The short version: in 2026, replacing one torsion spring runs $250 to $350 installed. Replacing the matched pair runs $350 to $500 installed. Extension springs run $200 to $350 for the pair. High-cycle springs add $50 to $100. Those are complete prices. Spring, labor, balance test, and a hardware check on the cables, drums, and bearings while the door is open. Most spring calls are done in under an hour.
What Garage Door Spring Replacement Costs
- Single torsion spring: $250 to $350 installed. The standard call on a single-car door, or on a double-car door that was built with one spring.
- Torsion pair: $350 to $500 installed. What we recommend on any door that has two springs. More on why below.
- Extension springs, pair: $200 to $350 installed. Older setups, usually on lighter single doors, with the springs running along the horizontal tracks.
- High-cycle upgrade: add $50 to $100. Buys a spring rated for 25,000 to 50,000 cycles instead of the standard 10,000.
Garage Door Spring Replacement Cost by Type and Cycle Rating
| Job | Standard spring (10,000 cycles), installed | High-cycle spring (25,000+ cycles), installed | Usually fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| One torsion spring | $250 to $350 | $300 to $450 | Single-spring doors, most single-car doors |
| Torsion pair | $350 to $500 | $400 to $600 | Any door built with two springs |
| Extension springs, pair | $200 to $350 | Quoted on site | Older, lighter single doors |
| Spring part only, online | $40 to $80 | Varies | Not installed, not wound, not balanced |
The high-cycle column is the standard price plus the $50 to $100 upgrade, nothing else added. The last row is there for comparison only. A spring bought online arrives unwound, and it has to be matched to the door by wire size, inside diameter, and length before it is worth anything.
The spread inside each range comes from door weight and wire size. A 16-foot insulated steel door needs heavier wire and a longer spring than an 8-foot uninsulated one, and the part costs more. Nothing else in the number moves much.
Torsion or Extension: What You Have
Stand inside the garage with the door closed. If there is a steel shaft running horizontally across the wall above the door with one or two springs wound around it, that is a torsion system. Torsion is the modern standard and what we install on every replacement. If instead you see long springs stretched along the tracks on either side, running front to back, those are extension springs. Extension setups are older and should always have containment cables run through them, because an uncontained extension spring becomes a projectile when it snaps.
If your door still has extension springs and the header has the headroom for a shaft, converting to torsion is worth asking about at the same visit. Torsion balances better, lasts longer, and is quieter. We price the conversion on site because it depends on your headroom.
One Spring or Two?
If your door has two springs and one breaks, replace both. This is not an upsell. Springs are manufactured and installed as a matched set and they take the same number of cycles. When the first one goes, the second is a few hundred cycles behind it. Doing the pair now costs $100 to $150 more than doing the single. Doing the second one later costs another full service call, plus the day you spend without a working garage.
If your door was built with a single spring, we replace the single. We do not add a spring your door was not engineered for.
Cycle Ratings: The Number That Decides Your Real Cost
Every spring is rated in cycles. One cycle is one full open plus one full close. Standard springs are rated for 10,000 cycles. For a household that runs the door about four times a day, that is roughly seven to ten years. Run it eight times a day with two working adults and two teenagers and you burn through 10,000 cycles in about three and a half years.
That is where the high-cycle upgrade pays. A 25,000-cycle spring costs $50 to $100 more up front and lasts two to three times as long. If the garage is your main entrance, the upgrade is the cheapest decision on this page. If the door opens twice a day, take the standard spring and put the money somewhere else. We tell you which one your house is when we see the door.
Run the math per year and the choice gets clearer. A standard torsion pair at $350 to $500 that lasts about three and a half years in a busy house works out to roughly $100 to $140 a year. A high-cycle pair at $400 to $600 that lasts two and a half times as long in the same house works out to roughly $45 to $70 a year, and you skip at least one emergency morning in between. In a two-person house that opens the door twice a day, the standard spring outlasts most people's ownership of the house, and the upgrade never pays back.
