Ask this anywhere and you get a list of surfaces. Driveways, patios, sidewalks, garage floors.
That is a list of what the contractor sells, not an answer. Two tests decide whether your concrete is a candidate, and once you know them the surface name stops mattering much.
The two tests that decide it
Here they are before anything else.
Is it sitting on the ground, on its own? Not attached to the structure, not holding the structure up, bearing on soil rather than on a footing.
Is it still acting as a single piece? Sound enough that pushing up from underneath moves the whole panel rather than shuffling the bits of it around.
Pass both and you are almost certainly a candidate, whatever it is called. Fail either and no amount of material helps, because you have a different job belonging to a different trade.
I would rather give somebody those two questions than a menu. You can apply them standing on the slab, today, before anybody quotes anything.
Test one, is it sitting on the ground, on its own?
Flatwork is built to be independent, and that is not an accident.
The ready-mix industry's guidance on joints says isolation joints exist to separate slabs from other parts of the structure, such as walls, footings or columns. The same guidance warns that when a slab is restrained by a connection to the structure, tensile stresses build and it cracks.
That is the whole answer. Your driveway is designed to move independently of your house, and that separation is what makes lifting it possible.
A footing is built to do the opposite. Residential code puts footings at least 12 inches below undisturbed ground and below the local frost depth, bearing on undisturbed natural soil or engineered fill. Deliberately deep, deliberately on ground nobody has touched, deliberately holding the building up.
So no, I do not lift foundations, footings or anything a wall bears on. That is structural work, and it belongs to a foundation contractor rather than to me. It is the most common call I redirect, and I would rather say it here than on the phone after somebody has got their hopes up.
Interior slabs sit in the same test. A basement or garage floor is usually slab on grade and a fair candidate, right up until something bears on it. A post, a column base, a bearing wall, and we are back to structural.
Test two, is it still acting as one piece?
Lifting works by pushing up on a slab. That requires a slab to push on.
A panel broken into several pieces does not give you one. Three separate sources describe the same failure from different directions. State maintenance guidance notes that grout too stiff to flow far enough from the entry point leaves unsupported areas and damages the slab. Industry stabilization guidelines say forcing material into unsupported ground ends in cracking. A transportation study found grout generally fills voids only near the injection hole.
They say the same thing. Support has to be continuous and the slab has to behave as a unit, and neither holds once the panel has come apart.
This is also why I look at edges and joints before the middle. An open joint or an edge that has lost its soil gives the material somewhere easier to go than under your concrete. I check those first and seal them if they need it, and a missing edge changes the plan.
What that leaves
By this point the list writes itself, and none of these are on it because they are products.
Driveways and garage aprons, which drop at the front joint as fill settles toward the street. Sidewalks, which fault at a joint. Patios, which tip back toward the house. Garage floors, which step at the door. Pool decks, which settle toward the shell. Shed pads. Front stoops.
They all pass both tests, which is why I treat them as ordinary work. What differs is not whether lifting is possible, it is what is underneath and what the method choice should be because of it.
Steps and stoops are their own case
A stoop is almost always a separate pour from the house, which is why it settles on its own schedule and why it is a good lifting candidate.
The part people cannot name is why it bothers them. Somebody says their steps feel off, or a visitor caught a toe, and they assume it is cosmetic. It is not. People climb by rhythm rather than by looking, so an uneven riser is felt through the feet before anybody sees it.
Residential code puts a number on this. The greatest riser height in a flight may not exceed the smallest by more than 3/8 inch, and the same limit applies to tread depth. My own working threshold has always been half an inch, which turns out to be the loose end of a line the code already draws tighter.
Go and measure yours. If one riser is out by more than 3/8 inch against the others, that is your answer, and it is a steps problem worth dealing with rather than a feeling.
The awkward ones
Three things get asked about constantly and only one of them is a maybe.
Pavers. Not a slab. Interlocking concrete pavement is made of discrete units set into roughly 1 to 1.5 inches of bedding sand over a base, and the published glossary classifies it as flexible pavement that stays in contact with the subgrade. There is no rigid piece to push on. A settled paver area gets lifted and relaid, which is a different job with a different crew.
Asphalt. Not concrete. Different material, different repair, not my trade.
Stamped and decorative concrete. A maybe, and the caution is my judgment rather than something I can point to a standard for. The lifting is ordinary. The patch is the problem. A port through a colored, textured surface never quite disappears, and on decorative work people look at closely, visible patches can be a worse outcome than the settlement was. I say that at the estimate and let the owner decide.
What passes both tests and still is not worth doing
There is a third boundary and it is economic rather than technical.
Published minimum job fees in this trade run $300 to $700 regardless of project size. So a single small pad can pass every technical test and still not justify a visit on its own.
The answer is not to argue the price. Walk the whole property before booking anything, because the second piece of concrete on the same visit costs far less than the first. I would rather do four things in one trip than talk somebody into one.
What lifting never fixes, whatever it is sitting on
Raising a slab restores its position. It does not restore concrete that is worn out.
If the surface is flaking, pitting or shedding grit with no height change, that is scaling, and it comes from freeze and thaw on concrete with too little entrained air, heavy de-icer, or finishing over bleed water. Surface problem, surface answer, and I will say so rather than sell you a lift. Whether your slab is worth saving at all is its own question.
And passing both tests is not a guarantee of anything long term. A lift lasts as long as the conditions under the slab allow. Get downspout discharge at least 5 feet from the foundation, or an underground catchment at least 10 feet out with pipe pitched 5/8 inch per foot or steeper. Agencies that do this at scale treat slab stabilization as maintenance with a service life rather than a repair that ends.
Getting a look at yours
I turn down work. Slabs that fail test two, surfaces that need a different answer, decorative work where I think the patches will bother somebody more than the settlement does. I would rather have that conversation at the estimate than take the money.
Bring me the two tests and I will tell you honestly which side of them your concrete is on, and if it is structural I will tell you who to call instead. If you want to know what actually happens once the work starts, the process is written up separately.
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FAQ
Can you mudjack a foundation?
No, and it is worth being clear about why. Residential code places footings at least 12 inches below undisturbed ground and below the local frost depth, bearing on undisturbed soil, carrying the weight of the building. Slabs on grade are the opposite, deliberately isolated from walls and footings so they can move independently. Lifting is for the second kind. Anything structural belongs with a foundation contractor.
Can pavers be lifted with mudjacking?
No. Interlocking concrete pavement is made of separate units bedded in roughly 1 to 1.5 inches of sand over a base, and it is classified as flexible pavement rather than a rigid slab. There is no single piece to push against. A settled paver area is repaired by lifting the units, correcting the base, and relaying them.
Can a cracked concrete slab be mudjacked?
It depends on whether it is still one piece. A single crack in an otherwise sound panel is usually fine. A panel broken into several pieces is not, because lifting relies on continuous support under a slab that moves as a unit. Industry guidance is consistent that pushing material into unsupported ground ends in further cracking rather than a level slab.
Can a garage floor or basement floor be lifted?
Often yes. Both are usually slab on grade, which passes the first test. The thing to check is what is bearing on the slab. A post base, a column footing or a bearing wall changes it from flatwork into structural work. An interior lift also needs access and clean working conditions, which affects planning more than it affects whether it is possible.
Can stamped or decorative concrete be lifted?
Technically yes, and the lift is no different from ordinary flatwork. The honest caution is about appearance rather than engineering. Injection ports have to be patched, and a patch in a colored, textured surface stays visible. On decorative work people look at closely, that trade off is worth talking through before the work is booked rather than afterward.