Most custom gunite pools in the Houston area cost between about $45,000 and $125,000 or more. Published Houston-area builder pricing in 2026 generally starts around $45,000–$65,000 for entry-level gunite pools, runs $65,000–$80,000 for mid-range builds, and passes $80,000–$125,000+ with spas, premium finishes, and outdoor living. Our own pool and spa packages start at $60,000. Your number depends on scope. Here’s what actually moves it.
The final cost depends on pool size, whether you add a spa, decking, finishes, access to the yard, site conditions, water and fire features, and any outdoor living you build with it.
See how far your pool budget can take you
Same backyard, three budgets. Pick a range to see what changes: the interior finish, the decking, the spa, and how much of the yard gets planned as one build.
Entry gunite pool: $45,000–$65,000
A smaller gunite pool with the essentials done well. Size and perimeter set where you land inside this band.
- Plaster interior, the economical baseline
- 500 square feet of concrete decking included
- Standard equipment: pump, filter, sanitation
Mid-range pool and spa: $65,000–$80,000
The pool grows, and an integrated spa fits inside this band. Astorga pool and spa packages start at $60,000.
- Larger pool with a tanning ledge
- Integrated spa with spillover into the pool
- Upgraded interior finish and deck beyond the included 500 square feet
- First water features, like a sheer descent
Premium pool, spa, and outdoor living: $80,000–$125,000+
The whole backyard planned and built as one project.
- Pebble interior, travertine or paver decking
- Fire and water features as real line items
- Outdoor kitchen, covered structure, landscape lighting and planting
- One plan, one builder, one construction sequence
Concept plan for illustration. Ranges are third-party published market bands from the sources on this page, not Astorga quotes; your lot decides where a real number lands.
How a budget builds, step by step
The plan above shows the whole picture. This is the same yard as a sequence, because that is how most families actually decide: start with the pool, then ask what each addition does to the number.
| Step | What gets added | Where published Houston pricing puts it |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The pool | A gunite pool with a plaster interior, standard pump, filter and sanitation, and 500 square feet of concrete decking included. | $45,000–$65,000, the entry band. Size and perimeter decide where inside it. |
| 2. Add a spa | An attached spa with its own jets, a heater sized for it, and the controls to run it. Usually the pool grows a little here too. | $65,000–$80,000, the mid-range band. Astorga pool and spa packages start at $60,000. |
| 3. Upgrade the finish and the deck | A better interior finish and deck beyond the included 500 square feet. Further up: pebble inside, travertine or pavers outside. | Still mid-range for a first round of upgrades. Pebble with travertine or pavers is where published premium pricing begins, around $80,000. |
| 4. Add outdoor living | An outdoor kitchen, a covered structure, fire features, landscape lighting and planting, planned with the pool as one project. | $80,000–$125,000 and up, the premium band. |
You can stop at any step, and you can plan a later step now without building it yet. What costs real money is deciding step four after step one is already poured, because gas, electrical, and drainage get trenched twice. How we design a custom pool covers the decisions in order.
What Houston builders publish (with sources)
Most builders keep prices off their websites. These Houston-area companies publish theirs, which makes them a useful honest baseline (all accessed August 2026; ranges shift, so verify current numbers at the sources below):
- One Houston builder tiers its gunite pools at roughly $50–65k entry, $65–80k upgraded, and $80k+ premium, with inclusion lists per tier.
- Another publishes project galleries banded from $50–60k up through $125k+.
- A third advertises fixed-layout packages starting around $60–70k.
- Budget-focused builders publish entry tiers in the $45–55k range.
- National cost guides put typical inground gunite projects in a similar spread, with Texas metro projects commonly landing between the entry and premium bands.
We publish our own starting price alongside this market context because you should be able to compare. Our smallest pool and spa package is listed above; an exact number for your project still requires your lot. The sources list at the bottom of this page links every published figure above.
Want the number for your yard instead of the market’s?
A consultation is a site walk and a straight conversation about scope and budget. We put a complete written scope against a real price. No pressure, no call center.
Rather read first? The eight drivers below explain what moves the number.
The eight drivers that move your number
- Size and perimeter matter because steel, gunite, tile, and coping all scale with feet of edge, not just gallons.
- Interior finish starts at plaster, the economical baseline. Pebble finishes add cost and durability.
- Decking anchors budgets at broom-finish concrete. Travertine and pavers move them up.
- Equipment and automation covers variable-speed pumps, filtration class, sanitation, heaters, and app control.
- Access matters. Under about 8 feet of side-yard clearance means smaller machines and longer excavation.
- Site conditions include expansive clay, drainage correction, tree roots, and utility relocation.
- Water and fire features add up. Each sheer descent, spillover, and fire bowl is a real line item.
