The headline figure
Custom cabinets in Mobile, AL cost $500 to $1,200 per linear foot installed, which is HomeAdvisor's national range published on 17 June 2026. Thumbtack, updated 8 July 2026, puts the same tier at $500 to $1,400 and up per linear foot. Semi-custom runs $150 to $650 on HomeAdvisor and $150 to $900 and up on Thumbtack. Stock runs $100 to $300 on HomeAdvisor and $75 to $400 and up on Thumbtack.
Two independent publishers using different methods landing in overlapping territory is genuinely useful. It means the custom band is real rather than an artefact of one survey, and it gives you a sanity check: a quote at $350 per linear foot is not custom cabinetry whatever it says on the letterhead, and a quote at $2,000 per linear foot is charging for something beyond the cabinetry itself.
| Tier | HomeAdvisor, 17 Jun 2026 | Thumbtack, 8 Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Stock | $100 to $300 | $75 to $400+ |
| Semi-custom | $150 to $650 | $150 to $900+ |
| Custom | $500 to $1,200 | $500 to $1,400+ |
Both publishers state these as national figures. Neither publishes a Mobile, Alabama or Baldwin County figure, and neither does anybody else.
Why this page will not give you a Mobile average
Before writing this guide we went looking for cabinet pricing specific to Mobile, to Mobile County, or to Alabama. Here is exactly what we found, so you can check the same sources.
- HomeAdvisor publishes a cabinet cost guide with detailed tier and material breakdowns, all of them explicitly national.
- Thumbtack publishes two relevant pages, a custom cabinet cost page and a cost to install kitchen cabinets page, both updated 8 July 2026 and both national.
- Homewyse publishes per-cabinet installation figures with a ZIP adjustment tool, but the underlying figure is a national average with a multiplier rather than measured local data.
- The RSMeans City Cost Index would let you scale a national figure to this metro properly. It is a paid publication and the city index values are not published free.
- The federal Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables carry metro-level wage data for the trades, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics blocks automated access to those tables.
Converting your kitchen into linear feet
Cabinet pricing runs on linear feet of base cabinet run, and it is the one measurement you can take accurately yourself in five minutes with a tape.
Measure along each wall that has base cabinets on it, in feet, from one end of the run to the other. Add the walls together. If the appliances are freestanding, most quotes still count the full wall length, because the run is still being designed and finished around them. If there is a built-in oven housing or an integrated refrigerator panel, that is cabinetry and counts.
| Layout | Usual range | Worked example |
|---|---|---|
| Small galley | 12 to 16 ft | 8 ft plus 7 ft equals 15 ft |
| Single wall | 10 to 14 ft | One run of 12 ft |
| L-shape | 20 to 28 ft | 12 ft plus 13 ft equals 25 ft |
| U-shape | 25 to 34 ft | 10 ft plus 12 ft plus 10 ft equals 32 ft |
| L-shape plus island | 28 to 40 ft | 25 ft of perimeter plus an 8 ft island equals 33 ft |
Measure the run of base cabinets along the wall in feet. Wall cabinets are normally included in the per linear foot rate rather than counted separately.
What a kitchen actually comes to
Multiply your linear footage by the per linear foot range for the tier you want. The tables below do that for you at the two ends of HomeAdvisor's published bands.
| Linear feet | At $500 | At $850 midpoint | At $1,200 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 ft | $6,000 | $10,200 | $14,400 |
| 15 ft | $7,500 | $12,750 | $18,000 |
| 20 ft | $10,000 | $17,000 | $24,000 |
| 25 ft | $12,500 | $21,250 | $30,000 |
| 30 ft | $15,000 | $25,500 | $36,000 |
| 35 ft | $17,500 | $29,750 | $42,000 |
| 40 ft | $20,000 | $34,000 | $48,000 |
Our arithmetic against HomeAdvisor's published national range, 17 June 2026. The midpoint column is a linear midpoint and not a published figure.
| Linear feet | At $150 | At $400 midpoint | At $650 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 ft | $1,800 | $4,800 | $7,800 |
| 15 ft | $2,250 | $6,000 | $9,750 |
| 20 ft | $3,000 | $8,000 | $13,000 |
| 25 ft | $3,750 | $10,000 | $16,250 |
| 30 ft | $4,500 | $12,000 | $19,500 |
| 35 ft | $5,250 | $14,000 | $22,750 |
Our arithmetic against HomeAdvisor's published national range, 17 June 2026.
HomeAdvisor also publishes whole-kitchen figures directly, and they line up with the arithmetic above: a 10 by 10 kitchen at $2,000 to $24,000 across all tiers with a typical band of $4,000 to $13,000, a 12 by 12 at $2,500 to $29,000, and a small kitchen at $1,700 to $20,000.
Cost by material
Material choice moves the total substantially, and the two publishers frame it differently, which is worth understanding before you compare their numbers.
| Material | HomeAdvisor, 17 Jun 2026 | Thumbtack, 8 Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| MDF or particleboard with veneer | Not listed separately | $1,000 to $2,500 |
| Wood veneer | $2,000 to $15,000+ | $4,000 to $9,000 |
| Laminate | $4,000 to $15,000 | $5,000 to $8,000 |
| Thermofoil | Not listed separately | $7,000+ |
| Solid wood or hardwood | $5,000 to $25,000+ | $6,000 to $25,000+ |
| Acrylic | $5,000 to $20,000 | Not listed |
| Stainless steel | $25,000 to $38,000 | Not listed |
Both publishers state these as national figures for a standard-sized kitchen. The two datasets use different category boundaries, which is why the veneer and laminate rows differ.
