To price landscaping jobs, add up five things: labour (crew hours × your loaded cost per hour), materials (with waste and delivery), equipment, a share of your overhead, and then your profit margin on top. Written as a formula: Price = (Labour + Materials + Equipment + Overhead) ÷ (1 − target margin). The rest of this guide shows how to get each number right, then prices a 300 sq ft paver patio and a season of weekly lawn maintenance step by step.
The numbers below are worked examples in Canadian dollars, not market averages. Swap in your own wages, supplier prices and overhead. If your prices come out higher than the competitor down the road, that’s usually because you counted everything and they didn’t.
The landscaping pricing formula
| Part | How to calculate it | Commonly missed |
|---|---|---|
| Labour | Crew hours × loaded cost per labour hour | Drive time, loading, cleanup, rain delays |
| Materials | Quantity × supplier price + waste + delivery | Waste, base material, edge restraint, dump fees |
| Equipment | Rental cost, or an hourly rate for your own machines | Fuel, trailer, wear on owned equipment |
| Overhead | Overhead per billable labour hour × labour hours | Insurance, office, phone, software, your own unpaid admin time |
| Margin | Divide total cost by (1 − margin %) | Using markup and thinking it’s margin |
Step 1: Know your crew cost per hour
Your labour cost isn’t the wage. It’s the wage plus everything the employee costs you: CPP and EI (or US payroll taxes), vacation pay, workers’ compensation (WSIB in Ontario, WorkSafeBC in BC), and any benefits. That’s your loaded rate.
| Item | Worked example |
|---|---|
| Hourly wage | $26.00 |
| Employer CPP, EI, vacation pay (example, about 14%) | $3.64 |
| Workers’ compensation (example rate) | $1.50 |
| Small allowance for paid non-productive time | $2.86 |
| Loaded cost per labour hour | $34.00 |
Your workers’ comp rate depends on your province or state and your classification, so look up your own. Our labour burden calculator does this math for you, and the contractor hourly rate calculator works out what to charge if you bill hourly.
Step 2: Estimate the hours honestly
Most underpriced landscaping quotes get the materials right and the hours wrong. Count every hour the crew is on the clock for this job, not just the hours with a shovel in hand.
- Loading and travel: yard to site and back, supplier pickups.
- Site prep: locates, layout, protecting lawns and driveways.
- The work itself: use your own past jobs. If last year’s 250 sq ft patio took 60 labour hours, start there.
- Cleanup and walk-through: sweeping, hauling, final photos, showing the customer.
- A weather and access buffer: tight backyard access, clay soil and slope all add time.
For one month, have the crew log start and finish times per job. You’ll learn more about your real production rates than from any industry chart.
Step 3: Materials, waste and disposal
Measure, then add waste. Pavers and sod get cut; mulch and soil settle; gravel compacts. Typical allowances many contractors use are 5–10% for pavers and 5% for sod, more for curved designs. Use our paver calculator and gravel calculator for quantities.
Then add what isn’t on the plan: delivery charges, edge restraint, polymeric sand, landscape fabric, and dump fees for excavated soil, which can be a surprisingly large line on hardscape jobs.
Step 4: Overhead and equipment
Overhead is everything you pay whether or not a crew is working: insurance, the yard, office rent, phones, software, accounting, advertising, and the hours you spend quoting. The simplest way to recover it is per billable labour hour:
Overhead per labour hour = annual overhead ÷ annual billable labour hours
Worked example: $90,000 of overhead a year ÷ 5,000 billable crew hours = $18 per labour hour. Every job then carries its share. If you work on the tools yourself, put your own wage into labour like any other crew member, and count the evenings you spend quoting and invoicing as overhead. Owners who leave themselves out of the numbers end up with a business that looks profitable on paper and pays them less than their crew. Revisit the overhead rate every winter: a new truck, a bigger yard or an office hire changes it. For equipment, use the rental price for rented machines, and an hourly rate for your own (purchase price spread over its useful hours, plus fuel and maintenance).