Why Coastal Springs Die Early
National cost guides are written for Ohio. On the Georgia coast and in Northeast Florida, springs have a second enemy besides cycles: chloride. Salt-laden air settles into the coils, pits the steel, and leaves rust that both raises friction and creates the stress risers where the wire eventually fails. We pull springs in St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island that failed years short of their cycle rating, with rust in the coils telling the whole story.
Two things slow it down. Spray the coils with a garage-door-rated lubricant once a year, and keep the door itself clean so salt does not sit on the hardware all summer. Both are part of our annual garage door maintenance visit, which is the cheapest insurance against an unplanned $400 morning.
What a Cheap Quote Leaves Out
If a price you are comparing is well under these ranges, ask three questions. Does it include the labor or is it the part only? Does it include a balance test after the swap, so the opener is not left dragging a door it cannot lift? Does the tech check the cables, drums, and bearings while the door is open, or do you pay for that call separately in six months? A spring never fails in isolation. Frayed cables and seized bearings are what killed it, and they are five minutes of work while the tech is already there.
Our number includes all of it, plus $50 off any repair. The diagnostic is waived with any repair. You get a written quote before work starts and the quote you approve is the invoice.
What Else Can Land on the Same Visit
A spring rarely fails alone, and the honest version of this guide has to say what else might be on the quote. These are the related repairs we find most often while the door is open, with the typical ranges we charge for them. None of them is added without your approval on the written quote.
- Frayed lift cables: typically $200 to $350 for the pair. When a spring snaps, the sudden slack often throws a cable off its drum or frays it where it wraps. Details on our garage door cable repair page.
- Door came off the track: off-track repair with cable replacement typically runs $250 to $400. This happens when someone keeps pressing the button after the spring breaks.
- Opener damaged by lifting a dead door: opener repair typically runs $150 to $350. A stripped gear or a burned board is the usual casualty.
- Extension to torsion conversion: quoted on site, because it depends on your headroom.
If you stopped using the door the moment you heard the bang, most of that list never applies. That is the single easiest way to keep this a spring-only invoice.
How to Compare Spring Quotes by Phone
Most people searching for spring replacement near them are calling three companies and comparing numbers. That works if everyone is quoting the same job. Before you call, find out four things: whether the door is torsion or extension, whether it has one spring or two, the door width (single is usually 8 or 9 feet, double 16), and whether it is insulated. Then ask each company the same three questions. Is that price for the pair or one spring? Does it include labor and the balance test? Is it a standard or high-cycle spring? A quote that will not answer those on the phone is usually the one that grows once the truck is in your driveway.
Across Glynn, Camden, McIntosh, Chatham, and the Northeast Florida counties we serve, the quote we give on the phone is a range, and the written quote on site before any work starts is the number you pay. If the door is not usable and a car is trapped, say so, and the ticket moves up.
The Warning Signs, Before It Breaks
Springs give notice. A loud bang from the garage with no obvious cause is a spring letting go, and it sounds like a gunshot. Before that: the door feels heavier by hand, it opens a few inches and stops, the opener strains or reverses, the door hangs crooked, or you can see a visible gap in the coil. Any of those means stop using the door. Every extra cycle on a failing spring is load transferred to an opener that was never built to lift a 200-pound door on its own.
More on how the system works in how garage door springs work and why they break. If the door is stuck right now, our garage door won't open checklist rules out the easy causes first.
Do Not Do This One Yourself
A wound torsion spring on a double door stores enough energy to break an arm or worse. It needs proper winding bars, not screwdrivers, and the replacement has to match your door's exact weight in wire diameter, inside diameter, and length. Get the wire size wrong and the door is unbalanced from day one, which quietly destroys the opener. This is the clearest line in the trade between what a homeowner should tackle and what a tech should. We wrote about the rest of that line in DIY vs pro garage door repair.
Getting It Fixed Today
Broken springs are same-day work. Our trucks carry the common wire sizes and lengths, so most calls are diagnosed and finished on the first visit. Full details on the service are on our garage door spring repair page, and if the door is unusable right now, see 24/7 emergency garage door repair. We run Brunswick, the islands, and up and down the coast from Savannah to Jacksonville out of one shop on Rose Drive.