. RenoQuotes says a driveway base often reaches 12 to 18 inches. HomeStars' Ottawa guide notes that Ottawa soil is often clay-heavy, which holds water and makes drainage harder.

Here is what those depths mean for a 20x20, with a 1-inch setting bed and 60 mm pavers on top. The volumes are the ground as it sits; dug soil bulks up and takes more room in the truck.

Source: ICPI Tech Spec 2, Construction of Interlocking Concrete Pavements (PDF) · Techo-Bloc, FAQ · RenoQuotes, Interlocking Paver Installation in Canada (updated 2026-05-19)

Why does the base depth move the price so much?

Each inch added to the base of a 20x20 is another 33 cubic feet out and another 33 cubic feet of compacted stone in. An 80 mm paver instead of a 60 mm one deepens the dig by about three quarters of an inch. That is a big part of why two quotes for the same driveway can sit thousands of dollars apart, and RenoQuotes makes the point itself: a quote that specifies 8 inches of compacted base will come in higher than one that specifies 4, and in a freeze-thaw climate the cheaper one is not the better deal.

None of these specs takes a driveway base down to the frost line. For a footing in clay, Table 9.12.2.2 of the Ontario Building Code sets a floor of 1.2 metres, and an 18-inch driveway base is barely more than a third of that. A paver driveway sits above the frost on compacted stone that lets water drain away, under a surface of separate pieces that can move a little together. That makes the drainage around the driveway part of the price, and a quote that fixes it carries its own line for it. HomeStars' Ottawa figures for that kind of work are $1,200 to $4,500 to regrade a yard and $1,800 to $7,000 for a drainage system.

Source: RenoQuotes, Driveway Paving Cost in Canada (updated 2026-08-26) · HomeStars, Landscaping Costs in Ottawa (updated 2026-08-21)

What permits does a new driveway need in Ottawa, and what do they cost?

The part of a driveway between your property line and the road sits in the City's right of way, and the City calls it an access. Building a new access, or modifying one (widening included), needs an access permit under the Access By-law (No. 2026-139), which replaced the Private Approach By-law on 2026-04-08. The 2026 fee for a standard access is $208, non-refundable, plus $121 for a culvert approval when the driveway crosses a ditch and the application has no professional drawings. The City quotes six to eight weeks to process it, including the contractor's road cut permit, and the permit is valid for one year. Resurfacing an access needs no access permit, and a driveway needs no building permit.

The road cut permit is the contractor's to get, and the City requires one for any work in the right of way, driveway construction included. Its fee schedule lists an external street segment fee of $586, a pavement degradation fee of $20.30 to $70.20 a square metre (charged on the larger of the cut or 5 square metres, and higher the more recently the street was paved), and a minimum security of $3,000 per permit for work in the roadway or the boulevard. What a driveway job triggers depends on what the work touches, so ask whether the quote includes it.

None of the national price guides above includes either permit. Our page on interlock driveways in Ottawa goes through the access permit, the width rules and the grade the City requires.

Source: City of Ottawa, Access permits for driveways and walkways · City of Ottawa, How to apply for a road cut permit

Who pays for the curb, and what can go in the right of way?

You do. Section 12 of the Access By-law puts building, repairing and replacing an access at the owner's expense, and section 6 makes the owner responsible for maintaining it, curbs included. Widening the access, or any change to the curb, goes through the permit, and section 5 requires the work to meet the City's standards and tie into the existing curb and sidewalk.

Where a sidewalk crosses the driveway, the City's Access Design Requirements keep the sidewalk's material and width continuous, so the pavers stop at the sidewalk. Section 9 bars curbing, decorative stonework or landscaping on the access that stands higher than the access itself, which puts raised stone borders and pillars on your side of the property line.

One widening needs no permit. Section 16 lets an existing driveway serving one to three parking spaces add one extension up to 1.8 metres wide, as long as it is not asphalt, stays out of a City tree's critical root zone, keeps 0.3 metres from the property line, 1.5 metres from a fire hydrant and 1 metre from City and utility equipment, does not cross a ditch, leaves the curb and the sidewalk alone, and stops at the sidewalk or the edge of the road. An interlock extension can qualify and an asphalt one cannot. Section 7 still caps all the accesses on a frontage at 50% of its width.

When the City rebuilds a street, section 3 has it rebuild a conforming access at no cost to the owner, and replace a non-conforming one with one that conforms. A driveway built to the by-law goes back at the City's cost.

Source: City of Ottawa, Access By-law No. 2026-139 · City of Ottawa, Access Design Requirements, first edition 2026-04-08 (PDF) · City of Ottawa, Residential pedestrian access and limited driveway extensions

Is interlocking cheaper than concrete?

No. RenoQuotes' driveway guide, the one source here that prices both on the same basis, gives concrete at $7 to $20 a square foot against $10 to $30 for paving stones, or $2,800 to $8,000 against $4,000 to $12,000 for a 400-square-foot two-car driveway. HomeStars' concrete driveway guide (updated 2026-08-21, national) puts a basic broom-finish concrete driveway at $12 to $20 a square foot.

