Cost reference · 2026
Sourced figures only, each credited to whoever published it. Where the market has no published number — and there are places it doesn't — this page marks the gap rather than papering over it.
Mon–Fri 8am–5pm · Idaho Falls and the surrounding towns
Tell us the scope level you are aiming for and roughly how big. You will hear which of the four ladder levels your budget actually reaches.
Almost every disagreement about what a shop costs is really a disagreement about scope. Four price levels get quoted in this market, they differ by roughly four times end to end, and all four are described as “a shop.”
Level 1
$8–$18
per square foot
Lumber, steel and fasteners delivered. No labour, no slab, no doors.
Level 2
$15–$28
per square foot
Posts, trusses, roof and walls standing. Dirt floor.
Level 3
$22–$42
per square foot
Shell plus slab, an overhead door and power. The point most owners mean by "a shop."
Level 4
$30–$60
per square foot
Insulated, heated, interior finish, full doors and utilities. Trusst Buildings of Shelley publishes $30–$60 per square foot.
The local anchor in that ladder: Trusst Buildings of Shelley publishes $30–$60 per square foot. When a $25,000 advertised kit and a six-figure bid land on the same desk, the difference is almost never that someone is overcharging — it is that one price stops at the pallet and the other ends with a building you can plug a welder into.
Steel Structures America publishes medians from its own completed projects — real finished buildings rather than a per-foot estimate.
30x40
$69,894
median across 178 projects
40x60
$119,721
median across 140 projects
40x80
$174,000
median across 28 projects
Read that attribution carefully. Steel Structures America operates across Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Montana — not Idaho Falls specifically. These are attributed regional medians, not local quotes, and a jurisdiction requiring a 47 psf ground snow load is not the cheapest place inside that footprint to build.
For comparison against those finished medians, the same footprints as a standing shell — posts, trusses, roof and walls, no slab:
| Size | Shell only, roughly | Finished median (SSA, regional) |
|---|---|---|
| 30x40 | $18,000–$34,000 | $69,894 |
| 40x60 | $36,000–$67,000 | $119,721 |
| 40x80 | $48,000–$90,000 | $174,000 |
The two columns are not directly comparable — one is a shell estimate, the other a completed-project median from a different geography. Shown together, they map the distance your remaining budget has to cover.
Typical effect on a 40x60 unless noted. These are market ranges, not a price list.
| What changes | What it does to a 40x60 |
|---|---|
| Concrete slab, 4" with wire mesh | $12,000–$20,000 |
| Overhead doors, two standard | $4,000–$8,000 |
| Premium or oversized door, each | $1,200–$5,500+ |
| Insulation — batt $1.50–$3.00/sq ft, spray foam $3.00–$7.00+ | $10,000–$28,000 |
| Site prep and excavation | $3,000–$20,000+ |
| Engineered stamped plans | $1,500–$5,000 |
| Snow-load engineering upgrade | $1,580 documented single case; $5,000–$20,000+ per SSA |
| In-floor radiant heat | $5,000–$25,000+ |
| Plumbing and half-bath | $5,000–$15,000+ |
| Utility runs | $5,000–$20,000+ |
Snow-load engineering carries two very different figures because the sources measure different things: $1,580 is one documented case of stepping a design from 60 psf to 75 psf with a 25% wind increase, including new sealed plans and truss drawings. The $5,000–$20,000+ range from Steel Structures America describes whole-building engineering for Idaho and Montana loads. Both explained in full →
Three figures people ask for constantly have no published source. Rather than estimate them and put a number in your head that nobody stands behind, here they are as gaps.
No source gives a dollar figure for the basalt premium on the Snake River Plain. Rock sits inside the published $3,000–$20,000+ site-prep range, undifferentiated.
No per-size overhead door price schedule was found for this market. Only the general ranges in the table above are published.
No figure exists for the cost delta between post-in-ground and a concrete-footing foundation. Any number you are given is a specific bid, not a market rate.
If another page states a firm figure for any of those three, ask which source it came from. For this market there isn’t one. The number only becomes real when a builder has stood on the parcel.
Inside Idaho Falls that is 47 psf, against 23 psf in the 2015 study for the same spot. The adopted number sets the truss package, and it is decided at the drawing stage.
The ag exemption, the residential path and a plain accessory-building permit carry different requirements. Choosing wrong is the expensive kind of mistake, because conversion later means full current-code compliance.
Tell us the scope you actually want — bare shell, or a heated room you can weld in — with the parcel address. What comes back is where that lands against the published bands above.