The best product for a crack in a concrete driveway is a polyurethane or epoxy crack filler worked into a cleaned, dry crack, not a surface sealer. A penetrating silane or siloxane sealer goes on the whole slab afterward to slow water and road-salt intrusion, but it will not fill, bridge, or hide a crack, and it will not fix a crack caused by a shallow base, frost heave, or a slab that has settled.
What goes in the crack, and what goes on the slab
Two different products, two different jobs. Most homeowners buy one can and expect it to do both.
In the crack: a polyurethane crack filler or a two-part epoxy injection. Polyurethane stays flexible and follows a crack that opens and closes with the seasons, which is what most driveway cracks in Central New York do. Epoxy is rigid and stronger than the concrete around it, right for a crack that has stopped moving and needs to be structurally re-tied, wrong for a slab still heaving.
On the slab: a penetrating sealer. Silane and siloxane soak into the concrete and line the pores, so water beads off instead of soaking in and freezing. They don't change the look of the driveway and don't peel, because there's no film to peel. Film-forming acrylic sealers sit on top and give a wet, glossier finish, but they wear through at the tire tracks within a couple of winters and need a recoat.
Here, a sealer is a 3-to-5-year maintenance item, not a one-time job. Between roughly November and April the surface takes road salt, and every one of those freeze-thaw cycles pulls at the same pores a sealer is meant to protect.
What a sealer will not fix
This is the part that saves people money. Sealer is a water repellent, not a repair.
- A crack wider than a hairline. Sealer has the consistency of water. It runs into a 1/8-inch crack, coats the sides, and leaves the gap open.
- A crack that keeps reopening. If you filled it in October and it's back by March, water is getting under the slab and freezing. That's a base and drainage problem, and no product on a shelf solves it.
- Frost heave from a shallow base. The frost line around Syracuse runs about 42 inches down. A slab poured over a foot of un-compacted fill lifts unevenly every winter, and sealing it just makes the lifted slab easier to look at.
- Settled or rocked slabs. A section that has dropped toward the street or tipped away from the house is a leveling job, not a sealing job.
- Spalling and scaling at edges and joints. That's the surface layer letting go, usually from a mix that wasn't air-entrained to survive salt. Sealer can slow the next flake. It can't put the concrete back.
- Wide, wandering cracks with a vertical offset. One side higher than the other means movement below. Filling it hides the symptom for a season.
Where sealing and crack repair land on price
Driveway sealing in Syracuse runs $250–$900, and crack filling is usually folded into that visit when the cracks are few and cosmetic. Concrete repair and slab leveling runs $400–$2,500. Those ranges are typical, not quotes, the final cost varies a lot with square footage, crack count and width, how much prep and cleaning the slab needs, and site conditions like drainage, slope, and access for equipment.
One honest note: if a 20-year-old slab has a dozen working cracks plus spalling across two sections, the number to compare against sealing is a partial replacement, which starts around $8,000–$16,000 for a full driveway. We put that comparison in writing before anyone signs anything.
How we handle it
We clean the crack with a wire brush and compressed air, confirm it's dry, and fill with the right material for whether it's still moving. Joints get checked at the same time, on a 4-inch slab, control joints should be spaced roughly 8 to 12 feet, cut on a plan rather than wherever the saw stopped. If the cracks trace back to joint layout, thin pour, or a base that wasn't compacted below frost depth, we say so instead of selling a seal and a callback.
For new work, air-entrained 4,000 psi concrete is the mix that holds up to road salt, and the base gets dug and compacted for the 42-inch frost depth. If your project touches the apron or the right-of-way, the city of Syracuse or the town you're in, Clay, Salina, DeWitt, Cicero, Geddes, will want a driveway permit for that portion, and we handle the paperwork as part of the job.
Why Syracuse Driveways
We're a concrete driveway company working in Syracuse and Onondaga County, not a sealing crew that also pours. That means we can tell you, in writing, whether a crack is worth filling or whether the slab is past it. Every driveway we pour is built for the 115 inches of lake-effect weather and the salt that comes with it, and we seal on a schedule because that's the difference between thirty years and eight.
Get a free quote
Send us a few photos of the cracks and we'll tell you what's worth sealing, what needs filling, and what's a replacement, with a written, no-pressure quote. Free estimates across Syracuse and the surrounding towns.