How to price landscaping jobs and lawn care

Price every job as crew hours at your rate plus materials and a markup; our example rate is about $80 an hour for an owner-operator. You'll use three kinds of price:

• An hourly or day rate for cleanups, pruning and odd jobs.
• A per-visit price for mowing and maintenance, built from time on site plus drive time.
• A fixed quote for installs like sod, mulch, plantings and hardscape, built from crew hours, materials and dump fees.

All three come from the same hourly rate, so get that right first.

Our example owner-operator spends $29,000 a year before pay and job materials. The usual lines:

• Truck and trailer: payments, commercial auto insurance, registration, maintenance and fuel.
• Equipment: mowers, trimmers, blowers, hedge trimmers and their payments.
• Repairs: blades, belts, oil and the small engine shop.
• Insurance: general liability and, once you hire, workers' comp.
• Dump and green waste fees.
• Phone, scheduling and invoicing software.
• Marketing: website, Google Business Profile, yard signs and door hangers.
• Any business license, and a pesticide applicator license if you treat lawns.

Materials like sod, mulch and plants belong on each quote, not in overhead.

In our example the same costs need about $80 an hour over a 36-week season, but only about $55 if you could bill all year. Truck payments and insurance don't stop in winter.

In colder states, set your rate on the weeks you really work and treat winter work like snow removal, leaf cleanup and holiday lighting as a bonus. In warm states your season is longer, but summer heat and rain days still cut billable hours.

Self-employment tax is 15.3% of net earnings, and crews add employer payroll tax. For 2026 the IRS sets out:

• Self-employment tax: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare, once net earnings reach $400, with Social Security capped at $184,500 for 2026.
• Estimated tax: generally required if you expect to owe $1,000 or more. Pay it from summer cash, not winter's.
• For each employee: 6.2% employer Social Security and 1.45% employer Medicare, plus federal unemployment tax of 6.0% on the first $7,000 of wages, which falls to 0.6% with the full state credit.
• State unemployment tax and workers' comp on top, at rates your state sets.

Sales tax on landscaping services and materials varies a lot by state, so check with your state's revenue department or your CPA.

These are example figures to show the sum. They aren't averages for landscapers and they aren't Ringzel customer data.

1. 1Working season: 36 weeks x 5 days x 8 hours = 1,440 hours.
2. 2Billable time: 75%, so 1,080 hours.
3. 3Break-even rate: $79,000 / 1,080 = $73.15 an hour.
4. 4Add a 10% margin: about $80 an hour, or around $645 for an 8-hour day.

Spread over 48 weeks instead, the same sum gives about $55 an hour. Price on that and you run out of money in February.

Mowing shows the limit of a solo rate. A quarter-acre lawn with 30 minutes on site and 10 minutes of driving is 40 minutes, or about $54 at $80 an hour. Angi puts a quarter-acre mow at $15 to $50, so mowing only pays with tight routes, a crew on a lower wage, or higher-value work mixed in.

In our example, 1,000 square feet of sod comes to about $1,680, or about $1.68 a square foot. Angi puts sod at $0.35 to $0.85 a square foot for materials; the other figures are examples.

Add soil prep, grading or removal of old turf as their own lines if the job needs them, and say in writing what's included. Angi notes that labor makes up 40% to 65% of a landscaping project's cost, so your crew hours are the number to get right.

Angi puts landscapers at $50 to $100 an hour and mowing at an average of $123 a visit in 2026. Here's the wider picture:

Sources: Angi's landscaping cost guide (updated 23 September 2026), Angi's lawn mowing cost guide (updated 17 March 2026) and HomeAdvisor's lawn care cost guide (updated 17 June 2026).

For wages, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median for employed landscaping and groundskeeping workers at $18.82 an hour, or $39,150 a year, in May 2025, and first-line supervisors of landscaping workers at $28.09 an hour. Those are what you'd pay a crew, not what a customer pays you.

Most landscapers use all four. Keep them tied to the same hourly rate so the prices make sense together.

Put a minimum on per-visit work. A small yard still costs you the drive and the unload.

Angi puts monthly lawn service at $200 to $400 a month. Build your own price this way:

1. 1Time one visit, door to door, including edging, blowing and drive time.
2. 2Multiply by your hourly rate and the number of visits in the season.
3. 3Add extras that come every year, like spring and fall cleanups, as their own lines or rolled into the contract.
4. 4Divide by the months you'll bill to get an even monthly price.

Monthly billing over a season smooths your cash flow. Say in the contract what happens in a drought, when mowing slows down, so nobody argues about paying for skipped weeks.

1. 1Rerun your costs before each season. Fuel, equipment and insurance all change.
2. 2Raise prices for new customers first.
3. 3Send contract customers new prices in late winter, before the season starts.
4. 4Drop or reprice the routes that lose money on drive time.

A weekly lawn customer at $80 a visit over a 30-week season is worth $2,400, so a missed call that would have booked one time in four costs about $600. Those are example figures inside Angi's $65 to $100 weekly range.

Spring is when most of those calls come, and it's also when you're busiest. Read how to stop missing business calls, then put your own figures into our missed call calculator.

Ringzel is an AI receptionist for landscapers and other small businesses. It answers every call 24/7, including the ones you can't hear over a mower, and takes down the address and what the caller wants done.

On the Professional and Premium plans it can book estimates into your calendar and transfer calls to you. The Android app is live on Google Play, and the iPhone app is coming soon.

Plans cost $99, $179 or $299 a month, as shown on our pricing page, with a 14-day free trial and no card. Basic is $1,188 a year, under half of one example weekly lawn customer.