How Much Should a Landscaper Charge Per Hour?
Stop copying your competitors. Learn how to calculate an hourly rate that covers your costs, pays you properly and supports business growth.
Most landscapers base their hourly rate on what other landscapers charge instead of what their own business actually needs to earn.
Most landscapers get this wrong.
It’s one of the first questions every landscaper asks when they go out on their own.
“What should I charge per hour?”
Most people start by looking at what other landscapers charge. Maybe it’s $80 an hour. Maybe it’s $100. If everyone else seems to be charging it, it must be about right.
The problem is that none of those landscapers know what your business costs to run.
The Problem With Charging $100 Per Hour
Let’s assume your goal is to put $120,000–$150,000 a year in your own pocket.
Running Costs
Typical annual costs might include:
Vehicle expenses (fuel, servicing, registration and insurance)
Trailer maintenance
Lawn mowers and power equipment
Tools and replacement blades
Public liability insurance
Accountant and bookkeeping
Phone and software
Marketing and advertising
Licences and registrations
Protective clothing and safety equipment
Superannuation
For many sole-trader landscapers, annual running costs end up somewhere between $40,000 and $60,000.
For this example we’ll use:
Annual business costs: $50,000
Billable Hours
This catches almost every landscaper out.
You might leave home at 6:30am and get back at 5:30pm.
That doesn’t mean you’ve billed ten hours.
Think about everything that happens before and after the actual landscaping work.
Loading materials
Collecting supplies
Setting up access equipment
Safety checks
Quoting new work
Weather delays
Travelling between jobs
Realistically, many landscaping businesses only bill around 28–30 hours each week.
We’ll use:
30 billable hours per week
45 working weeks per year
That gives us:
1,350 billable hours per year.
The Maths
Why Most Landscapers Still Undercharge
This is where most landscapers get caught.
They don’t calculate their own number.
They ask another landscaper.
Or they ask Facebook.
Or they charge whatever feels reasonable.
None of those methods tell you what your business needs to survive.
Your hourly rate should never be based on what someone else charges.
It should be based on what your business actually costs to run.
