Every foundation repair company looks the same from the outside - five stars, free inspection, lifetime warranty. What separates them is in the fine print: how long the warranty really runs, whether it survives when you sell the house, which pier they install, whether they finance. We put that side by side for 331 companies across Texas, so you can tell the difference before anyone is standing in your driveway.
Each city is ranked on its own. Soil, repair method and price do not travel - what works on Houston gumbo is the wrong answer in the San Antonio limestone.
The largest market we cover, and the most steel-pier-dominated.
Gumbo clay, subsidence and drainage - a different problem from the rest of Texas.
Limestone west of the escarpment, clay east of it. Two markets in one area.
Blackland clay east of I-35, limestone hills west. Settlement on fill is the local story.
Some of the most active expansive clay outside Texas.
Gulf Coast gumbo, the same problem Houston has.
Front Range bentonite - heave rather than settlement.
Deep clay, hard freezes, and a very fragmented contractor base.
A city goes live only once we have read every contractor website in it, so they arrive one at a time. The four marked in collection are in progress now.
Seven things, recorded from each company's own website. The percentage is how many of the 331 listed companies state it. A blank means they didn't say, not that the answer is no - which is exactly why it's worth asking.
Only 133 of the 331 companies listed say anything about a warranty at all. Of those, 129 offer the same thing: a lifetime warranty. Which means the term cannot tell one company from another - and a contractor leading with it is quoting the industry standard, not an advantage.
What actually separates them →Almost every warranty in this trade is a limited lifetime warranty - limited meaning exclusions apply, lifetime meaning the life of the structure rather than yours. Whether it is transferable to the next owner is the term that decides what it is actually worth, and most companies never put it in writing on their site.
What to ask before you sign →Among the ones that do, 91% in Dallas-Fort Worth install steel piers. In Houston that drops to 33% and pressed concrete leads at 52%, because Gulf Coast soil is deep and soft with nothing shallow to push against. The right method depends on your ground, and a contractor who only offers one is telling you something.
The four methods compared →Whether payment plans exist at all - worth knowing before you find out at the kitchen table.
An independent engineer sets the pier count, and the pier count sets the price. It is the cheapest way to control the biggest number in the quote.
A twenty-year warranty is worth exactly what the company behind it is worth. Median across everyone listed here: 15 years.
The rest are service-area businesses working out of a truck. Neither is bad - but you should know which one is coming.
Four short guides on the things homeowners get caught out by. Each one is built from the same 331-company data as the rankings, and each holds true in every city we cover.
Position here is earned by four inputs with fixed weights, applied identically to every company. No contractor can pay to move up, push a competitor down, or buy its way off the page. We may earn a referral fee when someone requests quotes through the form on a city page - that fee is the same whichever company you pick. If this site ever carries advertising or a featured placement, it will be labeled as advertising, sit outside the ranked lists, and change the order of nothing.
Out of 1,022 reviewed. The rest were excluded for having no working website, too few reviews to judge, being outside the area, being a lead-generation network, or not being a foundation company at all.
Years in business, review volume, rating, and whether there is a website to verify against. Fixed weights, applied identically to every company. See the weights.
If you run a company listed here and something is wrong, point us at the page on your own site that shows the correct information and it goes in on the next update. We'll also remove a listing on request, no reason needed.