house
Screened porch vs sunroom
Screens keep bugs off. Glass keeps weather off. What those two buildings cost, what has to be on the bid, and when you are already shopping a three-season or four-season room.
You want to sit outside without eating mosquitoes, or you want a room with a view. Those are different buildings. A screened porch is still outdoors: roof, floor, mesh, air moving through. A sunroom is enclosed with glass or panels. Weather stays out, bugs stay out, and you are paying for a different permit, a different foundation conversation, and often heat.
This is a hire job. You are not stretching screen on a kit from a weekend video if the roof has to tie into this house. The work this week is picking the building, then making two bids name the same one.
If you already know you want glass and you are stuck on three-season vs year-round, start with sunroom vs three-season porch. If the year-round version is the live question, HVAC and permits is the mechanicals. Stay here when the honest fork is screens versus glass.
What am I actually buying?
Screened porch. Mesh on a framed opening, a door that closes, usually a ceiling fan. Rain still blows in on a windy side. Winter is a coat. You hear the neighborhood. You smell the grill. HomeGuide treats screening an existing covered porch as the cheap enclosure: $10 to $25 per square foot, typically $2,000 to $5,000 for about 200 square feet. Building a new screened porch (floor, roof, posts, screens) is $50 to $175 per square foot, or $10,000 to $35,000 for that same 200-square-foot size.
HomeGuide: screened-in porch cost
Angi’s 2026 national screened-porch page puts enclosing an existing porch at $2,000 to $4,000, average around $2,800. Their size table is the one to put next to a bid: 12-by-12 existing enclosure about $2,000, new 12-by-12 about $7,200; 14-by-16 existing $2,900, new $11,200; 20-by-20 existing $5,000, new $20,000. They also price new work around $25 to $120 per square foot, and existing enclosure around $5 to $20 per square foot.
Sunroom. Walls you can see through, a door into the house, and a floor that is trying to be a room. Three-season glass is still not January living space in a cold climate. Four-season is an addition. HomeGuide’s sunroom guide is $8,000 to $50,000 three-season and $20,000 to $80,000 four-season, or $80 to $230 vs $200 to $400 per square foot. A 12-by-12 on that table is $11,500 to $33,000 three-season and $28,500 to $47,500 four-season.
HomeGuide’s porch-enclosure table is the conversion napkin: for a 5-by-10, screens $500 to $1,250, convert to three-season $4,000 to $11,500, convert to four-season $10,000 to $20,000. Screens are the cheap column because they are not a thermal envelope.
HomeGuide: cost to enclose a porch
If Bid A is $3,200 to screen the porch you already have, and Bid B is $28,000 for a “sunroom” on the same footprint, they are not competing. One is mesh. The other is a room.
Which one matches how you actually sit?
Buy screens when the point is bugs and breeze. You already use that porch from May through September. You want the dog and the coffee out there without a cloud of mosquitoes. You do not need another legal bedroom, and you will not work out there in January.
Buy glass when weather is the problem: pollen, wind-driven rain, a place for plants that cannot take a cold night, or a sitting room you will close the house door on. Then you are on the sunroom pages, because three-season vs four-season is the next fork, not screen vs nicer screen.
Do not buy glass because a salesperson said screens look cheap. Buy glass because you will use the room when it is 45°F and raining. If you will not, you paid sunroom money for a porch you will still abandon in October.
A screened porch you later convert to glass is a second project. The posts, the slab, and the roof were sized for mesh and wind, not for insulated glass and a snow load. If you already know year-round is coming, price the sunroom once.
What has to be on the bid?
Existing structure. Can this roof and this floor take walls? A deck built for a grill is not automatically a porch. Ask whether they inspected joists, ledger, and footings, and write the answer on the quote. Screening a bouncy deck is how doors stop latching.
New vs enclose. Angi and HomeGuide both split those jobs. A $2,800 number that quietly includes a new roof is fiction. A $18,000 “screened porch” that is really a new structure should look like HomeGuide’s new-build band, not the screen-only band.
Roof and flashing. If they add a roof, the house wall is the leak line. Step flashing, ice-and-water, whose shingles get stripped. Same failure as a sunroom, cheaper mesh does not forgive a bad tie-in.
Screens. Fiberglass vs aluminum vs pet mesh, how they fasten, and whether a door is included. Angi notes rescreening every six to eight years on local pages. Ask what a rescreen costs in their bid, because mesh is a wear item.
Electrical. A fan and a light are how you actually use the space after dark. Panel space, GFCI, whose electrician. A screened porch without a fan in August is a box of hot air with better bugs.
Floor. Existing boards, composite, or a slab. Screening does not waterproof a deck that already cups.
Permit and setbacks. Screening an existing porch can still need a permit, especially if you add a roof or change lot coverage. You want their license on the permit. HOA design rules kill mesh colors and roof pitches at the drawing, not at the punch list.
What is excluded. Paint, gutters, demo, matching the existing rail, mosquito-proofing the gap at the house siding, heat (there should be none on a true screened bid).
If you are looking at glass instead, the bid also has to name three-season vs four-season, glass type, insulation, HVAC, and foundation. That list lives on the sunroom page. Do not let a screened-porch contractor “upgrade you to windows” in a change order without that list.
What should three setups mean?
Setup A, screen what you have. Covered porch or patio with a real roof, sound floor, you want bugs gone. Angi $2,000 to $4,000 / HomeGuide $2,000 to $5,000 for a typical 200-square-foot enclose. Fan and a door in the price. Permit if the town wants one. This is the right job when you already sit out there.
Setup B, new screened porch. No roof yet, or the deck cannot take walls. HomeGuide $10,000 to $35,000, Angi new 14-by-16 around $11,200. Footings, roof, floor, screens. Still not a sunroom. Still not heated.
Setup C, you actually want a room. Stop comparing to Setup A. Price a three-season or four-season sunroom on sunroom vs three-season, and if it has to work in January, add HVAC and permits. HomeGuide’s 12-by-12 three-season $11,500 to $33,000 is the first glass band. That is several screened porches.
How does this go wrong?
You pay new-porch money and get screen-only scope, or the reverse: you budget $3,000 and they show up talking about posts and a roof.
The deck ledger was already tired. Screens add wind load. The house wall was the weak point.
You plan to “just add windows later.” The slab and the posts were not built for that, so later is a tear-off.
No fan, west sun, mesh that holds heat. August is unusable and you blame screens instead of the missing electrical line.
A sunroom bid that still says “screened porch” in the header. The inspector and the appraiser will believe the permit, not the brochure.
How do I decide this week?
- Write down which months you will actually sit there, and whether rain and 45°F are deal-breakers or just a sweater.
- If bugs are the problem and weather is fine, price Setup A or B as a screened porch, using Angi $2,000 to $4,000 to enclose and HomeGuide $10,000 to $35,000 to build new as the two sanity bands.
- If weather is the problem, stop this comparison and collect three-season vs four-season bids with glass, foundation, and HVAC named.
- Make every screened bid say enclose vs new, roof tie-in, floor, fan, permit holder, and screen type.
- Compare two quotes that enclose the same existing porch, or two that build new. Do not average a $3,000 enclose with an $18,000 new structure.
- If year-round living space is why you started, you want a sunroom permit, not nicer mesh.
The cheap number is usually screens on a roof you already own. The expensive number is a room. Pick which one you will sit in, then hire the person who will put that building on the page.