The gap closes with decorative concrete. HomeStars prices decorative or exposed aggregate concrete at $18 to $50 or more a square foot, and stamped, coloured or exposed aggregate finishes at $5 to $30 or more on top of a plain slab. At those figures decorative concrete overlaps RenoQuotes' $22 to $35 for turnkey interlock.

The repair is where they differ. A concrete slab that cracks gets a patch that shows, or it is broken out and poured again. A settled section of pavers is lifted, the base corrected and the same stones relaid. Our guide to interlock versus poured concrete and asphalt covers how each one takes an Ottawa winter.

Source: HomeStars, How Much Does a Concrete Driveway Cost? (updated 2026-08-21) · RenoQuotes, Driveway Paving Cost in Canada (updated 2026-08-26)

What does asphalt cost against interlock?

Both publishers here that price asphalt put it below concrete and pavers. RenoQuotes gives $3 to $20 a square foot and says standard hot-mix on a straightforward residential job sits in the lower half of that range; its table puts a 400-square-foot two-car driveway at $1,200 to $8,000. HomeStars' concrete guide puts asphalt at $4 to $10 a square foot.

Asphalt's running costs are the sealing and a shorter life. RenoQuotes prices sealcoating at $0.15 to $0.35 a square foot, or $60 to $140 a time on 400 square feet, and says an asphalt driveway on a solid crushed stone base can last up to 20 years. HomeStars gives asphalt 15 to 25 years, with sealing every 3 to 7 years.

RenoQuotes also suggests a budget route between the two: pavers on part of the driveway and asphalt on the rest. In Ottawa, the permit-free 1.8-metre extension in section 16 of the Access By-law has to be something other than asphalt.

Source: RenoQuotes, Driveway Paving Cost in Canada (updated 2026-08-26) · HomeStars, How Much Does a Concrete Driveway Cost? (updated 2026-08-21)

What is the cheapest option for a new driveway?

Gravel, on RenoQuotes' figures. Its driveway guide gives $1 to $4 a square foot for gravel and $2 to $5 for crushed stone, then asphalt, concrete and pavers in that order. In most of Ottawa, though, gravel is not an option for a driveway.

Subsection 601(5) of the Zoning By-law requires driveways in the Downtown Core, Inner Urban, Outer Urban and Suburban transects to be paved with asphalt, cement, permeable pavement, honeycomb block, turf block, cobblestones or a similar stable, dust-preventative material. Only in the Greenbelt and Rural transects is the rule just a surface usable in all seasons. Loose gravel is not on the urban list, and of the surfaces these publishers price that are on it, asphalt is the cheapest.

Two other ways to spend less are built into the same by-law. Build narrower: section 606 sets the minimum width of a driveway to one to three parking spaces at 2.6 metres, about 8 feet 6 inches. Or build wheel strips: in the N1 to N6 Neighbourhood zones and the V1 to V5 Village Residential zones, subsection 606(10) allows two parallel strips of concrete, asphalt, pavers, turf block, stone or permeable pavers, each no wider than 0.6 metres, with a permeable strip between them and a total width of 2.4 to 3.0 metres. That is half the paved area of a solid 2.4-metre driveway or less. We found no publisher that prices one.

Source: RenoQuotes, Driveway Paving Cost in Canada (updated 2026-08-26) · City of Ottawa, Zoning By-law No. 2026-50, Part 6 (parking and driveways)

How long does an interlock driveway last?

RenoQuotes says driveway pavers can last up to 30 years and that interlock can last for several decades when the foundation is properly built. Its figure for asphalt is up to 20 years. HomeStars puts concrete at 30 years or more with maintenance and asphalt at 15 to 25.

The warranties on the stone run longer than any of those figures. Techo-Bloc's residential warranty runs for life and covers surface damage from de-icing salt; Permacon's runs 50 years and is prorated. Neither pays for labour. Most interlock problems start below the surface, in the base and the joints: sand that washes out, an edge that spreads, an apron that drops where the base was built to patio depth. Because the surface comes apart, those are fixed by lifting the section, correcting the base and relaying the same pavers, which our guide on when a relay beats a rebuild walks through.

Source: RenoQuotes, Interlocking Paver Installation in Canada (updated 2026-05-19) · HomeStars, How Much Does a Concrete Driveway Cost? (updated 2026-08-21)

What should an interlock driveway quote list?

Two quotes for the same 20x20 can sit far apart because they priced different jobs. RenoQuotes' advice is to compare itemized estimates rather than totals, and to ask what excavation depth and base thickness are included, how the compaction is done, where the water will drain, whether removal of the old driveway and the permits are included, and what warranty covers settlement of the base.

In Ottawa, add four lines to that list: the $208 access permit if the driveway is new or wider, the contractor's road cut permit, any work on the curb, and 13% HST.

How we price an interlock driveway

We do not publish a per-square-foot price for driveways, because the base, the soil, the width the Zoning By-law allows on your lot and the permit path move the number more than the stone does. We measure the frontage, look at the grade and where the water goes, and draw the driveway in 3D and AutoCAD, so the price is tied to a design you have already seen. Patios, walkways, steps and retaining walls are on our page for interlock in Ottawa.

We are an insured, family-owned Ottawa contractor, established 2016, and we prepare the access permit drawings as part of the build. Call (613) 902-6137 or book a visit.