What do you actually need to charge per hour?
Most owners price off a number they heard at the supply store. Plug in the pay you want, your real overhead, and the hours you can truly bill — we'll show the break-even rate and a rate that leaves you a profit.
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Your goals → the rate that hits them.
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Type your inputs to see the rate you need.
How the math works.
Billable hours are the number that fools people
The single biggest pricing mistake is dividing your costs by 40 hours a week. You don’t bill 40 hours — you bill the time the mower is actually running. Drive time between stops, quoting, invoicing, equipment maintenance, and dump runs are all real work, but a customer doesn’t pay for them by the hour. A solo operator who works 50 hours often bills only 20–30 of them.
The formula
- All-in annual cost = the pay you want + your annual overhead.
- Billable hours per year = billable hours per week × working weeks.
- Break-even rate = all-in cost ÷ billable hours. This is the rate where you hit your pay target with zero margin to spare.
- Recommended rate = break-even × (1 + your markup). The cushion covers the lawns that run long, the equipment that breaks, and the customer who doesn’t pay on time.
A sanity check
A common floor in the trades is to bill at 2–3× your own (or a tech’s) hourly wage just to cover taxes, the truck, insurance, and overhead. If the rate this calculator produces is below 2× what you’d pay someone to do the work, your billable-hours or overhead inputs are probably optimistic. Once you have a rate, take it to the Lawn Care Pricing Calculator to turn it into a per-property price.
A rate is step one. Here’s what protects it.
Online estimates
Turn your rate into a branded estimate the customer approves with a click — with the price math already baked in so you stop underbidding on the fly.
See online estimates →Route optimization
The fastest way to raise your effective hourly rate is to bill more of the hours you already work. Tighter routes mean less unbillable windshield time.
See route optimization →Auto-invoicing
The rate only matters if you collect it. Invoices go out the day the job closes, with reminders and pay-online links so cash actually lands.
See auto-invoicing →Hourly-rate questions, plain answers.
Everything you need to know before getting started.
Know your rate. Now hold it on every job.
The calculator gives you the number. Grunlo gives you the estimate, the schedule, and the invoice that make sure you actually charge it.
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