Updated October 22, 2026
This lawn care quote calculator prices a mowing visit from your own numbers: lawn size, how fast your crew cuts, what the crew and equipment cost you per hour, the drive to the stop and the margin you want. You get a price per visit, a monthly price, your effective hourly rate and the break-even price below which the visit loses money.
Quick answer: Price per visit = (crew hours on site + drive) × (crew size × labor cost + equipment cost + overhead) ÷ (1 − margin), never less than your minimum charge. Monthly price = price per visit × visits per month (4.33 weekly, 2.17 every other week).
An estimate from the numbers you entered, not a market price. Time a few real properties and put your own costs in for a quote you can stand behind.
Home service businesses answer only about half their calls (Invoca, July 2026), and owners spend about 11 to 16 hours/week on admin. Pricing 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 companies 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.
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mowing minutes = sq ft ÷ 1,000 × minutes per 1,000 sq ft (or sq ft ÷ sq ft per hour × 60)biweekly: mowing minutes × (1 + extra %)visit minutes = mowing + edging + blowing + bagging + drivecost per crew hour = crew size × labor rate + equipment + overheadbreak-even = visit minutes ÷ 60 × cost per crew hourprice per visit = max(break-even ÷ (1 − margin), minimum charge)monthly price = price per visit × 52 ÷ 12 (weekly) or × 26 ÷ 12 (biweekly)effective hourly rate = price per visit ÷ (visit minutes ÷ 60)
These are assumptions for illustration, not market figures. Swap in your own.
| Input (assumption) | Value |
|---|---|
| Turf area | 10,000 sq ft (about 0.23 acres) |
| Crew speed | 1.5 minutes per 1,000 sq ft, 2-person crew |
| Labor | $26 per person-hour, burdened |
| Fuel and equipment / overhead | $14 / $12 per crew hour |
| Add-ons and drive | edging 6 min, blowing 4 min, no bagging, 10 min drive |
| Schedule, margin, minimum | weekly, 20%, $45 |
Mowing takes 10,000 ÷ 1,000 × 1.5 = 15 minutes. Add 6 for edging, 4 for blowing and 10 for the drive: 35 crew minutes, or 0.583 hours. A crew hour costs 2 × $26 + $14 + $12 = $78, so break-even is 0.583 × $78 = $45.50. At a 20% margin the price is $45.50 ÷ 0.80 = $56.88 a visit, which clears the $45 minimum. Weekly, that is $56.88 × 52 ÷ 12 = $246.46/month, and the effective rate is $56.88 ÷ 0.583 = $97.50 per crew hour with the drive counted.
Switch the same lawn to biweekly with 20% extra mowing time and the visit becomes 38 minutes, $49.40 break-even and $61.75 a visit, or $133.79/month. The biweekly customer pays more per cut and less per month, which is how it should be.
Customers buy a visit, so quote a visit. A per-square-foot rate is a fine way to build the quote for open lawns, and it is how this calculator starts. But square footage misses the slow parts of a property: a narrow gate the 60-inch deck won't fit through, a slope that needs the push mower, a fence line with 200 feet of trimming. Use square feet to get the mowing minutes, then add the add-on minutes property by property and send the customer one number per visit.
Grass grows fastest in spring and slows in summer heat or drought, so the same lawn takes different minutes in May and in August. Price on a normal mid-season cut, not your first or your slowest one. If you bill a flat monthly amount across the season, count the visits you expect to make in the season, multiply by the per-visit price and divide by the billing months. Put skipped weeks for drought and the season start and end dates in your terms so the monthly amount is not an argument later.
A tiny front yard still costs you the stop: parking, unloading the mower, the drive in. Set the minimum charge field to what a stop costs you with almost no mowing (try 1,000 sq ft in the calculator and read the break-even) plus your margin. When the result shows "minimum applies", the yard is too small for the formula to cover the stop on its own.
The first spring cut, or a lawn that hasn't been mowed in a month, can take two or three passes, a lowered deck in steps, and bagging you don't normally do. Don't guess a flat fee: run the calculator with the minutes that visit will really take (raise the minutes per 1,000 sq ft and tick bagging) and quote that as a one-time first-cut price before the regular per-visit price begins. Tell the customer both numbers up front so the second bill isn't a surprise.
Spring is when homeowners ring around for a weekly mow, and you can't hear a phone over a zero-turn. Unmanually is a 24/7 AI Office Manager you run by voice: it answers and books mowing calls on the live call, asks for the address, the rough lot size and weekly or every other week, gives your price and texts the confirmation. See what it does for lawn care companies and for landscapers, or run the hours-back calculator to see what your office work is costing you.
The pricing method behind this calculator, with a worked route example.
Install and hardscape bids with overhead built in.
What the AI Office Manager does for lawn care companies, from calls to invoices.
It is as accurate as the minutes and costs you put in. This one does not guess a market price from your zip code: it prices the visit from your own crew time, crew cost, drive time and margin. Time two or three real properties with a stopwatch and use those minutes, and the result will be close to what the job really costs you.
It adds up the crew minutes for the visit (mowing time from the lawn size and your crew's speed, plus edging, blowing, bagging and the drive), turns them into hours, multiplies by your labor, equipment and overhead cost per hour to get break-even, then divides by one minus your profit margin. If that is below your minimum charge, the minimum applies.
Yes. Type the acres into the converter (one acre is 43,560 square feet) and change the crew speed to what your bigger mower actually does. Large lots are usually cut with a wider deck, so the minutes per 1,000 square feet drop; using your small-yard speed on a two-acre lot will overprice it.
Yes. The crew is paid and the truck burns fuel while driving, so a stop's drive time is part of its cost. Use the drive from the previous stop on the route, not from your shop. A yard on a street you already mow costs less to serve than the same yard across town.
Margin is profit as a share of the price; markup is profit as a share of the cost. This calculator uses margin: price equals break-even divided by (1 minus margin). A 20% margin means a 25% markup on cost. Adding 20% to your cost only gives you about a 16.7% margin.
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