Lawn care pricing calculator — a per-acre price built from your own costs
How much should lawn mowing cost per acre?
There is no universal per-acre rate — the honest price is your own cost per acre divided by what your margin leaves of each dollar. On this page's example the large-lot floor works out at $67.84 per acre, yet the same business needs $141.17 per acre on a quarter-acre yard, because the drive to the job costs the same whether the lawn is small or large.
Any currency, any country — cost-plus arithmetic on your own numbers, with no market rates inside.
Rate charts hand you somebody else's average and leave out the only numbers that decide whether you profit: your speed, your costs, your drive. This page builds the price from those numbers and shows how it changes with lot size. When the job is priced, invoice it with the free invoice maker
Your numbers — the job and what an hour costs you
Everything here is yours: measure it from your last few jobs. Nothing on this page comes from a market chart.
Crew-minutes count every worker's time: two people spending forty-five minutes on one acre is ninety crew-minutes per acre. Travel works the same way — both directions, times the crew.
Labor is what one crew-hour costs you — wages and payroll costs, or what you pay yourself. Equipment is fuel, blades, maintenance and machine wear per hour of mowing; a season's receipts divided by a season's mowing hours is an honest estimate.
Overhead is what you pay even in a week of rain: insurance, truck payment, phone, software. It is spread over the crew-hours you actually spend on customers' properties in a month. The symbol is display only — it never enters the arithmetic.
The price — and what is inside it
Charge $154.01 for this 2-acre job to keep a 20% margin — that is $77.01 per acre. On large open lots the same margin needs at least $67.84 per acre.
This job takes 3.17 crew-hours, and an all-in crew-hour costs you $43.42.
Where the price comes from
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Labor — mowing and travel | $69.67 |
| Equipment and fuel — mowing hours | $40.00 |
| Overhead share of this job | $13.54 |
| Your cost for this job | $123.21 |
| Margin kept | $30.80 |
| Price | $154.01 |
Convention printed, not assumed: 20% here is margin — the share of the PRICE you keep. The same money as a markup on cost is 25%. Quoting one number while meaning the other is how jobs get underpriced.
The same costs at every lot size
| Acres | Job price | Per acre |
|---|---|---|
| 0.25 | $35.29 | $141.17 |
| 0.5 | $52.25 | $104.51 |
| 1 | $86.17 | $86.17 |
| 2 — your job | $154.01 | $77.01 |
| 3 | $221.85 | $73.95 |
| 5 | $357.53 | $71.51 |
| 10 | $696.72 | $69.67 |
The per-acre price falls as lots grow because the drive to the job is fixed: on a small yard it dominates, on a big field it almost vanishes. A flat per-acre rate misprices one end or the other — this curve is why.
How the price is built
- Time on site is the job's acres times your crew-minutes per acre; travel is added on top. Labor is paid for every crew-hour, driving included.
- Equipment and fuel are charged only for the hours the machines actually mow. The truck's own running costs belong in overhead.
- Monthly overhead is divided by the crew-hours you spend on customers' properties in a month, and this job carries its share of that rate for its on-site hours.
- The three costs add up to your cost for the job, and the price is that cost divided by what your margin leaves of each dollar of price — margin on price, not markup on cost; both figures are printed above so the two are never confused.
- No market rates, on purpose. What lawns fetch in your area is a number this page cannot verify, so it refuses to print one. It computes your floor instead — what the job must fetch so your margin survives.
- One visit, one service. Fertilizing, cleanups and bundled season pricing have different cost structures — price them as their own jobs.
- Crew-minutes per acre is your measurement, not ours. Terrain, gates, trimming and the machine change it; your last few jobs are the honest source.
- No taxes anywhere in the arithmetic. Sales tax, VAT and income tax vary by place and are not modelled — the price here is before tax.
- Discounts, contracts and minimum-visit fees are business decisions. The tool shows what a discount costs you — it does not recommend one.
Method: plain cost-plus pricing on numbers you enter. Every constant a rate chart would print is either measured by you or absent by design.
Educational arithmetic on numbers you enter — not business, pricing or accounting advice.
The book that keeps these numbers known
This page needs your hourly cost, your overhead, your minutes per acre — and most operators guess them. The Small Business Bookkeeping Spreadsheet is where those numbers stop being guesses: income, expenses and cost categories that add up and check themselves.
Get the bookkeeping spreadsheet — $14.99Questions this page settles
Why does the per-acre price fall as lots get bigger?
Because the drive to the job costs the same whether the lawn is a quarter acre or ten. On small yards travel is most of the job; on large fields it is noise. That is why one flat per-acre rate always overcharges one customer and undercharges another.
Where do I get crew-minutes per acre?
From your own jobs: time the crew on site, multiply the minutes by the people, divide by the acres mowed. Do it for a few typical properties and use the number your jobs actually show — not what a machine's brochure promises.
Why margin on price rather than markup on cost?
Both are legitimate — the danger is mixing them. A twenty-percent markup on cost keeps less money than a twenty-percent margin on price, and quoting one while meaning the other silently underprices every job. This page computes margin on price and prints the equivalent markup next to it, so you always see both.
Why is there no chart of going rates on this page?
Because this site does not print figures it cannot verify, and a market rate for your area is exactly that. The useful number a calculator can stand behind is your floor — the price below which the job fails your margin no matter what the market says.