Step 5: Markup vs margin
This is where good landscapers lose money without noticing. Markup is a percentage of cost; margin is a percentage of the price. A 15% markup does not give you a 15% margin.
| If you want this margin | Divide cost by | Equivalent markup on cost |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | 0.90 | 11.1% |
| 15% | 0.85 | 17.6% |
| 20% | 0.80 | 25.0% |
| 25% | 0.75 | 33.3% |
| 30% | 0.70 | 42.9% |
Check your numbers with the contractor markup calculator. Margin here means profit after you’ve already paid yourself a wage and covered overhead; it’s what lets you replace equipment and survive a slow spring.
Worked example: a 300 sq ft paver patio
A backyard patio, three-person crew, three days, with a skid steer and plate compactor rented. All figures are illustrative.
| Line | Calculation | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Pavers | 300 sq ft + 5% waste = 315 sq ft × $5.50 | $1,732.50 |
| Base gravel | 6 cu yd × $45 | $270.00 |
| Bedding sand | 1 cu yd × $60 | $60.00 |
| Edge restraint | 70 ft × $3.00 | $210.00 |
| Polymeric sand | 5 bags × $40 | $200.00 |
| Soil disposal | Dump fees and trucking | $350.00 |
| Labour | 3 people × 3 days × 8 h = 72 h × $34 | $2,448.00 |
| Equipment | Skid steer 2 days × $350 + compactor 2 days × $90 | $880.00 |
| Overhead | 72 h × $18 | $1,296.00 |
| Total cost | $7,446.50 | |
| Price at 15% margin | $7,446.50 ÷ 0.85 | $8,760.59 |
Round to $8,760 before tax, about $29 per square foot. Notice that materials are only about a third of the cost. Quote this job at “materials plus a bit” and you’d work three days for nothing. If the customer pushes back on price, offer a smaller patio or a cheaper paver rather than cutting your margin; the labour and overhead barely change with the paver style. Take a deposit when the quote is signed; see how much deposit to ask for.
Worked example: pricing weekly maintenance
Maintenance is priced per visit, then usually sold as a seasonal contract. The key number is minutes on site plus a share of the drive.
| Item | Worked example |
|---|---|
| Crew | 2 people × $30 loaded = $60/h |
| Truck, trailer and mowers | $22/h |
| Overhead | 2 labour hours per crew hour × $18 = $36/h |
| Crew cost per hour | $118/h |
| Time per visit | 25 min on site + 10 min drive share = 35 min (0.583 h) |
| Cost per visit | 0.583 × $118 = $68.83 |
| Price per visit at 20% margin | $68.83 ÷ 0.80 = $86 |
| Season (28 weekly visits) | 28 × $86 = $2,408 |
| Monthly billing, April to November | $2,408 ÷ 8 = $301 a month |
Tight routes are where maintenance makes money: cutting drive share from 10 to 5 minutes on that property lowers the cost per visit by about $10. That’s why many landscapers price new maintenance customers outside their core area higher, or don’t take them.
Hourly, per square foot or fixed price?
| Model | Use it for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Small cleanups, unclear scope, add-on work | Customers watching the clock; you’re not rewarded for being fast |
| Per square foot | Sod, mulch, pavers, as a quick check on a full estimate | Access, slope and small jobs break the per-foot math |
| Fixed price | Most installs and design-build | Scope creep: write exclusions and use change orders |
| Per visit / seasonal contract | Mowing, maintenance, snow | Weather and skipped visits; say how you handle them |
Photos, access, budget range, timing.
Slope, access, drainage, utilities.
Itemized, with options, photos and a deposit link.
Most quotes are won on the follow-up, not the first send.
Contruva builds this into your quotes: save your services, materials and rates once, then build a priced quote with options from your phone on site, get it e-signed with a deposit, and let automatic follow-ups chase it. Job costing then shows whether the patio really made 15%. See Contruva for landscapers, the best landscaping software compared, or our guide to starting a landscaping business in Canada.