Free calculator · Know your numbers
Landscaping hourly rate calculator: what you actually need to charge per hour
You're standing in a driveway doing math in your head. Two guys, most of a day, haul-off. The number you say out loud is the one you're stuck with for six months, and you picked it because it's close to what the guy down the road charges. That's guessing with your own money.
Free. No account, no email, no limit on how many times you run it.
Workers on the truck, counting yourself if you swing a blade.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Your pay, not the company's revenue.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Target rate per crew-hour
$200
- Per man-hour
- $67
- Break-even per crew-hour
- $170
- Revenue per day
- $1,122
- Revenue per week
- $5,610
- Suggested minimum job charge
- $250
Still using our suggested figures for crew size, whether the owner works in the field, average hourly wage, owner take-home pay, payroll burden, yearly overhead, days per week, hours per day, billable hours, profit margin, season length. Add your own numbers for a sharper answer.
Where each dollar of the rate goes
- Wages
- $62.86
- Payroll burden
- $15.71
- Overhead
- $38.96
- Your pay
- $52.76
- Profit
- $30.05
Your result is already on the screen. The email is only so you can keep it.
Use my real numbers
Employer taxes, workers' comp, liability, benefits.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Truck, insurance, equipment, trailer, phone, software, marketing, storage, licensing. Not wages.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Time on properties doing paid work, against clock time from leaving the yard to getting back. Most small crews land between 60% and 75%.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Suggested starting point, from our own national service-pricing research. Replace it with your number.
Check against a job you already do
What this calculator does
It answers one question: what does one hour of my crew’s time have to sell for?
- Break-even rate per crew-hour — wages, burden, overhead and your own pay, zero profit
- Target rate per crew-hour and per man-hour — the same, with your margin built in
- Revenue you need per day and per week to hit it
- Where every dollar goes — labor, burden, overhead, your pay, profit
- A note on which figures are still suggestions
Any figure we start you on is a national suggestion, labeled as one. We have no rate database for your area and won’t pretend otherwise. The number sharpens as you add your own figures.
How it works
- Enter your crew size. Workers on the truck, counting yourself if you swing a blade.
- Enter your average hourly wage. What you actually pay, before taxes and insurance.
- Enter what you want to take home this year. Your pay, not the company’s revenue. Most owners leave this out, which is why their “profit” is really just their salary.
- Read the result — break-even and target per crew-hour, plus per man-hour.
- Open “Use my real numbers” to tighten it: wage per worker, payroll burden, yearly overhead (one total, or built from a checklist), your season in weeks, days and hours, your billable share of the day, and your target margin.
Solo right now? Put in a crew of one. It tells you what you’d have to charge to afford a first hire.
How to calculate your landscaping hourly rate
Add up what a year costs you — wages plus payroll burden, plus yearly overhead, plus the pay you want — and divide by the crew-hours you actually bill, not the hours you work. That’s break-even per crew-hour. Divide by one minus your margin for the target rate, then by crew size for per man-hour.
The trap is the denominator. You’re on the clock 40 hours and you bill maybe 28. Drive time, loading, the gas station, the breakdown at the second stop — unpaid, and carried by the hours you do bill.
A worked example
Marcus runs a three-man crew in central Texas: weekly maintenance, plus cleanups and mulch.
| What goes in | His number |
|---|---|
| Crew size | 3 (him and two guys) |
| Average wage | $22/hr |
| Payroll burden | 25% |
| Take-home he wants | $85,000 |
| Yearly overhead | $48,000 |
| Season | 44 weeks, 5 days, 8 hrs |
| Billable share | 70% |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
- Crew hours on the clock: 44 × 5 × 8 = 1,760
- Crew hours he actually bills: 1,760 × 70% = 1,232
- Two employees at $22 plus 25% burden = $55 per crew-hour × 1,760 = $96,800
- Plus $48,000 overhead and his $85,000 = $229,800 to cover
Break-even: $229,800 ÷ 1,232 = about $187 per crew-hour. Target at a 15% margin: about $219 per crew-hour, or $73 per man-hour. Roughly $1,225 of work a day, $6,130 a week.
Then the reality check — run it against a job you already do. Marcus charges $600 for a cleanup his crew knocks out in three hours on site. That’s $200 per crew-hour: above break-even, under target. He isn’t losing money, he’s working for wages. A year of those comes up short.
Who this is for
Owners running two to five people who price from the truck and have never done this math. Especially the solo guy about to hire his first employee — that call lives or dies on this number, because a helper costs his wage plus burden plus the hours he’s riding instead of working. Finished a strong season with an empty account? This explains it.
It is not a homeowner cost guide. The output is a contractor’s rate, not a quote for a yard.
Related calculators
Every tool below prices off the number this landscaping hourly rate calculator gives you.
- Lawn Mowing Price Calculator — price a lawn per visit, month and season from your hourly rate
- All Okason pricing calculators — the full set, free and ungated
Where our suggested numbers come from. We built these tools because “what do I charge?” is the question two-to-five person crews ask each other most. The starting figures behind every input come from our own service-pricing research, reviewed each year and whenever the prices inside Okason change. They are national starting points, not your market. Replace them with your own numbers and the answer gets sharper.
More on pricing from your own costs: how to calculate landscaping job costs, flat-rate vs hourly landscaping billing, how to price landscaping jobs for beginners.
Reviewed Sep 17, 2026 · Written by the Okason team
Frequently asked questions
A crew-hour is one hour of the whole crew being somewhere. A man-hour is one person for one hour. A three-man crew on a property for two hours burns 2 crew-hours and 6 man-hours. Bid in crew-hours — that's how you schedule. Sanity-check in man-hours, because that's how other owners talk.
That gap is the point. Your number includes your pay and your overhead; theirs usually includes neither. Three levers: raise prices, cut overhead, or bill more of the hours you already work. The cheapest win is usually the third — tighter routes, less windshield time.
Everything on top of the wage: employer taxes, workers' comp, liability, benefits. Rarely under 20%, and it can run past 35% depending on your state and comp class. Replace the suggested figure with the real one off your last payroll report.
Everything you pay whether or not you cut a single lawn: truck payment, insurance, equipment and repairs, trailer, phone, software, marketing, storage, licensing. Don't include wages — they're already in the labor line.
No. Most maintenance should stay flat-rate — customers hate open-ended hourly, and you get punished for being fast. Use the rate as a yardstick: estimate the hours, multiply by the target rate, quote a flat price.
Put the number where your crew can reach it
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