Construction style also moves the number
HomeAdvisor puts framed cabinets at $5,000 to $20,000 and up for a kitchen and frameless at $6,000 to $30,000 and up, describing frameless as roughly a 15 percent premium over framed. Inset doors carry roughly a 20 percent markup over comparable traditional styles. Those are useful multipliers to apply to whatever per linear foot figure you started from.
Installation labour, separated out
Thumbtack publishes the cabinet installer labour rate separately at $50 to $70 per linear foot, updated 8 July 2026. Their national average range for a cabinet installation job is $482 to $2,167, with a most common figure of $1,044, a low of $164 and a high of $6,187. Their worked example of a typical kitchen totals about $5,000, made up of roughly $900 of installation on top of roughly $4,000 of cabinets.
| Linear feet | At $50 per ft | At $70 per ft |
|---|---|---|
| 15 ft | $750 | $1,050 |
| 20 ft | $1,000 | $1,400 |
| 25 ft | $1,250 | $1,750 |
| 30 ft | $1,500 | $2,100 |
| 35 ft | $1,750 | $2,450 |
Our arithmetic against Thumbtack's published national installer labour rate, 8 July 2026. This is labour only, for cabinets supplied separately.
That is the figure to use if you are buying cabinets yourself and want fitting only, which the cabinet installation page covers in detail, including the list of components self-specified orders routinely leave out.
The lines that quotes leave out
Every figure above is for cabinets. The lines below are the ones that appear afterwards and move a budget, and they come from the same published sources.
| Item | Published figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Crown moulding | About $70 per 8 ft section | Thumbtack, 8 Jul 2026 |
| Finished ends on exposed cabinets | $100 to $200 each | Thumbtack, 8 Jul 2026 |
| Removal of existing cabinets | About $300 | Thumbtack, 8 Jul 2026 |
| Cabinet painting, as an alternative to replacement | $1,200 to $7,000 national average | Thumbtack, 8 Jul 2026 |
| Kitchen designer | About $90 to $100 per hour | Thumbtack, 8 Jul 2026 |
| General contractor overhead | 13 to 22 percent, excluded from published figures | Homewyse, Sep 2026 |
| Permits and modification of existing systems | Excluded from published figures | Homewyse, Sep 2026 |
Homewyse is explicit that its published installed figures exclude contractor overhead, permits and modification to existing plumbing, electrical or mechanical systems. On a kitchen where the sink moves, that exclusion is routinely the largest unquoted number.
An island is the most common source of surprise on this list, because every face of it is visible. That means at least two finished ends plus a finished back panel, which the kitchen islands page goes through.
The cheaper routes, in order
If the boxes are sound, you have three options below full replacement, and the ordering is always the same.
| Route | What changes | Published figure |
|---|---|---|
| Painting and refinishing | Colour and sheen only | $1,200 to $7,000 national average, Thumbtack 8 Jul 2026 |
| New doors and drawer fronts | Fronts, not face frames | No reliable published figure; sits between the rows above and below |
| Refacing | Fronts plus face frame surface | No reliable published figure; below replacement, above painting |
| Replacement | Everything, and the layout can change | $500 to $1,200 per linear foot installed for custom, HomeAdvisor 17 Jun 2026 |
We are not printing invented figures for the two middle rows. No publisher produces a reliable separate national number for refacing or for doors-only work.
The decision between them is made by the condition of the boxes, not by the budget. The refacing versus replacing guide has the four tests that settle it, and the first one is pressing the sink base floor.
The $10,000 line that changes who can do the work
Alabama requires a residential home builder licence once the cost of the undertaking exceeds $10,000. Looking at the tables above, that threshold is crossed by almost every custom kitchen and by a good number of semi-custom ones. The Alabama Code defines cost of the undertaking as the total cost of materials, labour, supervision, overhead and profit, so it is the whole invoice rather than the labour line.
That is worth knowing at budgeting stage rather than at contract stage, because it narrows who may legally carry out the work. The permit and licensing guide quotes the statute directly, including the homeowner exemption and the duty on building officials to refuse permits for unlicensed work.
Making two quotes comparable
The most common reason two cabinet quotes differ by thousands is that they are not quoting the same thing. These are the items that have to be named on both documents before any comparison means anything.
- Linear footage, stated, so you can check both quotes are pricing the same run.
- Tier: stock, semi-custom or custom, named rather than implied by the word bespoke.
- Box material per location, with plywood explicitly called out at sink bases and exterior walls.
- Door style and overlay listed separately, since full overlay and inset are different prices for the same style.
- Construction: framed or frameless, which carries roughly a 15 percent difference on its own.
- Finish system named, and whether it is sprayed and where.
- Drawer box construction and slide type, since soft close is a hardware line.
- Crown, finished ends, fillers and scribe allowance, each as a visible line.
- What is excluded: countertop, backsplash, appliances, plumbing, electrical and permits.
- The Alabama Home Builders Licensure Board licence number, for any job over $10,000.
A quote naming all ten is a document you can hold somebody to. Two quotes naming none of them cannot be compared at all, whatever the numbers at the bottom say.
What to do with all this
Measure your linear footage. Pick the tier the room actually needs, using the filler strip test in the tier comparison guide. Multiply through the tables above for a budget range. Then get the room measured properly, because the number that matters is the one written down after somebody has been in your kitchen with a laser.
Start at custom cabinets for how the work is built, or go straight to contact for a measured quote.