How much to charge for lawn mowing

What homeowners are paying in 2026

LawnStarter, which books lawn services in cities across the country, says professional mowing typically runs $43 to $70 per visit, averaging $56, based on its data from August 2025 to August 2026. By lawn size, its ranges are $41 to $61 up to a quarter acre, $49 to $69 for a quarter to half acre, $59 to $114 for half an acre to an acre, and $99 to $264 for one to two acres.

GreenPal, another booking marketplace, puts most residential mows between $30 and $85 per visit, with a national average around $50. Both sources say pros typically charge $32 to $68 an hour, and LawnStarter gives $0.01 to $0.06 per square foot for those who price by area.

Treat these numbers as a sanity check, not a price list. They blend big cities and small towns, crews and solo operators, flat lots and hills. The number you need is the one that pays for your own hours, your own truck and your own route.

Start from what one hour costs you

Begin with your own pay. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median wage of $18.82 an hour for landscaping and groundskeeping workers in May 2025. That is the median paid to employees who do the work. As the owner, your hourly figure has to cover that much for your own time before the business has earned anything.

Then the truck. The IRS standard mileage rate for 2026 is 72.5 cents per mile for business use of a car, van or pickup. It is a tax figure, but it makes a reasonable stand-in for what a mile of driving costs. A 40-mile route day at that rate is $29 before you have cut a blade.

Then everything else: mower, trimmer and blower, trailer, repairs, fuel for the equipment, insurance, phone, a slow week in a dry spell. Add up a year of it and divide by the hours you expect to mow in a season. As an illustration, $6,000 a year spread over 1,000 mowing hours is $6 an hour. Add your pay, the equipment and overhead figure, and the profit you want on top, and you have a target hourly rate.

Turn the hourly number into a price per yard

Time each yard once. Count the minutes from parking to pulling away, including trimming and blowing off the drive, and add the minutes of driving from the previous stop. A yard that takes 34 minutes on site and 8 minutes to reach costs you 42 minutes of your day.

Multiply by your target rate. At $60 an hour, a minute is worth $1, so that yard needs $42 for time, plus about $2.90 for the 4 miles at 72.5 cents. Round $44.90 up and the price is $45 a cut. That sits inside LawnStarter's $41 to $61 range for lawns up to a quarter acre, which is a good sign the math matches the market.

Drive time is where the money hides. The same 34-minute yard with a 3-minute hop from the neighbor's house needs about $37 at the same rate; behind a 15-minute detour it needs about $49 plus the extra miles. A tight route lets you charge a fair price and still beat your hourly target.

Weekly, biweekly and overgrown lawns

Longer grass takes longer to cut, and published prices reflect it. A table GreenPal cites from HomeGuide's 2026 lawn care cost report lists a quarter-acre lawn at $45 to $65 per weekly visit and $60 to $85 per biweekly visit. GreenPal adds that a monthly mow often runs 50 to 80 percent higher than the weekly rate because the grass grows taller between cuts.

Overgrown first cuts deserve their own price. GreenPal says lawns with grass over 10 inches often carry a surcharge, sometimes doubling the normal rate, and LawnStarter says most companies charge a long grass fee once grass is over 6 to 12 inches. Put your overgrown rate in writing before the first visit so it is not a surprise on the invoice.

What one customer is worth over a season

Season length changes everything. LawnStarter's regional figures assume about 24 mowing weeks in the Northeast, 26 in the Midwest, 34 in the West and Northwest, 45 in the Southeast and 46 in the Southwest. A weekly $45 customer in the Midwest is about 26 times $45, or $1,170 a season if no week is skipped. The same customer in the Southeast is about 45 times $45, or $2,025.

Skipped weeks matter on a per-cut price. If a dry July takes two cuts off a weekly lawn, that customer pays for the cuts you made, and your season shrinks with the weather. A flat monthly price smooths that out for both sides but means you carry a wet month that needs extra cuts. Whichever you choose, write it down when the customer signs on.

Common pricing mistakes

Pricing the yard and forgetting the drive. Two lawns of the same size are not the same job if one is next door and the other is fifteen minutes away.

Copying the average. A $56 national average says nothing about your costs. If your target hourly rate puts you well above the local range, look at minutes and miles before you cut the price.

Charging the weekly rate for a lawn you see every other week, or the normal rate for an overgrown first cut. Both show up in the published prices above for a reason.

Never checking your own numbers. Prices are easier to adjust when you know what each yard actually took and billed. LawnRound keeps a per-cut rate and an application rate on each customer card and totals the visits you check off into an invoice, so a season of numbers for every yard is there when you sit down to set next year's prices.

Frequently asked questions