Lawn mowing is usually priced per cut with a per-stop minimum, by the hour, or per 1,000 square feet. Whichever way you quote, check it against the real cost of the job.
Start with what one minute of crew time costs
Mowing is sold by the cut, but it is paid for in minutes. So before you set any price, work out what one minute of one worker really costs you.
Take the full cost of one person-hour: the wage plus payroll taxes, insurance and workers' comp. Divide by 60. If that full cost is $30 an hour (illustrative numbers), one person-minute costs $0.50. The labor burden calculator helps you find your own number.
From there, a lawn's price is simple. Count the person-minutes the stop takes, from the moment the truck leaves the last lawn to the moment it leaves this one. Multiply by your cost per minute. Add a small amount per stop for truck fuel, mower fuel, trimmer line and wear on the mowers, trimmers and blowers. Then add your margin.
Margin is the share of the price you keep after job costs. At a 50% margin, the price is the job costs divided by 0.5, which is double the costs. Your office, ads, software and your own pay all come out of that margin. If you think in markup instead, read profit margin vs markup first. Adding 50% to your costs is not a 50% margin.
How to time a lawn before you price it
Every stop has four pieces of time. Price all four.
- Mowing. Set by the size of the lawn and how fast your mower covers it.
- Trim, edge and blow. String trimming around beds and fences, edging the walks, and blowing clippings off hard surfaces. This grows with the number of edges and obstacles, not just the size.
- Setup. Unloading, opening gates, moving a hose or toys, and loading back up.
- Drive. The time from the last stop to this one. Everyone in the truck is on the clock.
You can estimate mowing speed from the deck (the cutting width of the mower) and how fast you walk or ride. Here is a rough check with illustrative numbers. A 48-inch deck cuts a 4-foot strip. At 3 miles an hour (about 4.8 km/h), the mower moves about 264 feet a minute. That is about 1,050 square feet a minute in a straight line. Turns, overlap, trees and beds slow you down a lot, so on a normal yard you might get about half: roughly 500 square feet a minute.
The best number is your own. Time five or ten real lawns with a phone timer, from truck stop to truck start. Write down the lawn size and each piece of time. A week of that beats any chart. Our guide on how to estimate labor hours for a job walks through the same idea for any trade.
A lawn mowing price table built from real minutes
This table uses the method above. All numbers are illustrative. Use them to see how the method works, not as your price list.
Assumptions: a crew of two, $30 full cost per person-hour ($0.50 a person-minute), mowing at 500 square feet a minute, trim, edge and blow at 6 minutes plus 1 minute per 1,000 square feet, 6 person-minutes to unload and load, a 10-minute drive from the last stop (20 person-minutes for two people), $8 per stop for fuel, trimmer line and equipment wear, and a 50% margin. It also assumes both people keep working the whole stop, so one mows while the other trims.
| Lawn size (sq ft) | Mowing (person-min) | Trim, edge, blow (person-min) | Setup and drive (person-min) | Job costs | Price per cut at 50% margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 6 | 9 | 26 | $28.50 | $57 |
| 5,000 | 10 | 11 | 26 | $31.50 | $63 |
| 8,000 | 16 | 14 | 26 | $36.00 | $72 |
| 12,000 | 24 | 18 | 26 | $42.00 | $84 |
| 20,000 | 40 | 26 | 26 | $54.00 | $108 |
Two things stand out. First, setup and drive are the same 26 person-minutes on every lawn. On the smallest lawn, that is more than half the time. Second, the price does not grow in step with the lawn. A lawn almost seven times bigger costs less than twice as much to cut.
Swap in your own speed, your own hourly cost and your own drive time, and you have a price sheet you can defend.
Per cut, per hour, or per square foot
Many lawn companies quote a flat price per cut. The customer gets one number. You get paid for being fast. That works well once you have timed enough lawns to trust your minutes.
