Aluminium vs uPVC Guttering

Plastic guttering is the budget end of the market, and most houses on a normal street wear it. The lengths are cheap, the fittings clip together, and a roofer can carry a van load up a ladder without trouble. Aluminium costs more, both for the metal and for the time to fit it, and the gap widens if the run is long or the house is tall.

The price of the metal itself depends on the profile and the coating, so it is set by the written quote. A yardstick for a standard job is Checkatrade's October 2026 gutter table puts a whole replacement at £650 to £1,700, averaging £1,000, for 15 to 20 metres with three downpipes. Treat that as a starting point and no more, because it does not say which material it covers.

The sensible way to compare the two is to ask for each material priced as a complete job on your house, with scaffold and VAT stated. Our answer on gutter replacement cost explains what pushes a figure up or down, and the survey tells us which parts of your run are the awkward ones, such as a long side with no easy ladder access, a bay roof, or a tall gable end where a tower is needed.

Neither material has a lifespan we can promise, and no guarantee is a life expectancy. What we can say is how each one ages. Plastic fades and turns brittle after long exposure to sun, and the joint seals and brackets tend to give out before the channel itself does. A cold snap with a heavy load of leaves or ice can crack an old length that looked fine the week before.

Aluminium does not go brittle, and a factory-coated finish keeps its colour well. It can be dented by a ladder or a football, and cheap thin sections will bend under a lot of water, so ask for the thickness and profile of what is on offer rather than just the word aluminium. In a coastal or polluted setting the coating matters, so ask what finish is on offer.

The only lifespan figure on offer is for fascias, not gutters: a retailer says plastic fascia boards last between 20 and 40 years, and it is an interested party. We would not stretch that to gutters. If your gutters are failing, our page on the leaking gutter joint shows when a repair is enough.

This is where aluminium has a real argument. A rolled aluminium gutter is formed on site from a coil of metal by a machine on the back of the van, so a long side of the house becomes one piece. Joints are where gutters leak and clog, so removing most of them removes most of the weak spots. Corners and outlets are still joined, but there are far fewer places to fail.

Plastic comes in lengths of a few metres, so a typical elevation has several joints, each with a rubber seal that dries out. A well-fitted plastic run can last a long time, but the seals are the part that needs looking at, and so are the clips that hold each length in its bracket, which can loosen as the plastic expands and contracts through a year.

Whichever you pick, the gutter has to fall gently towards the outlet or it will hold water and sag. Brett Martin's guidance is 1mm for every 600mm of run, and our note on gutter fall per metre explains how to check it. A bad fall defeats a good material, and either gutter will hold standing water that rots the board behind it.

Plastic comes in white, black, brown and grey, in half-round, square and deep-flow profiles. It suits most modern houses and the fascia boards beside it, which are usually plastic too. Pale plastic shows green growth and dirt faster than dark, so a white run needs a wipe over more often to stay looking clean.

Aluminium has a sharper, more substantial edge and takes a wider range of coated colours, so it can match window frames or a painted fascia. On an older brick house with a handsome roofline, a metal gutter in the right profile looks closer to the original cast iron than plastic can. On a plain estate semi, the extra look is often not worth the money.

Before you change the material or profile on a listed house or one in a conservation area, ask the council's planning team. The look of a roofline can be part of what the council protects. The gutters, soffits and fascias page covers the wider job, including the boards the gutters hang from.