how much should i charge for lawn care

Highlights

• The majority of lawn care providers charge between $50 and $250 to mow a lawn.
• If you include maintenance charges, your rates might rise to $125–$450 .
• To estimate rates, multiply your mowing time by the size of your lawn.
• Per hour is the most dependable way for accounting for the unexpected.

How Much to Charge for Lawn Care Services

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On average, professionals charge between $50 and $250 for lawn mowing. When it comes to more specialist landscape management expenditures, such as weed control, pruning, aeration, fertilizer, and pesticide treatment, most professionals charge between $100 and $200. $125 and $450 .

Customers who hire full-service lawn care realize that they are paying for both time and skill. Your skills as a lawn specialist may transform lawns into park-like settings with the correct equipment, blades, and edging methods, making your labor worthwhile.

The pricing table and lawn mowing pricing models further down will assist you in determining what is a fair price to charge for your services.

Lawn Mowing Pricing Chart

One strategy to break down your expenses for prospective clients is to provide a price chart. They may then look at the table and analyze their lawn care requirements and budget. The emphasis here is on convenience.

The lawn care price table below shows how you may choose to split down lawn mowing expenses based on grass size and usual mowing time.

Different Lawn Mowing Service Pricing Models

Each lawn care work must be priced individually based on its unique variables. It’s completely legitimate, for example, to charge a premium for bigger, more difficult, or time-consuming work. When providing an estimate, just make sure you’re upfront about your price model.

The first step in establishing how to charge customers is to figure out how much you need to earn each hour across all projects. That doesn’t imply you’re charging per the hour. It simply implies that you understand the hourly breakdown that makes a work valuable.

Even if you offer a fixed or project-based fee, you’ll need to know how much each work will bring in per hour while accounting for your overhead expenditures.

Per Hour

When it comes to charging someone to mow their lawn, an hourly charge is the most basic choice. This strategy entails charging a flat fee for each hour it takes you to finish a task.

Most professional lawn mowing rates per hour range from $25 and $60 , and a large part of this variety is determined by experience and specialized services.

Let’s say you charge The hourly rate is $50. In the United States, the average lawn size is roughly 10,000 square feet. If you mow the whole lawn in two hours, you’ll spend $100 ($50 multiplied by 2).

The advantage here is that you get rewarded for your work if certain lawns take longer to mow owing to difficult terrain. You also don’t have to figure out how long preparation and cleaning will take ahead of time, as you would with a “package price.” Instead, you’ll bill for the whole time you’re on the site.

The sort of lawn mower you use to mow the grass may have a significant impact on the overall mowing time, so consider this as well. A push mower will take more than twice as long as a riding mower to complete an acre. Larger yards may need many hours to mow with a modest push mower.

For rookie lawn providers, charging by the hour might be a wise decision. This is because it is difficult to predict how long it will take you to accomplish a task at beginning. You risk losing money on customers if you hurry into flat rates or project rates because you underestimate how long projects will take.

Some lawn care companies like to charge by square foot. When producing estimates, they may examine aerial photography of properties to get a sense of how complicated the task would be. The intricacy of a project is significant since it is quite simple to lose money by offering the same fee per square foot to each client when topography varies greatly.

When establishing estimates based on square footage, make sure you receive your desired hourly rate.

Assume you want to earn $50 per hour and a client with a 10,000-square-foot lawn approaches you. You’ll need a decent sense of how many hours it would take you to mow that much square footage.

Assume you know it takes two hours to mow 10,000 square feet. To achieve your objective of $50 per hour, you should charge $0.50 per square foot.

Customers like our no-nonsense approach to lawn mowing prices. You’ll also like the fact that your income will be consistent.

The issue with pricing by square footage is that it does not take into account specific situations. For example, you may encounter a circumstance in which a certain 10,000-square-foot lawn takes you an additional 30 minutes to complete owing to mountainous terrain. Unfortunately, if you didn’t look at the property beforehand to boost your price per square foot, you’ll have to eat that additional $25 in work.

That $25 loss may not seem like much, but if you make multiple mistakes, you might lose hundreds of dollars every week.

Flat Fee

With a flat fee, you may charge a single sum for the whole job. A flat fee may be charged in a variety of ways.

First and foremost, flat prices are ideal for recurrent lawn mowing contracts. Customers would enjoy the predictability of paying a set monthly or weekly charge for routine mowing. You may also set up auto payments for regular clients.

You may also wish to provide fixed costs for bigger jobs to make it simpler for consumers to budget for the task.

Again, understanding how much you need to earn every hour to make a work lucrative is key to success. If you want to earn $50 per hour, you need know two things: how much work you can complete in each hour and how long the project will take.

Here’s a sample project:

• Mowing time: 55 minutes
• Trimming: 15 minutes
• Edging: 10 minutes
• Blowing: 10 minutes

Assume this is a 90-minute project. If you need to charge at least $75 for the whole project to be profitable, you must charge at least $50 each hour.

The disadvantage of charging a flat price is identical to the disadvantage of pricing per square footage. You may lose money if your estimate is not completely accurate. Furthermore, if you offer a fixed cost that is too cheap for a large project, you may be losing money day after day.

What to Consider When Charging for Lawn Services

When determining the price per hour required to be successful, ensure that you account for all essential charges, from lawn size to overhead.

Here are some important lawn mowing company expenses to consider:

Overhead

When running a lawn care service, you must include overhead and operating expenses in your hourly rate. Begin by calculating how much your monthly overhead is based on your spending. Your overhead covers anything from equipment expenditures to monthly company insurance payments.

