Aluminum Scrap Grades: Cast, Sheet, Extrusion & What Each Pays

Aluminum will never pay like copper per pound, but it’s everywhere, it’s light to handle, and — crucially — a yard sorts it into grades that can differ by two or three times in price. A clean pile of aluminum extrusion pays far more than the same weight thrown in as mixed “cast.” With aluminum, the money isn’t in the metal so much as in the sorting.

First: is it actually aluminum?

Before you grade it, confirm it. Aluminum is light, non-magnetic, and when it corrodes it turns a dull white/grey powder — never the red-brown rust of steel. Run a magnet over it: if it sticks, it’s steel (possibly galvanized, which fools people by looking silvery). If it’s suspiciously heavy for its size, it may be zinc or pot metal, which grade lower. A quick file or scratch shows bright silver underneath on real aluminum. Confirm with the magnet test before anything else — a magnetic “aluminum” load gets you paid for steel.

The grades you’ll actually handle

From roughly lowest to highest per-pound value:

Cast aluminum — the catch-all bottom grade for clean aluminum. Engine blocks and transmission cases (once cleaned of steel and iron), old BBQ housings, lawnmower decks, patio furniture castings. It has a grainy, rougher surface from being poured into a mold. This is where any unsorted or attached aluminum ends up, so it pays the least — indicatively around $0.55/lb.

Sheet aluminum — flat, thin, rolled stock: siding, gutters, flashing, roofing, license plates, aluminum trailer skin. Clean sheet grades a touch above cast, roughly $0.60/lb. Painted siding is usually fine; heavy insulation or backing gets it downgraded.

Extruded aluminum (“extrusion”) — the cleanest, highest common grade: window frames, door thresholds, storefront framing, screen-door frames, heat sinks. It’s pushed through a die so it has smooth, uniform, often-anodized surfaces and consistent profiles. Pull the steel screws, glass, and rubber and clean extrusion pays around $0.85/lb — worth keeping strictly separate from your cast.

Aluminum wheels (clean aluminum rims) — cast or forged aluminum wheels, tire and steel weights removed, are their own well-paying grade at many yards; leave a steel valve stem or wheel weight on and it drops to “dirty.”

Used beverage cans (UBC) — soda and beer cans are their own category, priced by the pound (and often better sold at can-buyback than a general yard). Keep them separate; don’t bury them in sheet.

Aluminum/copper radiators (“Al/Cu”) — the fin-and-tube radiators in AC units and some cars are a mix of aluminum fins and copper tubing, graded as their own thing (indicatively ~$1.30/lb) because of the copper content. Don’t toss these in with plain aluminum — you’d be giving away the copper.

What downgrades aluminum: “dirty” and “irony”

Two words cost you money at the scale:

• Dirty aluminum — aluminum with attachments still on: plastic, rubber, glass, steel brackets, insulation. A window with the glass and steel hardware still in it isn’t clean extrusion; it’s dirty.
• Irony aluminum — aluminum with enough steel attached that a magnet reacts. It’s graded far lower because the yard has to account for the iron.

The fix is a screwdriver and a few minutes: pull the steel, pop the glass, cut the plastic. Sort cast from sheet from extrusion into separate piles and present them separately, or the whole load tends to get called at the cheapest grade in the bucket.

Is aluminum worth scrapping at all?

For small amounts, honestly, not really — a grocery bag of cans is a couple of dollars. Aluminum pays when you have volume and when it’s clean and sorted: a truck bed of separated extrusion, a stack of clean sheet, wheels with the tires off. Before you haul a big mixed load, put a realistic weight and price on each grade with the Scrap Lot Deal Analyzer, and use the Unit & Price Converters if your yard quotes in $/kg or per tonne.

Keep learning

• Get the price, ID cues, and sorting tips for one grade at a time on the aluminum grade pages.
• Confirm your metal first with the magnet test.
• Brass and bronze hide in the same bins — sort them out with Brass vs Bronze vs Copper.
• Pulling apart an AC unit? See what the aluminum, copper, and steel add up to on the Appliance Scrap Value calculator.
• More sorting know-how in the Metal ID & Sorting guides.