Lawn Care Pricing Calculator (Canada): what to charge per visit in CAD

Price a Canadian mowing visit in CAD from your own loaded rate, minutes on site, drive time, overhead and margin, with metric sizing, four cadences and a GST/HST line.

Price per visit, before tax

—

Enter your loaded hourly rate to build the quote.

The same cut at four cadences, before tax

Cadence	Per visit	Per month

Mowing labour: —
Drive time: —
Materials and disposal: —
Overhead: —
Margin: —
Price per visit, before tax: —

Export

How this is calculated

The per-visit price is a build-up from your own cost, with margin taken on price rather than as a markup on cost. Drive time is costed at the same loaded rate as the cut, because you pay the crew for it either way.

labour     = crew × (loadedRate ÷ 60) × minutesOnSite
drive      = crew × (loadedRate ÷ 60) × driveMinutes
subtotal   = labour + drive + materials
overhead   = subtotal × overheadPct
costBase   = subtotal + overhead
perVisit   = costBase ÷ (1 − targetMargin)
perVisit   = max(perVisit, minimumCharge)
firstCut   = perVisit + firstCutSurcharge        (first visit only)
month      = perVisit × cadenceFactor × visitsPerMonth
season     = month × (seasonWeeks ÷ 4.33)
GST/HST    = preTax × gstHstRate                 (registered only)
PST/QST    = preTax × provincialRate             (parallel, never compounded)

Worked example, the one the page ships with. A 460 m² lawn (about 4,950 sq ft), one operator, 35 minutes on site, 10 minutes of drive, a $70 loaded hourly rate, 15% overhead and a 30% target margin. Labour is $40.83, drive is $11.67, overhead is $7.88, so the cost base is $60.38 and the price is $86.25 a visit before tax. That is $115.00 per crew-hour across the 45 paid minutes, and $18.75 per 100 m². The $70 is an operator input, not a Canadian rate: change it and every figure moves.

The cadence factors are the only pre-filled multipliers, and they are carried over unchanged from the US parent so the two pages price the same cut the same way: weekly 1.00, every two weeks 1.20, monthly 1.65, one off 1.30. A fortnight of growth is a heavier cut than a weekly one, which is why a fortnightly round is dearer per visit and still cheaper per month. The month conversions are arithmetic: 52 weeks over 12 months is 4.33 visits, 26 fortnights over 12 months is 2.17.

The size bands seed the minutes box and nothing else. They are the parent calculator's square-foot brackets restated on metric boundaries, so the two pages scope the same lawn the same way: Under 230 m² (about 2,500 sq ft) = 20 min; 230 to 464 m² (about 2,500 to 5,000 sq ft) = 30 min; 465 to 929 m² (about 5,000 to 10,000 sq ft) = 45 min; 930 to 1,999 m² (up to about half an acre) = 60 min; 2,000 to 4,050 m² (about half an acre to an acre) = 90 min. Above about 4,050 m² the suggestion adds an hour per acre-equivalent and stops at a full eight-hour day. Every one of them is a starting point in an editable box, not a standard.

The tax rates are the only figures here a government publishes. They come from the Canada Revenue Agency's own GST/HST rate table, whose Date modified is 2025-04-01 and which records that the Nova Scotia rate decreased to 14% on 1 April 2025: 5% GST in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, the three territories, Quebec and Saskatchewan; 13% HST in Ontario; 14% in Nova Scotia; 15% in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. Where a province runs its own tax alongside the federal one the CRA prints the rate but not which supplies it catches, so that box is a prefill you can edit, and both lines are charged on the pre-tax price so neither compounds on the other.

Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent.

A Canadian mowing quote is the same arithmetic as an American one, run on different units and finished with a tax line. This page is the en-CA twin of the US lawn care pricing calculator: the same job, the same inputs, the same outputs, restated in CAD and metric first. The calculator above builds a price per visit from your loaded crew cost, then carries it across to a month, a season, a rate per 100 m² and a rate per hectare.

Why this is a translation and not a Canadian rate card

The US page ships a homeowner reference band, its own internal curve for showing how a per-acre rate compresses as a property grows. There is no Canadian counterpart here, and there is not going to be one. Nothing published in Canada stands behind a per-visit mowing price, and converting the American curve at a spot exchange rate would have manufactured a Canadian one out of an American guess. So this page is operator only: the loaded hourly rate, materials, surcharge and minimum are your fields, they start empty, and there is no result until the rate is filled in.

What does carry over are the dimensionless parts, and deliberately so. The cadence factors are the parent’s, unchanged, which is the whole point of a translation: the same cut prices the same way on both pages. The size bands that seed the minutes box are the parent’s square-foot brackets restated on metric boundaries, so 460 m² and 4,950 sq ft scope the same lawn. Both are starting points in editable boxes, shown on the page with their basis.

Measure the turf, not the lot

The single most expensive mistake in this calculator is the first box. A 700 m² lot with a house, a driveway and beds on it can be 300 m² of grass, and quoting the lot means quoting an hour you never spend or, worse, pricing the property you walked past. Measure what the mower actually covers. The lawn area calculator does the subtraction for an irregular yard, and the mowing time estimator turns the result into a defensible minutes figure to replace the size-band suggestion.

