Grow Your Business
Free tool for tree service owners
Tree service pricing calculator, built from your real crew costs.
Enter your crew wages, truck and chipper costs and overhead to get the billable crew-hour rate your business needs. Then price a removal phase by phase, with stump grinding, disposal and crane time as their own line items.
Free, no sign-up
BLS May 2025 wage defaults
Runs in your browser, nothing saved
3-person crew, bucket truck + chipper
About $300 per crew-hour
Tree trimmer median wage
$24.50/hr · BLS May 2025
Use this free tree service pricing calculator to turn your real crew, equipment and overhead costs into a billable crew-hour rate, then price a removal phase by phase. The defaults use Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 wages for tree trimmers and pruners: a $24.50 median and $38.61 at the 90th percentile. With those inputs, a three-person crew with a bucket truck and chipper bills about $300 per crew-hour. Change any number to match your business. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is saved or sent. When the quote looks right, your tree service software can turn it into a scheduled job.
Calculate your crew-hour rate and job price
How to use the tree service pricing calculator
- List your crew. Add each role on the job with its hourly base pay and head count.
- Add labor burden. Enter payroll taxes, your workers' comp rate per $100 of payroll, benefits, overtime and the share of paid hours you can actually bill.
- Price your equipment. Enter what each machine costs you per day, then the billable hours in a crew day.
- Set overhead and profit. Choose markup or margin. The calculator shows the other one and your break-even rate.
- Estimate the job by phase. Enter crew-hours for setup, climbing and rigging, lowering, chipping and cleanup, plus a risk premium for dead or storm-damaged wood.
- Add line items. Stump grinding, crane time, disposal and permits each get their own line, so the customer sees what they pay for.
Already sent a quote? Enter it in the "check a price" box to see whether it covers break-even.
How the calculator gets to your price
The calculator builds the price from cost, not from what competitors charge. It works in four steps, and every number is visible so you can check the math.
- Loaded labor per crew-hour = crew wages, adjusted for overtime at time and a half, divided by the billable share of paid hours, plus payroll taxes, workers' comp and benefits on those wages.
- Equipment per crew-hour = the total day cost of every machine on the job, divided by billable hours per crew day.
- Break-even rate = loaded labor plus equipment, plus your overhead percentage.
- Billable rate = break-even times (1 + markup), or break-even divided by (1 minus margin).
The job quote is then crew-hours times the billable rate, plus the risk premium and the separate line items. For a full walk-through of the method with a worked 60-foot oak example, read our guide on how to price tree removal jobs.
Markup and margin are not the same number
A 20% markup on cost is only a 16.7% margin on the price. Owners who mean margin but apply markup leave money on every job. Use this table to convert between them; margin = markup divided by (1 + markup).
| Markup on cost | Margin on price |
|---|---|
| 10% | 9.1% |
| 20% | 16.7% |
| 25% | 20.0% |
| 33.3% | 25.0% |
| 50% | 33.3% |
| 100% | 50.0% |
Source: Bella FSM calculation, margin = markup / (1 + markup).
What numbers should you enter?
Crew wages
Use what you actually pay. For reference, the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025 count 55,160 tree trimmers and pruners in the U.S., with a mean wage of $26.91 per hour, a median of $24.50, and $38.61 at the 90th percentile.
Payroll taxes and workers' comp
Employers pay 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare, per IRS Topic 751. Add state unemployment in the benefits field. Workers' comp is the line that varies most. Tree work is usually rated under NCCI class code 0106, and Beancount's tree service bookkeeping guide (May 2026) says most companies pay $9 to $18 per $100 of payroll, within a market range of $6 to $25. Use the rate on your own policy.
Equipment day rates
For each machine, add up a year of payments or depreciation, insurance, fuel and maintenance, then divide by the days it works. A bucket truck that costs $80,000 a year to own and run, and works 200 days, costs $400 a day.
Overhead and profit
Overhead is everything the business pays that is not tied to one job: office, estimating time, the yard, software, insurance and your own salary if you do not work on the crew. Tofu's tree pricing guide uses 25% overhead and 20% profit as its starting defaults, and notes that many tree care businesses aim for 15% to 25% profit. Divide last year's overhead by last year's direct job costs for your own percentage.
Check your quote against real tree jobs
Once the calculator gives you a price, compare it with what other tree companies invoice. Tofu's invoice data from 253 tree service businesses and more than 13,700 removal jobs (2024 to 2026) puts the median removal line item at about $1,125, and the median full removal with stump and cleanup at about $2,360. Its median stump grinding charge is about $700. Homeowners expect less: Fixr's tree removal cost guide (January 2025) lists a national average of $435 per tree.
A quote well above those medians is not wrong if the job has a crane, a target zone or storm damage. It does mean you should itemize clearly. For typical price ranges by tree height and service, see the pricing guide on our tree service estimate template.
From calculated price to paid job
A price only holds if the job runs the way you estimated it. Booking crews, the bucket truck and the crane in tree service scheduling software keeps the hours you priced from turning into hours you eat. Compare estimated crew-hours with clock-in data after each job, and adjust your phase estimates.
Track every quote and why it was won or lost in tree service crm software. When the job is done, tree service invoicing software bills the same line items you quoted. Prefer paper? Use our free tree service invoice template.
Price every job from your own numbers
A tree service pricing calculator gives you the rate. Bella FSM keeps estimates, crew schedules, work orders and invoices in one place, so the hours you price are the hours your crew works to.