- The spa decision brings shell, jets, heater sizing, and controls along together (see FAQ below).
Shell type sits underneath all eight. Every figure on this page is for gunite, which is what we build; our gunite versus fiberglass comparison explains why built-in-place concrete suits Houston clay and what changes when you price a fiberglass shell instead.
Cost drivers at a glance
The same eight drivers, plus the ones that sit behind them, in one table. Nothing here is a price; it is what moves a price and where it lands in a quote.
| Driver | What moves the number | Where it shows in a quote |
|---|---|---|
| Size and perimeter | More feet of edge: steel, gunite, tile and coping all scale with perimeter, not just gallons | Shell, tile, coping |
| Spa | An integrated spa adds shell, jets, a heater sized to warm it quickly, and separate controls | Shell and equipment |
| Decking | Anything past the 500 sq ft of concrete in our entry builds; travertine and pavers move it up | Hardscape |
| Interior finish | Plaster is the baseline; pebble and aggregate finishes add cost and durability | Finish |
| Water and fire features | Each sheer descent, spillover and fire bowl is its own line | Features |
| Equipment and automation | Variable-speed pump, filtration class, sanitation, heater, app control | Equipment pad |
| Access | Under about 8 ft of side-yard clearance means smaller machines and longer excavation | Excavation |
| Engineering and permits | Stamped structural plans for clay, the permit path your parcel answers to, HOA fees and deposits | Soft costs |
| Drainage and site conditions | Expansive clay, a high water table, tree roots, utility relocation, drainage correction | Site work |
| Outdoor living additions | A covered patio, outdoor kitchen, lighting and turf planned with the pool | Outdoor living |
Building cost is only half of owning a pool. What a Houston pool costs to maintain covers chemicals, electricity, cleaning and equipment, and the design decisions made before the dig that keep those costs down.
What a spa adds to the price
People search for a spa price on its own, and builders rarely publish one. There is a reason. An attached gunite spa is not an accessory bolted onto the pool. It is poured as part of the same shell, plumbed into the same equipment pad, and it brings its own jets, a heater sized to bring it up to temperature quickly, and the controls to run it separately from the pool.
So the honest comparison is pool-only against pool and spa. In published Houston pricing, pool-only builds sit in the $45,000–$65,000 entry band, and projects that pair a pool with an integrated spa generally run $65,000 to $125,000 depending on size, finishes, and features. Our own smallest package, an 80-foot-perimeter gunite pool with an attached 7-by-7-foot spa, starts at $60,000.
The full breakdown, including raised versus flush spas and what each does to the scope, is in how much a pool with a spa costs in Houston. Sizing and layout live on the pool and spa page.
Does a smaller pool cost less?
Less, but not in proportion. Published Houston-area figures put custom gunite plunge pools roughly between $45,000 and $70,000, and one area builder advertises a starting price just under $42,000. That overlaps the entry band for a full-size pool, which surprises people.
The reason is that the fixed costs of a pool do not shrink with the water. The crew still mobilizes, the excavator still has to reach the yard, the equipment pad still gets built, and the engineering and permit are the same paperwork. A small pool saves on steel, gunite, tile, and decking, and it can make a tight lot work when a full-size pool cannot. Sizes, labels, and honest costs are on small and plunge pools in Houston.
Can a pool be financed?
Some homeowners pay directly. Others finance through their own bank or credit union, home equity, or a lender that focuses on home improvement. Either way the loan is between you and the lender. Astorga is not a lender.
Astorga Outdoor Living is working to provide financing options for qualified homeowners through independent third-party financing providers. Financing may be available for custom pools, remodeling, landscaping, patios, outdoor kitchens, and complete outdoor living projects. We do not publish rates, payment examples, or approval odds, because those come from a lender’s own disclosures and not from a builder’s website. How financing works, and what to ask any lender.
What a complete quote includes
Engineered plans. Permit and HOA responsibility. Every construction phase by name. Equipment by model. Finish, tile, coping, and decking by product. Electrical scope. Startup and orientation. And the part that separates real proposals from teasers: written exclusions. Our free planning guide includes the full checklist, and what a Houston pool quote should include goes through it line by line. With more than one proposal in hand, how to compare pool builder proposals shows how to line them up fairly, and the quote comparison checklist is the printable version of both.
The costs that hide in site conditions
Houston’s expansive clay, high water tables in some areas, and drainage requirements are where under-scoped projects go over budget. A builder who walks your lot before quoting isn’t being slow. They’re pricing the project you’ll actually build. Read how our process sequences this.
