Updated October 21, 2026
The most dependable answer to how to price lawn mowing jobs is to price by time, not by guesswork about lot size. Work out what your crew costs per minute, time how long a property takes including the drive to it, and the price follows. Lot size only matters because it predicts minutes.
Quick answer: Total your crew cost per hour (labor at burdened rates, mower and truck costs, fuel and an overhead share), divide by one minus your profit target, and convert to a price per crew minute. Multiply by on-site minutes plus the drive from the previous stop. Set a minimum per visit so small yards still pay.
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Two quarter-acre lots can take very different times: one is open and flat, the other has a fence, a slope, a playset and twenty feet of edging. If you price only by acreage, you will lose the easy yards to cheaper competitors and keep the hard ones at a loss. Time is the honest unit.
| Cost line (2-person crew) | Assumption | Per crew hour |
|---|---|---|
| Labor | 2 × $22 wage + 20% burden | $52.80 |
| Mowers, trimmers, blowers | purchase, repairs and replacement spread over the season | $12.00 |
| Truck and trailer, fuel | payment, insurance, fuel, maintenance | $13.00 |
| Overhead share | insurance, phone, software, office, marketing | $20.00 |
| Crew cost | $97.80 | |
| Price at 20% profit | $97.80 ÷ 0.80 | $122.25 per crew hour |
| Per crew minute | $122.25 ÷ 60 | about $2.04 |
Illustrative assumptions. Your wages, equipment and overhead will differ.
A quarter-acre suburban lot: 18 minutes on site for mow, trim, edge and blow with two people, plus 8 minutes of drive from the previous stop. That is 26 crew minutes × $2.04 = $53, which you might round to $55 a cut. If the same yard sits across town from your route, the drive could double and so should your thinking about whether to take it.
Every stop has fixed time: parking, unloading, walking the property and loading back up. A minimum charge per visit (for example, 20 crew minutes) keeps tiny yards from losing money. Customers understand minimums; they rarely understand why their price jumped mid-season.
The cheapest minutes you can sell are on the street you are already on. Many lawn companies offer a slightly better price to neighbors of existing customers, because the drive time is near zero. Pricing by crew minute makes that discount a calculation rather than a favor.
Commercial properties are bid per visit or per season from measured turf area, trimming linear feet and site rules (hours, insurance certificates, crew check-in). Time similar sites you already service and bid from those minutes; avoid quoting a commercial site off a satellite image alone.
Recalculate in winter: wage changes, a new truck payment or a jump in fuel moves your crew cost per minute. Raise prices at the start of the season with a clear note, rather than in July.
Once your crew minute rate is set, every add-on can be priced with the same logic. Bed weeding is minutes per bed, leaf cleanup is crew minutes plus disposal, aeration and overseeding are machine time plus seed. Writing these down as a simple menu lets you or anyone answering the phone quote them consistently, and it turns weekly mowing customers into higher-value accounts without guesswork.
Quote requests come in while you are on a mower, and spring sign-up season is when the most people are shopping. Unmanually is a 24/7 AI Office Manager you talk to between stops: it calls new leads back in about a minute, asks for the address and what they need, sends your quote and puts them on the route once they accept. It asks before anything that spends money. See what it does for lawn care companies, or run the calculator to see the hours of office work it turns into minutes of talking.
What the AI Office Manager does for lawn care companies, from calls to invoices.
The project method for install and hardscape bids.
What happens to calls when every crew member is in the field.
Time it, including drive time, and multiply by your price per crew minute. With the assumptions in this guide, 26 crew minutes at about $2.04 is roughly $53 a cut; your own costs set the real number.
Yes. Every stop has fixed time for parking, unloading and loading. A minimum per visit keeps small yards from losing money.
Time it separately. Taller grass takes longer to cut and clean up, so a biweekly visit should be priced on its longer time, not as a weekly price plus a small surcharge.
Home service businesses answer only about half their calls (Invoca, July 2026), and owners spend about 11 to 16 hours/week on admin. Knowing what to do is the easy part; the money leaks out in the calls you can't take, the quotes nobody chases and the invoices that sit unpaid. Unmanually is a 24/7 AI Office Manager for lawn care that you run by voice from your phone:
Sources: Invoca, July 2026 (52% of home-service calls answered by a person, 60M+ calls); admin hours: Time etc / Censuswide 2023 and Amex SME Barometer 2026.
Unmanually is an AI Office Manager that works 24/7 and that you run by voice from your phone. Leave your mobile number and the AI Office Manager calls you right away, the same way it would call back one of your customers. That call is the demo: it answers, books you a 15-minute time with the founder and follows up.
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