Car Dent Repair Cost: 2026 Averages by Dent Size & Method
Car Dent Repair Cost: 2026 Averages by Dent Size & Method Car dent repair costs $75-$350 for a small dent with intact paint using paintless dent repair (PDR), $500-$1,000 for a dent that broke the paint and needs a body-shop repaint, and $1,200-$4,000+ for multi-panel hail damage in 2026. The single biggest price driver is whether the paint is intact: an undamaged finish unlocks PDR, which runs 40-70% cheaper than conventional bodywork. Estimate your specific job with our Paintless Dent Repair Cost Calculator(/auto/paintless-dent-repair-cost-calculator) before you book. When I traded in my old Accord, the dealer knocked $1,200 off the offer for a single creased door dent I had ignored for two years. A mobile PDR tech later told me that exact dent would have been a $180 fix when it was fresh — before the crease set and a parking-lot scuff chipped the paint. That $1,020 lesson is why this...
How Much Does an Auto Paint Job Cost in 2026? (Maaco, Mid-Range, Show)
How Much Does an Auto Paint Job Cost in 2026? An auto paint job costs $500 to $20,000 in 2026 depending on quality tier: economy ($500-$1,500), mid-range ($1,500-$5,000), high-end ($5,000-$10,000), and show-quality ($10,000-$20,000+). The price ladder reflects prep work hours, paint material grade, and the number of clearcoats applied. A real session from our Auto Paint Job Cost Calculator(/auto/auto-paint-job-cost-calculator) on 2026-05-12 in McKinney, TX showed a standard single-stage paint job with scuff-paint-over prep at $2,535-$5,915 — a typical mid-range range for a sedan. The reason auto paint costs vary 40× across tiers is that 70-85% of paint cost is labor in body and prep work, not the paint material itself. A $600 Maaco "Supreme" job and a $6,000 mid-range custom job use the same quart of urethane base — the difference is whether the shop spent 4 hours masking and scuff-sanding or 40 hours stripping to bare metal, fixing dents,...