These are the Houston-specific ones, and what each does to a budget:
- Access. A standard excavator needs roughly 8 feet of clear side-yard access. Tighter lots use smaller equipment, which stretches excavation time and cost. We measure gates, fences, and easements at the first site walk.
- Soil. Much of the metro sits on expansive clay. USDA soil surveys classify local series such as Lake Charles at 45 to 60 percent clay. That movement is what the steel schedule and shell design are engineered for, and it is why a generic spec is a risk here.
- Groundwater. USDA data puts a seasonal high water table within 2 feet of the surface across about 62 percent of mapped Harris County acreage. On those lots, dewatering during the dig and hydrostatic relief in the shell are real line items.
- Permitting. Who issues your permit depends on the parcel, not the mailing address: a city building department, a county engineer, or, in unincorporated Fort Bend County, no county pool permit at all, because the county’s pool regulations exempt private single-family pools. Floodplain lots add their own paperwork, such as the as-built elevation certificate unincorporated Harris County requires. The jurisdiction map is here.
- HOA review. Architectural review is paperwork, but it carries real costs in some communities, such as a published $125 administrative fee in Shadow Creek Ranch or a refundable $1,000 construction deposit in gated sections of Cinco Ranch II, and review windows that run to 30 business days.
- Drainage. Deck slope, area drains, and swales are designed so Gulf Coast rain leaves the yard without heading for the house or the neighbors. Correcting existing drainage is a common line that teaser quotes leave out.
- Decking. Our entry builds include 500 square feet of concrete. Everything past that is priced by area and material, so deck size is the line most likely to grow between the first sketch and the final plan.
- Utilities. A heater needs a gas line run to the equipment pad, new equipment may need electrical service work, and buried lines sometimes have to move. All three are common exclusions, which is why they belong in writing.
What changes by area
The eight drivers are the same across Greater Houston. What changes from one address to the next is who issues the permit, what the HOA asks for, and what is under the grass. Each area page spells that out: custom pools in Cypress sit on expansive clay and permit through Harris County; a pool builder in Katy answers to one of four jurisdictions; Fulshear pool design has to account for ground that actually rolls; Tomball pool construction plans around a seasonal water table; Pearland custom pools go through the city and, in Shadow Creek Ranch, a mandatory review committee; and League City and Clear Lake add floodplain and windstorm rules. Two areas have their own sourced cost editions: what a pool costs in Katy and what a pool costs in League City. The rest of the map is on the service areas page.
Common questions
How much does an inground pool cost in Houston?
Can I get an inground pool in Houston for $30,000?
Not a custom gunite pool from a Houston builder that publishes prices. The entry tiers those builders publish start around $45,000 to $55,000 for a basic shell with minimal decking on an easy-access lot, and our own smallest pool and spa package is $60,000. A $30,000 budget in Houston generally points to an above-ground pool, a much smaller pool than the projects on this page, or building in stages with the pool first and the decking, features, and outdoor living later. If your number is fixed, say so at the first conversation. It is more useful to design to a real budget than to stretch one.
Can you build a pool in Houston for $50,000?
Yes, within limits. $50,000 sits inside the published Houston entry band of $45,000 to $65,000, which buys a modest gunite pool with a plaster interior, standard equipment, and a basic concrete deck. It generally does not stretch to an integrated spa, a pebble finish, water or fire features, or outdoor living. Our own smallest pool-and-spa package starts at $60,000. If $50,000 is the ceiling, the design conversation is about perimeter, finish, and decking, not about whether a pool is possible.
What is the typical cost of a 12×24 inground pool in Houston?
A 12-by-24-foot pool is a compact build: about 288 square feet of water and roughly 72 feet of perimeter. In published Houston pricing that size lands in the entry band, $45,000 to $65,000 for gunite, before a spa, a premium finish, or outdoor living. Size is only one of the eight drivers, so two 12×24 pools can land at different numbers depending on finish, decking, equipment, and site conditions. Small and plunge pools in Houston covers compact builds, and what size pool fits my backyard shows what a 12×24 footprint needs around it.
What is the average cost to build a pool in Houston, TX?
There is no single published average, so we quote the bands instead. Houston-area builders that publish prices put entry gunite pools at $45,000 to $65,000, mid-range pool-and-spa builds at $65,000 to $80,000, and premium builds with outdoor living at $80,000 to $125,000 and up in 2026. Read the middle band as the middle of the market, not as a quote: your number depends on size, the spa decision, finishes, decking, equipment, and what your lot requires. The sources for every figure are listed at the bottom of this page.
How much does a pool with a spa cost in Houston?
Within the published Houston ranges on this page, projects that pair a pool with an integrated spa generally sit in the mid-range and premium bands, roughly $65,000 to $125,000 depending on size, finishes, and features. The spa brings its own shell, jets, heater sizing, and controls, so it moves more than one line at once. Treat any tighter number as a quote question, not a search result.