Per hour fits odd work: a yard cleanup, a neglected lot, hand-mowing a steep bank. If you bill by the hour, bill for every person on site and count the drive and loading time too, or build it into a trip charge. A $30 cost per person-hour needs $60 per person-hour billed to reach a 50% margin, and that only works if every paid minute gets billed. For regular weekly lawns, hourly pricing punishes you for getting faster.
Per square foot on its own is a trap for small lawns. In the table above, the price works out to about 1.9 cents a square foot on a 3,000 sq ft lawn but only about 0.5 cents on a 20,000 sq ft lawn. One flat rate per square foot will either overcharge big lawns or lose money on small ones. A per-stop minimum plus a rate per 1,000 square feet fixes that.
Commercial mowing (offices, strip malls, condo and HOA grounds) uses the same method with bigger numbers. A larger mower covers more ground per minute, but the site may ask for set cut heights, set days, extra insurance, litter pickup and early-morning or weekend work. Price each of those in minutes. Big open areas are often bid by the acre: see how much to charge per acre to mow.
Biweekly, one-time and overgrown lawns, plus add-ons
Not every cut takes the same time, even on the same lawn. Price the extra minutes instead of hoping they even out.
- Biweekly lawns. Two weeks of growth is taller and thicker. You mow slower, may need a second pass, and blow more clippings. Time a few biweekly lawns. If they take a third longer, the mowing and trimming minutes go up by a third, and so does that part of the price.
- One-time cuts. A one-off stop is rarely on your route, so the drive is longer and nothing shares it. Use a higher minimum for one-time work.
- Overgrown first cuts. Grass that is knee-high can take two or three times as long, plus bagging and hauling. Quote the first cut on its own, from its own minutes. Then switch to the regular price once the lawn is under control.
These are add-ons. Price each one, and list it in your agreement so it never becomes free:
- Bagging and hauling clippings, including any dump fee
- Picking up sticks, pet waste or toys before mowing
- Edging garden beds, not just walks
- Weed pulling and bed cleanup
- Spring and fall leaf cleanup
- Hand-mowing or trimming steep slopes and ditches
Price the route, not just the lawn
For a crew that mows all season, the real product is the route: the list of lawns cut each day. A good price on a bad route still loses money.
Drive time is where routes win or lose. In the table above, the 10-minute drive costs 20 person-minutes, or $10, on every stop. If the next lawn were 3 minutes away instead, that stop would cost $7 less, with the same price. That is why route density, meaning how close your stops are to each other, matters as much as your price per cut.
- Group stops by area and day. Say no to a new lawn on the far side of town unless the price covers the drive.
- Find the losing stops. At the end of each month, divide each stop's price by the person-hours it really took, drive included. The bottom few are paying the least per hour of work.
- Raise or drop the bottom stops at renewal. Give notice before the new season, offer the higher price, and let the ones who say no go. See how to raise prices without losing customers.
- Use neighbours. A lawn next door to one you already cut has almost no drive. You can give a small price break and still earn more per hour, as long as the break is smaller than the drive you save.
- Plan for rain. Rained-out days still cost you trucks and insurance, and the next day runs long. Leave room in each day so one wet day does not wreck the week.
Mistakes, and when to say no
These habits quietly drain a mowing business:
- Copying the lowest price in town. You do not know their costs, and they may not either.
- Charging biweekly the same as weekly. The cut is slower, so the price must be higher.
- Cutting an overgrown lawn at the regular price. The first cut is a separate job.
- Letting extras creep in. A free bed edge here and a free leaf pickup there add minutes to every visit.
- Forgetting blades, belts and repairs. They belong in your per-stop equipment cost, next to fuel.
- Keeping the same price for years. Wages, fuel and insurance go up. Check every season.
Raise the price, or turn the lawn down, when:
- It is far from your route and no neighbours are likely to sign up.
- Slopes, ditches or tight gates mean hand work that the price does not cover.
- The customer wants you to skip weeks when it "looks fine", so every cut is an overgrown cut at a weekly price.
- Locked gates or loose dogs mean wasted trips.
- They want a price below your per-stop minimum and will not move.
How to present your mowing price
Customers want one clear number and to know what they get for it. Give them both in writing.
