Short answer: Pick landscape estimating software by how you price work. Budget-based tools (LMN from $297 a month, SynkedUP from $359, Aspire by quote) load overhead into every bid. Line-item tools such as Jobber suit maintenance quotes. PlanSwift and STACK take quantities off plans; aerial tools measure properties from imagery.
3,600 cost estimators employed in landscaping services, 0.38% of the industry’s 953,760 jobs (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
$32.73 median hourly wage of those estimators (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
14 of 17 estimating tools reviewed publish a price or are free (vendor pages, checked Oct. 7, 2026)
$171 how far a 100 sq ft measuring miss moves our worked 600 sq ft bed bid (illustration; see method)
Our picks are not paid. No vendor paid to appear, be ranked or be described on this page, none of the links are affiliate links, and no vendor reviewed it before publication. We did not run these products on live jobs. What follows is a comparison of what each vendor publishes: its pricing page, its help center and its product pages, all read on Oct. 7, 2026. How the site is funded is on our how we make money page.
Of the top three Google results for this search on Oct. 7, 2026, one was a vendor-written list that ranks its own product first and two were single-product sales pages. None sorted the tools by the job they actually do, and that is the useful split: some software measures the work, some prices it, and a few do both. For the wider software market (scheduling, CRM, design, payroll) see our landscaping software guide.
Estimating is two jobs: measuring the work and pricing it
Every landscape estimate answers two questions. How much work is there (square feet of bed, cubic yards of mulch, linear feet of edging, a count of shrubs)? And what does each unit or each crew hour have to sell for to cover wages, burden, equipment, overhead and profit? The four estimating methods split cleanly along that line. Plan takeoff and aerial measurement produce quantities. Budget-based and unit-price estimating turn quantities into a price. Most companies need one tool from each pair, and several platforms bundle one of each.
Which pair matters most depends on the work mix. In the 2022 Economic Census, grass cutting and grooming brought in 14.5 percent of landscaping-services revenue and was reported by 47.8 percent of establishments, while residential landscape construction brought in 7.0 percent and was reported by about 14.8 percent (17,312 of 116,787 establishments) (Census, 2022 Economic Census, product lines for NAICS 561730; establishment share is our arithmetic). For most landscapers the estimating problem is measuring and pricing properties quickly, not reading plan sets.
| Criterion | Budget-based (overhead recovery) | Unit price / production rates | Takeoff from plans | Aerial measurement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | What must each crew hour sell for? | What does each unit of work sell for? | How much work is on the drawings? | How much work is on the property? |
| Inputs you supply | A P&L, payroll hours, equipment list, overhead budget | Production rates (hours per unit), material costs, markups | PDF or CAD plan set with a usable scale | An address; imagery does the rest |
| Typical output | Loaded sell rate per hour, overhead and profit on every line | A quote of line items: units times price | Areas, lengths, volumes and symbol counts | Turf, bed, hardscape areas and edge lengths |
| Setup effort the vendor states | LMN: 5 to 8 hours for a first operating budget; under 5 minutes for an “express” budget of markups only | Build a price list once; re-price when wages or overhead change | PlanSwift Essential includes 2 hours of live training | Minutes per property; trace and label each area |
| Where it goes wrong | Garbage budget in, wrong rate out; recovery method changes job prices | Unit prices freeze last year’s assumptions and ignore site difficulty | Only as good as the drawings and the scale | Can’t see slope, access, soil or anything under tree canopy |
| Leading tools | LMN, SynkedUP, Aspire, DynaScape Manage360, UGA Hort Scape | Jobber, Service Autopilot, Estimate Rocket, Arborgold, SingleOps, QuoteIQ | PlanSwift, STACK, On-Screen Takeoff | PropertyIntel, SiteRecon, Smart Maps, Arborgold, Google Earth |
| Published entry price | $100 one-time (UGA) to $359/mo (SynkedUP, annual); Aspire unpublished | $29/mo (Jobber Core, annual) to $350/mo (SingleOps Plus, annual) | Free version (STACK) to $3,000/yr per seat (PlanSwift Core) | Free (Google Earth) to $500/mo (SiteRecon Partner); PropertyIntel unpublished |
| Best fit | Install and design-build firms bidding labor-heavy work | Recurring maintenance and repeatable small jobs | Commercial and public work bid from architects’ drawings | Maintenance bids, enhancements, any remote first pass |
Who actually writes the estimates
Landscaping companies employ very few people whose job title is estimator. BLS counted 3,600 cost estimators in landscaping services in May 2025, 0.38 percent of the industry’s 953,760 jobs, at a median wage of $32.73 an hour ($68,080 a year). The industry employed 20,730 service sales representatives (median $31.17) and 90,190 first-line crew supervisors (median $27.31) (BLS OEWS industry estimates for NAICS 561730, May 2025). For comparison, 8,191 landscaping establishments had 20 or more employees in 2023 (Census County Business Patterns 2023; our sum of the size classes).
