Lawn Mowing Price Calculator
Enter what a lawn costs you to service and the margin you want. This returns the price that achieves it — and the hourly rate you would actually be earning.
These are your numbers, not market rates. This calculator works from the costs you enter. It does not tell you what your area pays — that varies by region, season and year, and any site quoting you a single national figure is guessing. Use this to find the price that covers your costs and target profit, then sanity-check it against what you can actually win locally.
The formula and a worked example Show the arithmetic
Paid hours = (time on site + drive time) x crew size
Labour = paid hours x wage x (1 + payroll burden)
Fuel = time on site x gal/hour x fuel price
Maintenance = time on site x maintenance reserve
Overhead = (time on site + drive time) x overhead rate
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Job cost = labour + fuel + maintenance + overhead
Price = job cost / (1 - target margin) Note the division. To achieve a 35% margin you divide cost by 0.65 — you do not multiply cost by 1.35. Multiplying by 1.35 applies a 35% markup, which is only a 26% margin. That single mistake is worth about nine cents on every dollar of revenue. Margin vs markup calculator.
Worked example
An 8,000 sq ft lawn, 21-inch push mower at 3 mph, one person, 12 minutes of driving each way. Time on site works out at 0.361 hours (about 21.6 minutes) using the mowing time calculator.
Time on site 0.361 hr
Drive time 0.200 hr
Paid hours (0.561 x 1) = 0.561 hr
Labour 0.561 x $20 x 1.15 = $12.90
Fuel 0.361 x 0.5 gal x $3.60 = $ 0.65
Maintenance 0.361 x $2.00 = $ 0.72
Overhead 0.561 x $15 = $ 8.41
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Job cost = $22.68
Price at 35% margin = 22.68 / (1 - 0.35)
= 22.68 / 0.65
= $34.89
Profit = 34.89 - 22.68 = $12.21
Effective hourly rate = 12.21 / 0.561 = $21.77/hr Two things worth noticing. Overhead is the second largest line at $8.41 — larger than fuel and maintenance combined — which is why omitting it wrecks a price. And the effective hourly rate of $21.77 is what the business earns per hour after paying the $20 wage; those are different numbers, and confusing them is how people conclude they are making $60 an hour when they are not.
Common questions
How much should I charge to mow a lawn?
Enough to cover your cost for that job plus the profit margin you are targeting. There is no universal number, and any figure quoted as a national average is describing a market you are probably not in.
The method is the same everywhere: work out what the job costs you in labour, equipment and overhead, then divide by (1 minus your target margin). This calculator does that arithmetic. What it cannot tell you is whether your local market will pay the result — that part is your judgement.
Why does overhead need to be in the price of every job?
Because insurance, the truck payment, your phone and your software do not stop when you are not mowing. If those costs are not carried by the jobs you do, the year loses money even though every individual job looked profitable.
This is the single most common reason a busy lawn business ends a season with nothing to show for it. Every billable hour has to carry a slice of the fixed costs.
Should I price per lawn or per hour?
Quote per lawn, but calculate per hour. Customers want a flat price they can budget for, and you want to know the effective hourly rate you are actually earning.
The risk of flat-rate pricing is that a lawn takes longer than you estimated and your effective rate collapses. That is why this calculator shows the effective hourly rate alongside the price — if the price looks fine but the rate looks bad, your time estimate is the problem, not your pricing.
What profit margin should I target?
That is a business decision rather than a formula, and it depends on how much risk you carry and what you are reinvesting. What matters here is that you apply it as a MARGIN and not a markup — they are different quantities and confusing them costs you real money.
A 50% markup on cost is only a 33% margin. If you meant 50% margin, the multiplier is different. See the margin vs markup calculator.
Does drive time count?
Yes, and leaving it out is why tightly-clustered routes are so much more profitable than scattered ones. A 30-minute lawn with 25 minutes of driving is nearly a one-hour job, and it has to be priced like one.
This calculator counts drive time toward labour and overhead but not toward fuel and maintenance for the mower, because the mower is not running while you drive.
Related tools
- Lawn Care Hourly Rate CalculatorThe hourly rate you must charge to cover wages, equipment and overhead — and still profit.
- Mowing Time CalculatorHow long a lawn takes, from deck width and ground speed. Shows the acres-per-hour derivation.
- Margin vs Markup CalculatorConvert between the two, and see what the confusion costs you on every job.
Sources
- Exmark mower productivity charts - acres/hour = mph x deck width / 99; 80% efficiency is representative of real conditions
- US survey acre = 43,560 square feet - definitional; used for all area-to-time conversions here
- Margin and markup are distinct quantities - margin = (price - cost) / price; markup = (price - cost) / cost. Both formulas are unit-tested in this site's test suite.