Most homeowners pay between $200 and $900 for a standard termite treatment on a typical single-family home. That range covers a basic liquid perimeter treatment with no major complications. But costs can climb well above $2,500 for larger homes, aggressive species, or infestations that require fumigation. The final price depends on your home’s size, the type of termite, the treatment method, and how far the damage has spread before you catch it.
Cost by Treatment Method
The three main professional treatment options are liquid soil treatments, bait station systems, and tent fumigation. Each works differently, targets different situations, and carries a different price tag.
Liquid Soil Treatment
Liquid treatment is the most common approach for subterranean termites. A technician digs a shallow trench around your home’s foundation, applies a chemical barrier, and backfills the soil. For homes with concrete slabs or patios, they may need to drill through the concrete to reach the soil underneath. National averages run between $3 and $16 per linear foot of your home’s perimeter.
For a smaller home under 1,200 square feet, a complete liquid treatment typically costs $200 to $500, assuming straightforward construction and no heavy infestation. Mid-size homes between 1,500 and 2,500 square feet run $500 to $1,200. Homes above 3,000 square feet often exceed $1,500 before factoring in any wood repair or retreatment. If the infestation is active and extensive, requiring interior drilling or additional steps, totals can push past $2,500.
Bait Station Systems
Bait stations are plastic cylinders buried in the soil around your home’s perimeter, filled with material that termites carry back to their colony. The initial installation may cost more than a liquid treatment because stations need to be placed at regular intervals and checked multiple times per year. The real cost difference shows up over time: annual renewal contracts for bait systems typically run two to four times more than renewals for liquid treatments, because bait stations require quarterly monitoring visits rather than a single annual inspection.
Tent Fumigation
Fumigation is the most expensive option and the most disruptive. Your entire home gets sealed under a tent, and a gas penetrates the wood to kill termites throughout the structure. This method is most often used for drywood termites, which nest inside wood rather than traveling from the soil, making them unreachable by liquid barriers. You’ll need to leave your home for two to three days, remove food and medications, and arrange for pets to stay elsewhere.
Costs vary widely. Homeowners with roughly 1,500-square-foot homes report paying anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000, with the range depending on the home’s volume (pricing is based on cubic footage, not just floor area), whether repairs are included, and regional labor costs. Homes with attached garages, covered patios, or multi-story construction cost more because there’s more space to treat.
How Termite Species Affects Price
Not all termites are equally expensive to eliminate. The species you’re dealing with determines which treatment methods will work, how much labor is involved, and how likely you are to need follow-up treatments.
Subterranean termites are the most common in the U.S. and typically cost $225 to $900 to treat. They live underground and build mud tubes up into your home’s wood, so treatment usually involves both exterior trenching around the foundation and interior wood treatment with a borate-based chemical. That multi-step process adds to the labor cost compared to a simple perimeter application.
Drywood termites run $225 to $900 for localized treatments, but severe infestations often require full fumigation, which can push costs to $5,000 or more. Because drywood termites nest inside the wood itself rather than in the soil, liquid soil barriers won’t reach them. Spot treatments with localized chemicals work for small, contained colonies, but if the infestation has spread through multiple areas of the home, tenting becomes the only reliable option.
Formosan termites are the most aggressive species and cost $250 to $1,500 to treat. They build massive underground colonies that can contain millions of individuals, and they consume wood faster than other species. Their colony size and tunneling behavior make them harder to fully eliminate, often requiring more extensive treatment and closer follow-up monitoring.
What Determines Your Specific Price
Beyond the treatment type and termite species, several factors push your quote higher or lower. Home size is the biggest variable, since treatment is priced by linear footage of your perimeter or cubic footage of your structure. A home with 100 linear feet of perimeter might cost $300 to $1,600 for liquid treatment, while one with 250 linear feet could run $750 to $4,000, depending on the per-foot rate.
Construction type matters too. Homes built on concrete slabs require drilling to access the soil beneath, which adds labor and time. Homes with crawl spaces are generally easier to treat but may need more extensive inspection. Brick or stone foundations, finished basements, and landscaping close to the foundation can all complicate access and raise costs.
Geography plays a role as well. Termite pressure is highest in the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast, where warm, humid conditions support larger colonies and year-round activity. Treatment companies in these regions handle more volume, which can mean competitive pricing, but the infestations themselves tend to be more severe.
Annual Maintenance and Warranty Costs
Most pest control companies offer an ongoing warranty or “termite bond” after the initial treatment. This typically costs $100 to $300 per year and includes an annual inspection, retreatment if termites return, and in some cases coverage for damage repair as long as you keep the contract active. Homeowners commonly report paying around $110 to $150 per year for basic renewal plans.
Some companies bundle termite protection into broader pest control packages. One common structure is a $299 annual package that includes the termite warranty renewal plus quarterly general pest treatments. Whether the warranty is worth renewing depends on your risk level. In high-termite areas, a lapse in coverage can mean paying for a full new treatment if termites return, which will almost always cost more than several years of renewal fees.
The Cost of Waiting
Treatment costs are only part of the equation. Termite damage repair can dwarf the cost of the treatment itself, and the longer an infestation goes undetected, the worse it gets. Minor structural repairs, like replacing a damaged sill plate and reinforcing a few beams, might run around $3,000. But severe, long-term infestations can cause damage that costs $50,000 or more to fix, sometimes exceeding what the home is worth.
Termites work slowly but constantly. A mature subterranean colony can eat about a pound of wood per day. Over months and years, that adds up to compromised floor joists, wall studs, and support beams that are expensive to access and replace. The treatment itself is almost always the cheaper part of the problem. Catching an infestation early, ideally through annual inspections, is the single most effective way to keep total costs low.