To price a lawn, take what one crew hour costs you, multiply it by the crew hours the visit takes, add materials and fuel, then add your markup and round up. Multiply that price by your visits to get the season, and divide by the months you bill to get a monthly amount.
We make a lawn care pricing calculator and sell it in our shop, PaperworkLighter. This guide stands on its own. The method, the worked example and the calculator below are free, and they work with any spreadsheet, including one you build yourself.
Whichever way you quote, check the result against one number: your price per crew hour. If it falls below what a crew hour costs you, that price does not cover your crew's time, and materials are not even counted yet.
This guide does not list local prices. Rates differ by town, lot and season, and we have no sourced local data to share. It shows you how to find the price that covers your own costs. Then you can compare it with what is charged near you.
A wage is not a cost. The cost of an hour has two parts: labor and overhead.
Labor. Start with the wage. Then add payroll taxes, workers comp and benefits. Paid time off is paid but not worked, so its cost spreads across the hours that are worked. Drive time, loading the trailer and the trip back to the yard for a part are paid too, and none of them happen on a property. So the total gets spread over fewer billable hours.
The share of worked hours that land on a property is the hardest number to guess, and it is easy to guess too high. If you have never measured it, start lower than it feels. Take tax and workers comp rates from your own payroll records, because they vary by state and trade.
Overhead. These are the yearly costs that exist whether or not you are on a job:
Add up the year, then divide by the hours your crew can bill. Leave a cost off the list and every price built on it comes out too low.
Here is a sample for a three-person crew. The numbers are invented for the example. Your wages, rates and costs will differ, so run your own.
| Yearly cost of the crew, with taxes, workers comp, benefits and time off | $173,598.20 |
|---|---|
| Billable hours a year, whole crew | 4,012 |
| Labor cost per billable hour | $43.27 |
| Yearly overhead | $68,300.00 |
| Overhead per billable hour | $17.02 |
| Cost of one crew hour | $60.29 |
If you work alone, use the same method with one worker: your costs for the year, over the hours you can bill.
Crew hours for a visit equal the crew size times the minutes on the property, divided by 60. Two people for 20 minutes is 0.67 crew hours.
Count only the minutes on the property. Drive time is already inside your cost per crew hour, because Step 1 spread it across the billable hours. Counting it twice makes prices too high.
The minutes are the part you control least, so measure them. Time a few real visits and use your own average. Slopes, fences and gates, many beds to edge around, tight access for the mower and long grass can all add minutes. Write down what you find, so the next quote is faster.
Add what the visit uses: fuel, trimmer line, bags, dump fees. Then add your markup to the total cost.
Markup and margin are not the same. Markup is a percentage of your cost. Margin is a percentage of the price. A 30 percent markup leaves a margin of about 23 percent. Finally, round the price up to the next dollar. It keeps quotes clean, and it never rounds below your target.
A weekly mow, trim, edge and blow on a lot of 10,000 square feet. Two people, 20 minutes on the property, and $3 of materials and fuel per visit.
| Crew hours, 2 people times 20 minutes | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Cost of one crew hour | $60.29 |
| Crew cost for the visit | $40.40 |
| Materials and fuel | $3.00 |
| Your cost for the visit | $43.40 |
| Markup, 30 percent | $13.02 |
| Price before rounding | $56.42 |
| Price per visit, rounded up | $57 |
The crew cost carries the cents of the hourly cost. If you multiply the rounded $60.29 by 0.67 you get $40.39. That one cent is rounding.
Now check it. The price per crew hour is $57 divided by 0.67, which is $85.07. That is well above the $60.29 an hour costs you. The price per 1,000 square feet is $5.70.
For the season, 28 visits at $57 is $1,596. Spread over 8 months, that is $199.50 a month for this lawn.
A spring cleanup is a one-time job, so there is no season to multiply. The steps are the same. In this sample, two people spend 150 minutes on beds, edges and hauling debris, with $35 of materials and dump fees.
| Crew hours, 2 people times 150 minutes | 5 |
|---|---|
| Cost of one crew hour | $60.29 |
| Your cost for the job, 5 crew hours plus $35 | $336.47 |
| Markup, 30 percent | $100.94 |
| Price before rounding | $437.41 |
| Price for the job, rounded up | $438 |
The price per crew hour is $438 divided by 5, which is $87.60.
Type over the sample numbers. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
If you would rather not build this in a spreadsheet, our Lawn Care Pricing Calculator does it for every service on your list and turns it into a one-page quote.
See the Lawn Care Pricing CalculatorThe season total is the price per visit times the visits you expect. Weekly mowing in the sample is 28 visits. Yours depends on your climate and your season. The monthly amount is the season total divided by the months you bill.
Weather will skip some visits. It helps to say how that works right on the quote. For example: "Visits follow the weather. A visit that has to be skipped is made up or not charged."
A client adds a bed. A storm leaves a cleanup. Treat it as its own price: work it out, write it down, and get a signature before you start. A change with no number and no signature is free work. Our change order form guide shows how.
Check your own numbers. Tax rates, workers comp rates, license fees and permit costs vary by state, by trade and by year. Landscape and tree work often sit in their own workers comp class. Confirm every rate against your own records and your own advisers before you rely on a price.
The Lawn Care Pricing Calculator is $19, one time. It is a digital download of four files in one zip:
You enter wages, payroll costs and yearly costs once, and the sheet works out the full cost of a crew hour. For each service and lot size you enter the crew size, the minutes on the property, materials and visits. You get the price per visit, per crew hour, per season, per month and per 1,000 square feet. Mark the services a customer wants, and the quote fills itself in.
It works in Excel 2007 or newer and in Google Sheets, with standard formulas and no macros. The Client Quote tab prints on one US Letter page. No sheet is protected and no cell is locked, so you can change any label or formula. The files open on a worked sample, and every sample figure is invented. It is a calculation tool, not accounting, tax or legal advice, and it does not tell you what to charge.
See the Lawn Care Pricing Calculator, $19 The same file on Etsy
This guide was drafted with the help of AI tools and checked against the product's own files. The numbers in it are invented examples.