Next, figure out how much of the overall cost you need to include into each project for overhead. This is accomplished by dividing the overhead cost by the average number of tasks booked each month.

Taxes

Purchases and leases of equipment, mileage travelled, depreciation, employee salary, and payments to independent contractors are all tax deductible. In reality, practically every company cost is tax deductible, including phone and internet fees if used for commercial purposes. Keep comprehensive records to ensure you obtain the maximum deductions when it comes to tax time.

Weather

If you reside in a colder area, you are probably aware that landscaping has a famously short season in the winter. Unfortunately, many of your overhead expenditures such as car maintenance, equipment ownership, and insurance will continue to apply even when the calls aren’t coming in. During busy seasons, you may need to include slow season expenditures into your pricing.

Attempt to “winterproof” your lawn care firm by offering services other than mowing.

Here are several services that may keep you afloat when demand for mowing decreases:

• Draining sprinklers
• Dethatching lawns
• Wrapping trees in burlap
• Planting bulbs
• Seeding
• Mulching/pine straw
• Pressure washing

Many landscapers also provide plowing and sidewalk shoveling services. Clients that do not mow their own lawns often prefer not to have their driveways shoveled. Every time it snows, summer regulars might become winter regulars.

Location

The cost of products and services differs by state. That implies you must price your services based on the area average rather than the national average. If you operate in a region with a stable climate, you may charge less since you won’t have to purchase equipment that is suitable for all four seasons.

On the other hand, mowers and trimmers are likely to wear down quicker in areas where mowing is required most of the year.

Labor

Wages are a significant component of your overhead if you have a workforce. When making estimates, you consider the entire cost based on the number of hours required multiplied by the number of persons required.

When providing estimates, be sure to include the quantity of employees in your itemized list in order to explain your charges.

How to Calculate Lawn Care Pricing

Lawn care price might be difficult to calculate, but after you’ve determined which methods work best for your company, you’ll have charges that appropriately represent your job. Here’s how to figure out your lawn care costs:

1. Choose a Method

Lawn care services are priced in three ways: by the hour, by square footage, and by flat fees.

By the Hour

Charging by the hour protects you in the event of unanticipated events, such as tough terrain. Hourly rates may improve your revenues, but they can also price you out of the market if you tackle a big property with a low-quality lawn mower.

If you have more than an acre of land, you should consider purchasing a rear-engine riding mower or a tractor riding mower.

By Square Footage

If you’re confident in your mowing abilities, you may charge per square footage. This is a simple technique that allows consumers to budget for the overall cost, but it might result in a loss of cash if you underestimate the intricacy of the lawn.

By Flat Rate

Finally, a flat charge might be ideal for attracting repeat consumers who want the steadiness of a straightforward package. Flat pricing, such charging by the square foot, often underestimate the time it takes to mow a lawn.

To determine your pricing, you may wish to use a variety of approaches. Charging a fixed pricing for diverse property sizes may give clients the impression that they are obtaining the greatest prices for their lawn sizes.

2. Consider All Expenses

Once you’ve decided on a strategy for determining your rates, you’ll need to include in any extra expenditures that may arise. This will assist cover any unexpected shocks such as thick grass, hilly ground, rocky terrain, and so on. It’s also vital to include in the expenses of standard lawn care service add-ons, such as:

• Fertilization costs: $75–$400
• Aeration costs: $0.10–$0.35 per square foot
• Yard cleanup costs: $190–$1,000
• Tree trimming costs: $200–$750 per tree
• Reseeding costs: $0.10–$0.20 per square foot

3. Create a Pricing Package

With all of your cost considerations and billing strategy in place, you can finally stop watching the grass grow and start designing the ideal lawn care plan for your company.

clients appreciate alternatives, so take your figures and develop several bundles that fall inside your pricing range to provide your clients a choice. It’s also a good idea to compare your calculations to the costs of other lawn care services in your region to ensure that your charges are competitive.

Frequently Asked Questions

Starting a mowing company may be successful if you run it effectively, precisely evaluate expenses, and invest in time-saving, high-quality equipment. With strong customer service, you can retain loyal clients who spend in weekly lawn care services, allowing your firm to thrive.

Lawn care companies may generate anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 per year, depending on how they are run, but you must include the cost of equipment to calculate your true profit margins.

Depending on the kind of lawn mower, you may mow at speeds ranging from 2.5 to 13 miles per hour. (mph). At 2.5 mph, which is slightly under the average walking speed, a basic push lawn mower will take the longest to mow. Riding mowers may go much quicker. Rear engines reach speeds of roughly 5 mph, tractors reach speeds of little under 8 mph, and zero-turn mowers reach speeds of 13 mph.

Related Questions

• What are the benefits of being a yard maintenance worker?

  To assist you understand what’s required, we’ve compiled a list of some of the reasons you may want to seek a career as a lawn care technician.

  1. You Can Earn a Good Living. …
  2. You Can Work Year-Round. …
  3. The Work is Fulfilling. …
  4. There are Growth Opportunities.

• What is the meaning of lawn maintenance?

  Lawn upkeep include cleaning and grooming your lawn throughout the year. Royal Landscapes can help you remove waste, mow your grass on a regular basis, or clean up your yard before winter arrives.

• Is yard work a good side hustle?

  When the money coming in each month exceeds the money going out each month, the cash flow is positive. I believe it is reasonable to conclude that beginning a lawn care company is worthwhile! We spent less than $1,000 to get started, and we’ve developed a thriving side business in less than a month.