- One price per cut, with the frequency (weekly or biweekly) stated next to it.
- What each visit includes: mow, trim, edge walks and driveway, blow hard surfaces. Name it plainly.
- What costs extra, with prices: overgrown cuts, bagging, leaf cleanup, bed work.
- The season: when service starts, when it ends, and how rain days are handled.
- How and when they pay. Collecting on time matters as much as the price.
Do not lead with a discount. If a customer pushes back, offer to change the scope, such as biweekly instead of weekly at the biweekly price, rather than cutting the price for the same work.
CrewBrain tracks crew hours by job, so you can compare each lawn's price with the time it really took and see which stops on your route earn their price. For the bigger picture beyond mowing, see how to price landscaping jobs.
A worked example: a weekly mow, trim, edge and blow on a 6,000 sq ft suburban lawn
| Item | How it is worked out | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Labor | 2 people × 0.42 hours (including drive time) × $30 per hour | $25 |
| Materials | Supplies used on the job | $2 |
| Vehicle and fuel | Truck time and fuel for this job | $6 |
| Job costs | $33 | |
| Price at a 50% margin | $33 ÷ 0.50 | $66 |
| Left after job costs | $66 − $33 | $33 |
Where the price goes in this example
Every dollar of the price, split into the costs it covers and what is left over.
- Labor $25 (38%)
- Materials $2 (3%)
- Vehicle and fuel $6 (9%)
- Left after job costs $33 (50%)
The whole bar is the price the customer pays: $66. Illustrative numbers, built from the table above.
Hourly cost per person is the full cost of one hour: the wage plus payroll taxes, insurance and workers' comp. The 10-minute drive from the last stop counts as paid time for both people. Materials cover trimmer line and mower fuel, and the vehicle line covers truck fuel and equipment wear. These numbers are an illustrative example of the method. They are not a price list, and not a promise of what your jobs will earn.
Try it with your own numbers
Job costs means crew time (with drive time), materials, vehicle and fuel. Hourly cost per person is the full cost of an hour, including payroll taxes and insurance, not just the wage. This is a simple calculator, not a quote.
Built for lawn mowing: the lawn mowing price calculator works from lawn area, edging and trimming, with example speeds you can change to your crew’s.
Keep going
- CrewBrain for landscaping and lawn care companies: how the software handles quoting, scheduling and crew time for this trade.
- How much to charge per acre to mow, from half an acre to five acres
- How to price landscaping jobs so each one makes money
- How to price snow removal jobs so each one makes money
- How to price a service job: the five-step method behind every page in this series.
- Job price calculator: the same calculator as above, on its own page.
- What is a good profit margin for a service business?
- How to estimate labor hours for a job
- All pricing guides by trade
Questions owners ask
How much should I charge to mow a lawn?
Time the stop, including mowing, trimming, setup and the drive from your last lawn. Multiply those person-minutes by your full cost per minute, add fuel and supplies, then divide by one minus your margin. Never go below your per-stop minimum.
How much should I charge per hour for lawn mowing?
Start from your full cost per person-hour, then divide by one minus your margin. At an illustrative $30 cost and a 50% margin, that is $60 per person-hour, and the drive and loading time must be billed too or the real margin drops.
Should biweekly mowing cost more than weekly?
Yes. Two weeks of growth is slower to cut and leaves more clippings to blow. Time your biweekly lawns and raise the mowing and trimming part of the price by the extra time they take.
How much should I charge for an overgrown lawn?
Quote the first cut as its own job, priced from its own minutes, which can be two or three times a normal cut plus bagging and hauling. Then move to your regular price once the lawn is under control.
How do I charge for lawn mowing by the square foot?
Use a per-stop minimum plus a rate per 1,000 square feet, both worked out from your timed lawns. A single rate per square foot loses money on small lawns or overcharges large ones.
How do I price commercial lawn mowing?
Use the same minute-based method with your bigger mower's speed, then add the site's extra demands like set days, cut heights, litter pickup and insurance. Large open areas are often easier to bid by the acre.