The rate that goes in the hourly box is the other half. It is not a wage: it is the wage plus payroll taxes, the workers’ compensation premium, benefits and the hours nobody bills. The labour burden rate calculator builds that number, and the gap between it and the wage is usually larger than operators expect.

Tax is a line, never the headline

Canada quotes before tax, so the headline here stays pre-tax and GST or HST sits underneath it as its own figure. Whether you charge it at all is a registration question, and the Canada Revenue Agency, not this calculator, answers it: a small supplier is not required to register until worldwide taxable supplies pass $30,000, and the CRA states that exceeding that threshold in a single calendar quarter ends the status immediately, while crossing it over the previous four consecutive quarters carries a different registration date. Untick the box and no tax line appears anywhere in the quote.

Where you are registered, the rate is the one for the province of supply, prefilled from the CRA’s own rate table and editable afterwards. Four provinces run a second tax alongside the federal one, which is why there is a second box: the CRA publishes British Columbia at 5% GST with 7% PST, Saskatchewan with 6%, Manitoba with 7% RST and Quebec with 9.975% QST. Both lines are charged on the pre-tax price, so neither compounds on the other. The CRA publishes rates, not rulings on whether your particular supply is caught, so that second box starts from the prefill and stays yours to zero out.

Registration is only one of the boxes to tick before the first invoice goes out. The provincial and municipal side of that, the business licence, the numbers you need and who issues them, is set out in the Canadian lawn care business licence guide, and the wider sequence from registration to first route is in how to start a lawn care business in Canada.

A shorter season changes the season total, not the visit

The visit price does not care what month it is. The season total does, and it is the figure a customer on a level-billing plan is really buying. The US parent defaults to 28 weeks; this page starts at 22 and says plainly that the number is a placeholder rather than a measurement, because the honest Canadian answer varies by more than a month between a Prairie round and a coastal British Columbia one. Count last season’s first and last cut, type that number in, and the month and season figures follow.

The shoulder months are where the Canadian round is genuinely different, and they are worth pricing as their own work rather than as short mowing. A spring first cut carries its own surcharge box here. Autumn leaf work and winter service are separate jobs on separate visits, and if the same truck turns into a winter route the Canadian snow removal pricing calculator prices that contract the way Canadian snow work is actually sold, per push, per centimetre-banded event or as a seasonal flat rate.

Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent. Estimate only, not a binding quote.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge for lawn mowing in Canada?

This page will not hand you a figure, because no Canadian regulator, trade body or published survey stands behind one, and a number lifted off a competitor site is somebody else’s cost structure wearing your name. Build it instead: your loaded crew cost per hour, the minutes the stop actually takes, the drive between stops, your overhead and the margin you need. The calculator turns those into a price per visit, a price per 100 m² and a season total in CAD. Then check the result against your own accepted quotes, which is the one benchmark you can trust.

Why is this a separate page from the US lawn care pricing calculator?

Because three things change and none of them is the currency symbol. Sizing is metric first, so the turf area is in square metres and the rate comes back per 100 m² and per hectare rather than per 1,000 sq ft and per acre. The season is shorter than the 28 weeks the US page defaults to, so the season box is yours to set. And a Canadian quote carries a tax line: GST or HST, plus a provincial tax in four provinces, stated separately from the price. The arithmetic underneath is deliberately identical, so the same job prices the same way on both pages.

Do I have to charge GST or HST on lawn mowing?

Only once you are registered, and this page does not decide that for you. The Canada Revenue Agency treats you as a small supplier, with no requirement to register, until your worldwide taxable supplies pass $30,000; the CRA also states that exceeding that threshold in a single calendar quarter ends the status immediately, while crossing it across the previous four consecutive quarters carries a different registration date. Leave the box unticked and no tax line appears anywhere in the quote.

Which tax rate applies where I work?

The rate for the province of supply, prefilled from the Canada Revenue Agency rate table and left editable: 13% HST in Ontario, 14% in Nova Scotia since 1 April 2025, 15% in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island, and 5% GST everywhere else. British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec run a provincial tax alongside the federal one, which is why there is a second rate box. The CRA publishes the rate but not the answer to whether a given service is caught, so that box is a prefill you can zero out rather than a ruling on your supply.

How many mowing weeks should I plan for?

Your own, counted off last season’s job list. The calculator ships 22 weeks as a placeholder for a Canadian round, and a placeholder is all it is: the US parent page assumes 28 weeks, a Prairie season is shorter than that, and a mild coastal British Columbia round can run longer than either. The weeks figure only moves the season total, so get it roughly right, then correct it after a full season of dated invoices.

Why is the first cut of the season priced separately?

Because it is a different job. Spring growth after a Canadian winter is heavier, wetter and slower to clear than anything that follows, and pricing it at the route rate donates the hardest visit of the year. Enter the surcharge, tick the box on the first visit only, and the route price behind it stays where it is. If the first visit also involves clearing what winter left behind, that is separate work again and belongs on its own line.

Sources

How we choose and check our formulas