What to charge: price one visit from your costs
Use this calculator to build a price from the job in front of you — crew, time, miles, materials, overhead, and the margin you actually want.
It is a research-based illustration, not a bid and not advice. We do not test jobs, and we do not fill in “typical” minutes-per-lawn or a default payroll-burden percentage.
A useful price starts with honest inputs.
Trade, crew, and wages
Trade only sets the wage default and labels. Choose lawn mowing, landscaping maintenance, house cleaning, pressure washing, window cleaning, gutter cleaning, pest control, or pool service; HVAC, plumbing, and handyman are optional extras. Enter your crew size — it has no default.
The wage is pre-filled with the U.S. BLS May 2025 OEWS national median for the closest official occupation. For example: landscaping and groundskeeping workers (SOC 37-3011), $18.82 an hour; pest control workers (SOC 37-2021), $21.75 an hour. Edit it to what you actually pay. See the methodology.
Pressure washing, window cleaning, gutter cleaning, and pool service have no unique BLS occupation. They use janitors and cleaners, except maids and housekeeping cleaners (SOC 37-2011, $17.71), labeled as a closest official occupation, not a going rate.
Payroll burden — taxes, workers’ comp, and benefits — has no default.
Time and vehicle cost
Enter on-site hours, or square footage divided by your own production rate. We will not supply a production-rate default. Drive time counts toward labor; equipment only runs against on-site time.
Vehicle cost defaults to the IRS 2026 business mileage rate in effect: 76 cents a mile from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2026 (72.5 cents for Jan. 1–June 30). This is an IRS substantiation rate, not a required charge-out rate. Official IRS standard mileage rates, checked 2026-11-12 (America/Chicago).
Overhead, software, and utilization
Enter materials, equipment $/hour, monthly overhead, and billable crew-hours per month. Overhead is spread only across the billable hours you enter; we do not invent utilization.
Software cost per job is an optional, separate allocation from a monthly plan cost and your company’s jobs per month. It is not added to break-even, so software already in overhead is not counted twice. If it is not in overhead, include it there yourself if you want it covered in the recommended price.
Margin, minimum, and recurring work
Recommended price = break-even / (1 − target margin), then the greater of that figure and your minimum charge. The tool also shows equivalent markup: margin / (1 − margin). If the minimum lifts your price, it shows the effective margin too. The margin vs. markup guide is planned for a later run.
One-time visits have no invented monthly or annual revenue. Weekly uses 52 / 12 visits a month, biweekly uses 26 / 12, and monthly uses 1. Recurring client revenue is price × visit frequency; it is revenue, not profit.
The calculation, in full
- Labor = crew size × (on-site hours + drive hours) × wage × (1 + payroll burden).
- Vehicle = miles × vehicle rate.
- Equipment = equipment $/hour × on-site hours.
- Overhead share = monthly overhead / billable crew-hours per month × crew size × total hours; 0 when overhead is blank or 0.
- Break-even = labor + vehicle + equipment + materials + overhead share.
- Price = the greater of break-even / (1 − margin) and minimum charge.
- Effective rate per crew-hour = price / (crew size × total hours), or n/a when time is 0.
- Software cost per job = monthly plan cost / your company jobs per month, when used for recurring work.
Results include recommended price and break-even per visit; the cost breakdown; effective rate per crew-hour; equivalent markup; and monthly and annual revenue for a recurring client. Source dates and defaults come from the dated data file.
Read our methodology, disclosure, or return home.