Patching is quoted by the square foot of failed pavement, and the calculator above uses $6 per square foot as the example rate. Notice that this example is higher than full parking lot paving rates. That is not a typo. Patching is surgery, and small surgery carries big fixed costs.
Two things get called a patch
A saw-cut, full-depth patch means cutting a clean rectangle back to sound asphalt, digging out the failed material and bad base, compacting new base rock, then placing and rolling hot mix. Done right, the repair outlives the pavement around it. Throw-and-go means shoveling cold patch into the hole and tamping it with the truck tire. It has a real use, keeping a hole safe in winter until plants open, but it is a placeholder, not a repair. Quote them as the different products they are, and tell the customer which one they are buying.
Why the per-foot number runs high
A patch job hauls the same overhead as a paving job: mobilization, a crew, a saw, a plate compactor or roller, and hot mix that the plant sells by the ton whether you need one ton or twenty. Spread that over a few dozen square feet and the per-foot cost is naturally a multiple of large-area paving. At the example rate, an 8 by 10 foot patch is 80 square feet, which comes to $480. A little 4 by 4 pothole repair is 16 square feet, or $96 at the same rate, and $96 does not get a crew and a saw to the curb. That is exactly what a minimum job charge is for, and it is worth settling before you hand out numbers, especially over the phone.
Find out why it failed
Asphalt rarely fails for no reason, and the usual reason is water. A pothole in a low spot, at a clogged drain, or where a downspout dumps across the pavement is telling you the base got saturated. Patch it without touching the drainage and you will be back, on warranty, patching the ring around your own patch. Walk the water path before you quote, and price the fix, regrading, a drain, or a curb cut, as its own line. When patches start connecting into whole failed sections, patching stops being the answer, and the job moves into overlay or replacement territory. The wider pricing method is in how to price sealcoating and asphalt jobs.
The rate here is an example. PriceDesk runs this calculator with your patch rate and your minimum charge built in, free for 14 days, so the small-job math protects you automatically.