Hedge Trimming and Shrub Pruning Pricing Calculator
Work out what to charge for hedge trimming and shrub pruning from the measured face: run length, height, sides, shrub counts, crew hours and the green waste haul.
How this is calculated
The quote is a straight build-up from a measured face and a production rate you can time. Three things behave deliberately: the cap is priced from its own measured width rather than a fudge factor, every time below is per technician with crew size multiplying it, and drive time is tracked twice, so every drive hour lands in your cost while only the share you choose to bill lands in the charge.
sideArea = runLength x height x sides (sides = 1 or 2)
topArea = topped ? runLength x topWidth : 0
faceArea = sideArea + topArea
hedgeHours = faceArea / cutPerHour x (1 + overgrowth)
shrubHours = (small x minS + med x minM + large x minL) / 60 x (1 + overgrowth)
onSite = hedgeHours + shrubHours + haul + setUp
crewHours = onSite x crewSize
driveCrew = driveHours x crewSize
billedDrv = driveCrew x driveBillPct
labour = (crewHours + billedDrv) x chargeRate
disposal = greenWaste x tipFee x (1 + disposalMarkup)
subtotal = labour + disposal + addOns
visit = max(subtotal, jobMinimum)
perLinFt = visit / runLength
tax = visit x taxRate
cost = (crewHours + driveCrew) x costRate + tipFeeAtCost
margin = (visit - cost) / visit
annual = visit x trimsPerYear A worked example, to show the shape. A 120 ft run at 6 ft
finished height, cut on both sides with a 2 ft cap, is
120 x 6 x 2 = 1,440 sq ft of sides plus
120 x 2 = 240 sq ft of top, so 1,680 sq ft of face. At 300 sq ft
per crew-hour on a maintenance trim that is 5.6 h on the hedge for one
technician, plus four medium shrubs at 12 minutes each (0.8 h) and half an
hour loading and running the waste: 6.9 h on site per tech, which at two
technicians is 13.8 crew-hours. At a charge-out rate of 80 that is 1,104 of
labour, and 3 cubic yards of green waste at a 20 tip fee with a 15% markup
adds 69, for a build-up of 1,173 before tax. The rate, the tip fee and the
markup in that example are illustrative operator-typed figures, not market
rates, and the same arithmetic runs on whatever you type instead.
No price presets anywhere. Every currency field starts empty. The only pre-filled numbers on the page are time conventions: the production rates behind the access selector (300, 220 and 150 square feet of face per crew-hour for ground, extended reach and ladder work), the overgrowth allowances behind the condition selector (0%, 40% and 80%), and the per-shrub minutes (6, 12 and 25). None of them is a benchmark, a survey figure or a market rate. They are a starting shape for "roughly how long does this take", they all sit in editable boxes, and the numbers you replace them with after three timed hedges are the ones that matter.
Why there is no published rate to quote you. No regulator, trade body or statistical agency publishes a hedge trimming rate per linear foot. The figures in circulation trace back to homeowner lead-generation pages quoting one another, which is somebody else's cost structure wearing your name. This site's rule is cite or omit, so the tool omits, and gives you the structure instead.
The units convert at the edge. Type metres and the run, height and cap width are converted to feet before anything is priced; type a production rate in square metres per hour and it is converted to square feet per hour; type cubic metres of green waste and it is converted to cubic yards. The arithmetic only ever happens in one system, so a metric quote and the same job typed in feet come out to the same number.
The margin check is all-or-nothing. Without a cost per crew-hour the labour half of the job cost is unknown, and a margin computed off the tip fee alone would flatter every quote, so the block simply does not appear until you supply one.
Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent.
What this prices, and what it deliberately does not
A hedge is measured, not counted. What decides whether the visit earns anything is the face you have to cut: the run length multiplied by the height, on one side or both, plus the cap if you are topping it. This calculator builds the quote from that measurement, at the production rate you can actually achieve on the access the site allows, and then runs the two checks a flat per-job price hides: what the visit returns per paid crew-hour, and what it implies per linear foot of hedge.
It is not a tree tool. Taking a tree down is a different job, a different risk profile and a different insurance conversation, and it is priced on the tree removal cost estimator instead. Anything that needs a chipper, a rope or a bucket is out of scope here.
Every money box starts empty on purpose
Search for a hedge trimming price per linear foot and you will find plenty of numbers. Follow their citations and they resolve to homeowner lead-generation directories and contractor blogs quoting each other: no regulator, no trade body, no published survey. Under this site’s cite-or-omit rule that means the tool ships with none of them. What it gives you instead is the shape of the quote, with every currency field blank until you fill it.
The only pre-filled numbers anywhere are time conventions: the production rates behind the access selector, the overgrowth allowances behind the condition selector, and the per-shrub minutes. All of them sit in editable boxes, they are a scoping starting point rather than a benchmark, and you are expected to overwrite them after three timed hedges. If you have not yet set a defensible number to type into the rate box, the service hourly rate calculator and the labor burden rate calculator are the two places that number comes from.
Length is not the measurement. Face is.
The single most common mistake in hedge pricing is quoting off the run alone. A 100 ft hedge at 3 ft tall, cut on one side, is 300 square feet of face. The same 100 ft run at 8 ft tall, cut on both sides with the top taken as well, is over 1,700 square feet. That is nearly six times the work at the same “100 feet of hedge”, which is why a single per-foot rate quietly subsidises every tall job your business wins.
The cap gets the same treatment. Rather than applying a fudge factor to the sides, the tool asks for the width across the top and prices that strip as its own area. If you tick the top and leave the width empty, it tells you the cap is adding nothing, because a silent zero is worse than a visible one.
Access is the lever most quotes ignore
Production rate is not a property of the hedge, it is a property of how your crew reaches it. Working off the ground, off a pole or extended reach, and off a ladder or platform are three different jobs at the same measured face, and the selector seeds three different starting rates to say so. Over about 10 ft the tool stops trusting a ground-level scope entirely and says so in a warning: access equipment is a cost and a competence question, not a rounding error.
Drive time gets the same honesty. Every drive hour lands in your cost, because you pay the crew for it whether or not the customer sees it, while only the share you nominate lands in the charge. The per-paid-crew-hour figure at the bottom of the result counts the whole day, which is usually the number that explains why a busy week felt unprofitable.
The haul is where hedge money goes
Hedge work generates volume out of all proportion to the time it takes to cut. Clippings are bulky, they are loaded by hand, and the tip charges by the cubic yard. So the tool prices green waste as its own block: the volume off this job, the tip fee per cubic yard at cost, an optional markup, and the hours it takes to load and run it. Enter debris with no haul time booked and it tells you, because on a hedge the haul is often the longest single line after the cut itself.
From a one-off trim to a maintenance line
A hedge trim is rarely a standalone sale. It is the visit that turns a mowing customer into a maintenance account, which is why the tool asks for trims per year and annualises the visit. Once the account is standing work, the landscape maintenance checklist template is what the crew actually follows on site, and the spring cleanup pricing calculator prices the other seasonal visit that usually sells alongside it.
Everything runs in your browser: no account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent. Estimate only, not a binding quote.