What to charge for lawn mowing
Price the cut from the size of the lawn and what an hour costs you. The lawn's square feet, the width your mower cuts and your speed give the hours. The hours, at what one costs you, give the cost. A price above that, divided by the size, is your price for each 1,000 square feet.
By TailGateBid. .
Quoting per visit? Here is the sum under it
If you give one price a visit, this is how to know what that price leaves you on a given lawn: work the cost out from the lawn's size, then hold your price for the visit up against it.
A price worked out from the size is the safer one. A flat price stays where it is when the next lawn is half as big again, and your hours do not. A price for each 1,000 square feet goes up with the lawn by itself.
From the lawn to the hours
- Measure the lawn. Length times width gives the square feet, the way Iowa State's extension service measures one. Take off the house, the driveway and the beds.
- Divide by 1,000 for the size that goes on the quote. A big property can go by the acre instead: 43,560 square feet.
- For the time on the mower, take the width of the cut in feet (48 inches is 4 feet), times your speed in miles an hour, and divide by 8.25. That is the most acres you could mow in an hour: the sum is in Iowa State's guide to compact equipment.
- In practice you get less, the same guide says: turning, overlap on each pass and stops take a share. Multiply by what you really cover of every 100.
- The lawn in acres, divided by that, is your hours on the mower. Trimming, edging, blowing off, loading and the drive come on top, and those hours are your own to count.
What to check before you price it
- The size. Measure the lawn once and keep the figure. A guess here is a guess in every price that follows.
- Your real speed. Mark off 88 feet, mow it and count the seconds: 60 divided by the seconds is your miles an hour. The method is Iowa State's, written for farm machines; the arithmetic is the same behind a mower.
- What you really cover. The box starts at 70 of every 100, the figure the compact equipment guide assumes for a 2 acre job with a walk-behind mower. It names maneuvering time first among its reasons, so the more a lawn makes you turn, the lower yours will be. One mower maker takes 20 percent off for overlap and turns in its own chart: Scag, in the note under its productivity chart. Timing yourself on a lawn you already cut beats both.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the lawn
These boxes turn the lot, your mower and your speed into the size of the lawn and the hours, and put both in the calculator below.
The house, the driveway, the beds. Leave it empty if you measured only the grass.
Turns, overlap and stops take the rest. It starts at 70; put in your own.
Trimming, edging, blowing off, loading, the drive. A quarter of an hour is 0.25.
Type the length and the width of the lot. The size of the lawn shows here.
Two people for a day of 8 hours is 16.
A rental, dump fees, a sub.
Type the size of the job to see a price for each 1,000 square feet.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your hours and what an hour costs you, or your materials. The answer shows here.
One lawn, worked through
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say a lot is 100 by 140 feet, and the house, the driveway and the beds take up 4,000 square feet of it. The lawn is 10,000 square feet. Say your mower cuts 36 inches wide, you mow at 3 miles an hour and you really cover 70 of every 100: 0.3 of an hour on the mower, which is 18 minutes. Say trimming, edging, loading and the drive add 27 minutes more: 0.75 of an hour in all. At $57.05 an hour that is $42.79, and with $3 of fuel and trimmer line the cut costs you $45.79. Charge $66 and you keep $20.21, which is $31 of every $100. That is $6.60 for each 1,000 square feet.
The same lawn at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $51 | $5.21 | $10 |
| $58 | $12.21 | $21 |
| $66 | $20.21 | $31 |
| $77 | $31.21 | $41 |
| $92 | $46.21 | $50 |
Pick a unit that grows with the lawn
1,000 square feet, an acre for a big property, or the hour. Each of them gets bigger when the job does, which is what a flat fee cannot do.
In TailGateBid you choose which one a service is charged by and type your own price for it: how rates work. If your hour is still a guess, work out what an hour costs you before anything else on this page.
A lawn you cut every week
In TailGateBid a job can repeat every week or every two weeks. The visits are made for you, and each one can send its own invoice when it is marked complete. How scheduling works.
The beds on the same property are their own sum: what to charge for mulch. A field cut with a tractor uses the sum on this page with a wider machine: what to charge for brush hogging.
If your crew works in Spanish
TailGateBid works in English and Spanish. The crew can work in one language while the quote goes to the customer in the other. How the two languages work.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
- Width in feet, times speed in miles an hour, divided by 8.25, is the most acres a machine covers in an hour. The figure is the square feet in an acre divided by the feet in a mile. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, Estimating the Field Capacity of Farm Machines (Ag Decision Maker, File A3-24), .
- An acre is 43,560 square feet. That is how the square feet of a lawn become acres for that sum.
- The box for what you really cover starts at 70 of every 100. Iowa State's guide to compact equipment assumes 70 percent for a 2 acre job with a walk-behind mower, and 80 percent for a 6 foot mower under a compact tractor. Starting at the lower one is our choice. Neither is a figure for your machine on your ground: put in your own. Iowa State University Extension, Finding the Right Machine for the Job: Compact Power Equipment (PM 1976), . (our choice, change it)
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.
This page is about one kind of job. TailGateBid works for any trade, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.
Sources
- Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, How to Calculate Fertilizer Rates for the Lawn,
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Handbook 44 (2026), Appendix C,
- Iowa State University Extension, Finding the Right Machine for the Job: Compact Power Equipment (PM 1976),
- Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, Estimating the Field Capacity of Farm Machines (Ag Decision Maker, File A3-24),
- Scag Power Equipment, a mower maker: the note under its productivity chart,
Related
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- Mulch installationFrom a bed's length, width and depth to the yards to order and a price for each yard installed.
- Brush hoggingA 5 acre field worked through, from the width of the cutter to a price for each acre.
- English and SpanishEach person works in English or Spanish, and each customer gets the one you set for them.
- SchedulingDay, week and month, jobs that repeat, and an email when you are on your way.
Price the lawn once, set the job to repeat, and TailGateBid makes the visits for you.
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