What does an Astorga pool and spa package cost?
Our smallest pool and spa package starts at $60,000: an 80-foot-perimeter gunite pool with an attached 7-by-7-foot spa. Size, finishes, features, and site conditions move the number from there, which is why the price that matters is the one in a written proposal after a site walk.
Does a smaller pool always cost less?
Less, yes. Proportionally less, no. Published Houston figures for custom gunite plunge pools run roughly $45,000 to $70,000, which overlaps the entry range for a full-size pool. Mobilization, excavation, the equipment pad, engineering, and permitting do not shrink with the water. A small pool saves on steel, gunite, tile, and decking, and sometimes it is the only pool a tight lot can take. Sizes and honest costs are on our small and plunge pools page.
What affects pool construction cost the most?
Size and perimeter first, because steel, gunite, tile, and coping all scale with feet of edge. After that come the spa decision, the interior finish, and how much decking you add beyond the basics. The costs people do not see coming are in the lot itself: tight access, expansive clay, drainage correction, and utility work. That is why a site walk comes before a real number.
How much should I budget for decking?
Start with what is already included: our entry pool builds come with 500 square feet of concrete decking. Beyond that, decking is priced by area and by material, which makes it the easiest line on a proposal to grow without noticing. Broom-finish concrete is the baseline, and travertine and pavers cost more. For a sense of scale, Angi’s 2026 Houston data puts pool deck construction between $2,250 and $12,000. Decide how you will actually use the deck (loungers, a dining table, a clear path to the gate) and size it to that.
Can a pool project be financed?
Many pool projects are financed, but through a lender, not through the builder. Homeowners typically look at their own bank or credit union, home equity, or a lender that focuses on home improvement. Astorga is not a lender. We are working to provide financing options through independent third-party providers, and financing may be available for qualified homeowners. Rates, terms, and approval always come from the lender, never from us. Our financing page explains how it works and what to ask.
What should be included in a pool quote?
Engineered plans, permit and HOA responsibility, every construction phase by name, equipment by model, the finish, tile, coping, and decking by product, the electrical scope, and startup. Then the part that matters most: written exclusions. A quote that does not say what it leaves out is not finished. The line-by-line version is in what a Houston pool quote should include.
What’s usually NOT in a pool quote?
Common gaps: electrical service upgrades, fencing and safety code items, landscaping repair, dirt haul-off, extended decking, and site-condition allowances. Every gap becomes a change order later, which is why our proposals put exclusions in writing next to the inclusions.
Why won’t builders give a price over the phone?
Because the honest number depends on your lot: access, soils, drainage, utilities, and the design itself. A phone price is either padded to be safe or lowballed to get the appointment. A written proposal after a site walk is the number that means something.
Are the cheapest advertised pools real?
Entry prices you see advertised typically describe a basic shell with minimal decking, base equipment, and tight size limits on an easy-access lot. They’re real as far as they go. The question is what’s excluded. Compare complete scopes, not headlines.
What does a pool cost to run each month in Houston?
National cost guides such as Angi put routine upkeep in the low hundreds of dollars per month depending on whether you hire weekly service or handle chemistry yourself, with electricity varying by pump and heater use. Astorga builds pools rather than servicing them, but equipment selection at design time, especially a variable-speed pump, is what keeps running costs efficient for the life of the pool.
The full breakdown of what drives those costs is in our Houston pool maintenance cost guide.
Get a number for your actual backyard.
Market ranges are a starting point. We’ll walk your lot, talk through what you want, and put a complete written scope against a real price.
Rather talk it through first? Call or text (832) 930-6723
Sources
- Ocean Blue Pools, published pricing tiers: obpi.com (accessed Aug 2026)
- Platinum Pools, price-band project galleries: platinumpools.com (accessed Aug 2026)
- Avree Custom Pools, Express package pricing: avreecustompools.com (accessed Aug 2026)
- Houston Cool Pools, entry-tier pricing page: houstoncoolpools.com (accessed Aug 2026)
- Angi, inground pool cost guide: angi.com (accessed Aug 2026)
- Anthony & Sylvan, pool cost guide: anthonysylvan.com (accessed Aug 2026)
- Angi, Houston pool remodel cost data (pool deck construction range): angi.com (read Sept 2026)
- McKinney Custom Pools and Venture Pool Company, published plunge-pool pricing: cited in full on small and plunge pools
- USDA NRCS soil surveys and Soil Data Access, Harris County (clay content, seasonal water table): websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov
Reviewed and updated: September 2026. Market ranges are third-party published figures, not Astorga quotes. City editions: what changes in Katy and in League City.