Grade 40 or Grade 60 sarya: which steel bars to use for a house, and the price gap

Grade 40 vs Grade 60 steel comes down to strength: Grade 60 bars yield at no less than 60,000 psi (420 MPa), Grade 40 at 40,000 psi (280 MPa), under the American standard ASTM A615, which Amreli, Agha and Mughal make bars to. Use the grade your structural drawings name. The price gap is small: on 14 October 2026, Kamran Steel in Lahore listed Grade 60 at Rs 277,000 a tonne and Grade 40 at Rs 275,000.

Below: what the grades mean, what to use, why official price tables understate Grade 60, and how to check bars on delivery.

What is the difference between Grade 40 and Grade 60 steel?

The grade is the bar’s minimum yield strength: the stress at which it starts to stretch and stay bent.

Sources: ASTM A615/A615M-16; Amreli Steels buying guide.

Amreli lists the standards commonly used in Pakistan as ASTM A615, ASTM A706, BS 4449, and the Pakistani standards PS 1879 and PS 1612. Mughal Steel makes deformed bars to PS 1879 in Grade 60, and says its bars are under “mandatory compliance” with the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA).

Which grade should you use for a house?

The one on your structural drawings. Amreli’s buying guide tells buyers to ask the architect, structural engineer or contractor which standard and grade the project needs. The engineer sizes the bars and their spacing for that grade.

Don’t buy Grade 40 for a Grade 60 design to save money. At the same bar size, Grade 40 has two-thirds of the yield strength, and the saving is tiny (see below). If you want to use a different grade, the engineer has to redo the design.

Published Pakistani take-offs assume Grade 60. Zameen’s breakdowns, with rates from Alpha Construction, list 3,000 kg of Grade 60 for a 5 marla house, 5,000 kg for 10 marla and 9,000 kg for 1 kanal.

Some mills sell bars for earthquake-resistant frames to ASTM A706: Amreli’s Ultima and Agha’s A706 bars, which Agha links to the American concrete code ACI 318. Pakistan’s seismic building code (Building Code of Pakistan, Seismic Provisions 2007) is issued by the Ministry of Housing and Works. We couldn’t find a citable copy of its text to say which grades it allows, so we don’t claim a rule here.

What is the Grade 60 steel price, and how big is the gap?

Only one mill we checked publishes its rate:

Source: Kamran Steel, Lahore, its own published rate, the same in every city. Amreli, Agha and Mughal show no prices on their sites.

A Rs 2,000 a tonne gap is 0.7%. On our construction material calculator, that adds:

• about Rs 5,500 to Rs 7,500 for a 5 marla house with load-bearing brick walls (2.8 to 3.8 tonnes)
• about Rs 9,200 to Rs 12,500 for a 10 marla house (4.6 to 6.3 tonnes)
• about Rs 33,300 to Rs 42,800 for a 1 kanal house with a full RCC frame (16.7 to 21.4 tonnes)

Why do official steel prices show only Grade 40?

PBS (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics) prices one steel item in its city table: “Iron bars (1/2” 40 grade) (M.S. bars)“. In September 2026, its latest month, that was Rs 231,380 a tonne in Lahore, Rs 241,542 in Karachi and Rs 246,167 in Islamabad.

So every price page and calculator built on PBS, including construction material prices and our calculator, prices Grade 40. For a Grade 60 house the steel line is understated.

There is a second gap. Kamran Steel’s October list price for Grade 40 is Rs 43,620 (19%) above PBS’s September Lahore average for the same grade. Neither source explains the difference. Treat PBS as a trend line and get two dealer quotes for the grade on your drawings before you buy.

At wholesale, steel bar and sheet prices were 5.29% higher in September 2026 than a year earlier, and 0.91% lower than in August.

How do you check steel bars on delivery?

Amreli’s buying guide lists these checks:

1. Maker’s name on the bar. Genuine bars carry the manufacturer’s name along their length. Mills show their markings on their websites.
2. Deformed bars, not TOR bars. Deformed bars are rolled from steel billets to a standard. TOR bars are cut from old ship plates and twisted by hand.
3. Weight. Weigh the bars when they are loaded and delivered, or ask for a third-party weighbridge slip.
4. Bend test. Lift one bar from a bundle by one end and let go. Good bars spring back close to straight; poor ones stay bent.
5. Ribs. The rib pattern should be even along the whole bar.

To check weight, use the standard weight per foot:

From the ASTM nominal weights (lb per foot) published by Continental Steel, converted to kg (our calculation). If the weighbridge figure is well below this for the lengths delivered, ask the dealer why.

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