Why a mowing price follows the minutes, not the square footage
Two lawns of the same size can take 14 minutes or 28, so owners who time their route price each yard by how long it really takes.
Time a week of your own stops and the problem shows up fast. Two lawns both at $45 might take 20 minutes and 28 minutes: the first earns $135 an hour, the second about $96. Every lawn has to be profitable on its own, so the slow one gets repriced, not averaged in with the fast ones.
Size is only one thing that moves the time. A gate that forces the push mower, bagging, every-other-week service, slopes, heavy landscaping and a long drive all change the minutes, and none of them show up in a square footage.
The worked quote: a weekly 6,500 sq ft lawn at $54.71
The sample lawn costs $43.07 a visit to service and sells for $54.71, earning $77.95 for every hour of labour it takes.
It's a weekly mow, trim, edge and blow on front and back lawns, about 6,500 sq ft of turf, with an open back yard and clippings mulched. All in, it takes about 40 minutes of labour a visit once the drive and the small jobs are counted.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Per visit | Amount |
| 2 | Trimmer line and mix gas | $0.87 |
| 3 | Mowing, trimming, edging, blowing and the drive | $34.92 |
| 4 | Loading, extra trimming, wear parts and office time | $7.28 |
| 5 | Cushion, materials markup and profit | $11.64 |
| 6 | Price per visit | $54.71 |
Every minute is charged at the shop's break-even rate of $58.12 per billable hour, which comes from an owner, one crew member and $26,300 a year of overhead. How that rate is built, and what owners charge per man-hour, is on the lawn mowing hourly rate page. At 4.33 visits a month for 8 months, the lawn brings in $1,895.10 a season.
Does every-other-week mowing cost more per visit?
Yes: longer grass takes longer to cut, trim and blow, so each visit costs more even though the month costs less.
| A | B | C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Same 6,500 sq ft lawn | Per visit | Per month |
| 2 | Weekly (quoted) | $54.71 | $236.89 |
| 3 | Every 2 weeks | $66.27 | $143.80 |
| 4 | Every 3 weeks | $75.52 | $108.75 |
| 5 | One-time cut | $82.45 | n/a |
Owners who don't time every frequency often use a flat add-on instead, around $10 more per visit for a bi-weekly property. The sheet also adds a one-time start-up charge of $54.93 on the first visit, for an overgrown first cut and the time spent walking and timing the lawn.
Per acre, per square foot, a dollar a minute: the shortcuts checked
Each shortcut is fine for a phone quote and wrong for some lawns, so check it against your own cost per visit before you commit to it.
Per acre. Some owners price from the lot size on a listing site: multiply the acreage by 100 and that's the weekly price. Half an acre comes to $50 to $55, and anything that works out under the minimum, often about $35, gets the minimum. Small add-ons of around $5 for a corner lot or a small gate are common.
Per square foot. The old penny rule says a 4,000 sq ft lawn should be $40 a week. It ignores your overhead, your drive and how cut-up the lawn is. The example works out to about 0.84 cents a square foot, but only because of how long this particular lawn takes.
A dollar a minute. It's decades-old advice from before truck payments and insurance cost what they do now. On the example lawn, 40 minutes at a dollar a minute is about $40, which doesn't cover the $43.07 it costs to service.
What mowing owners charge per lawn
In our research, a normal weekly residential lawn sells for $45 to $55, with about $35 as the floor for small ones.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What owners said they charge | Per lawn |
| 2 | A typical weekly route | $45 to $55 |
| 3 | A 5,000 sq ft lawn, local going rate | about $50 |
| 4 | A 30-minute lawn at $100 an hour | $50 |
| 5 | A 45-minute lawn at $100 an hour | $75 |
| 6 | Half an acre, acreage shortcut | $50 to $55 |
| 7 | Weekly minimum | about $35 |
These are single owners in their own markets, not averages. The example's $54.71 sits at the top of the $45 to $55 band because it is a 6,500 sq ft lawn priced from full cost. The warning that goes with any going rate: copying $50 only works if $50 is profitable for your shop.
Loading, gates and dump runs: the costs mowing quotes leave out
The costs that go missing are the minutes around the mowing, not the mowing itself, and in the example they add $7.28 to every weekly visit.
Loading and strapping down the mower. Every stop starts and ends with it, all season. Nobody counts it as work, but every minute is paid.
Extra trimming when the customer adds things. New beds, trees and fence lines turn a quick trim into a long one. A customer who plants a dozen trees in the back can add 15 or 20 minutes a visit. Price the trimming the lawn has now, and put in writing that new plantings mean a new price.
A narrow gate that forces the push mower. In the sample Job Log, a lawn got a new fence that kept the big mower out of the back; hours ran 50% over the quote and the lawn lost $42.68 a month until it was repriced.
Out-of-the-way yards. A lawn off your route may need a higher price, or should wait until you have other customers nearby. The drive is paid time plus the truck's cost per mile.
Bagging and dump fees. The dump station charges every time you drop off. Spread the bags, the extra minutes and the dump trips over every visit of a bagging customer.
Blades, line, plugs and filters. Each is small, and all of them wear a little on every lawn. They're the costs owners most often leave off.
Rain reshuffles, invoicing and callbacks. A rain week reshuffles the whole route, and going back for a missed strip is a second trip for no money.
The big hidden costs, the truck, insurance and hours nobody pays for, sit inside the break-even rate rather than on the quote. Overhead and profit explains how they get there.
Where lawn prices go wrong
Most underpriced lawns come from discounting, from handing speed savings to the customer, or from never timing the lawn again.
Discounting the neighbours. Charging one house $50 and the house next door $35 to pick up the extra stop backfires, because neighbours talk. Standardise, and let the short drive be your gain.
Charging less because you got faster. When a bigger mower or a better trimmer cuts your time, keep the price and keep the saving. You paid for the equipment, not the customer.
Never re-timing a lawn. Go through the route yard by yard at least once a year and raise, drop or change anything that isn't worth the price. The Job Log in the example does that check for you; the method is in job costing.
Bidding big sites you've never timed. Commercial bids are easy to lose, or win at a loss, when you don't know how fast your crew mows, trims, blows and edges a site that size. Until you've timed similar properties, a big bid is a guess in both directions.
Terms that keep a mowing price right all season
A mowing price stays right only while the lawn stays the same, so the quote should say what happens when it changes.
- The price covers the lawn as it is today. New beds, trees, fences or a narrow gate that add minutes mean a new price. For how to handle that mid-season, see change orders.
- Prices get reviewed once a year, with notice. A short note saying the lawn goes from $45 to $55 starting next service, with nothing for the customer to do, is all it takes.
- A discount for paying the season up front. Some owners give 5% off to customers who prepay the year.
- Rain days. Decide whether you come the next dry day and whether the monthly price stays the same, and write it down. Our research didn't cover this, so it's your call.
The Lawn Care Pricing Calculator comes with ready-made lawn care terms you can edit, and prices weekly, every 2 weeks, every 3 weeks and one-time cuts from one timed visit.