So in most companies the owner, a salesperson or a crew lead writes the estimate between other jobs. That should shape the purchase: a tool that needs a dedicated estimator to keep its price book and budget current will drift out of date in a company that doesn’t have one. The BLS estimator count carries a 14.4 percent relative standard error, so treat it as an order of magnitude.
Budget-based estimating: price every hour from your overhead budget
Budget-based software starts from the company, not the job. You enter a year’s forecast sales, field labor, equipment, materials and overhead, and the software calculates the markup each estimate needs so that, if you sell the forecast, overhead is recovered and the target profit is left over. LMN’s help center walks through its own example: a $25.00 wage, plus 29 percent labor burden ($7.25), gives a $32.25 loaded cost; a 204 percent overhead markup adds $65.79; 10 percent profit on that adds $9.80, for a sell rate of about $107.84 an hour (LMN Help Center, How LMN Calculates Overhead, Labor Burden, and Profit, Aug. 20, 2026).
The recovery method is a pricing decision, not a setting to skip. In the same article, a company with $370,000 of overhead on $1,000,000 of sales has a 37 percent overhead ratio. Spread over all $630,000 of direct costs, that overhead needs a 58.7 percent markup. Loaded onto $180,000 of labor alone, it needs about 205 percent. Same company, same overhead dollars, very different job prices: the all-costs method charges more on a stone-heavy patio, the labor-only method charges more on a pruning job. LMN offers three recovery methods (it abbreviates them MORS, FLH and SORS) and says it typically recommends MORS, which spreads overhead across labor, equipment, materials and subcontractors (LMN Help Center, Budget Types). Our guide to bidding landscaping jobs explains the trade-off and builds an overhead rate per billable hour from scratch.
Budget-based tools and what they charge
- LMN (Granum): Starter is $297 a month billed monthly, after a one-time onboarding fee the page doesn’t state, with 1 office/crew-lead license and 5 crew licenses. It includes overhead recovery limited to 1 active budget, customizable price lists and material and labor calculators; Professional ($648 a month) adds real-time job costing and equipment and material costing. Divisional budgets, which split overhead between maintenance, install and snow, are Professional and Enterprise only (Budget Types). LMN’s estimating page also lists production-rate calculators, digital takeoffs from aerial images and an integration with Beam AI for reading plans.
- SynkedUP: Standard is $359 a month billed annually with no activation fee, or $399 month to month plus a one-time $1,000 activation fee, with 2 users included and more at $20 a month each. PRO is $539 annually or $599 monthly with 5 users. Both plans list budgeting and overhead recovery, estimating templates with production rates, quoted, time-and-materials and per-visit pricing, and access to a financial coach.
- Aspire (a ServiceTitan company): no published price. Aspire says it charges a single monthly license fee set by company size and complexity, with unlimited users, implementation and training included, and payments, payroll and GPS quoted separately. Its estimating page describes “kits” that combine your production factors with labor and material costs into one estimate item, and margins and markups that can differ by branch, division or service type.
- DynaScape Manage360: the Sales & Estimating package is $2,497 a year plus a $599 onboarding and training fee, or $219 a month; DynaScape notes the annual discount applies to the first year only. Its sales and estimating page lists built-in overhead recovery models, a cost book, kits, and export from its own design software into an estimate.
- Hort Scape and Hort Management (University of Georgia Extension): Excel-based bidding workbooks written by UGA horticulture and agricultural economics faculty for Windows PCs with Excel 2002 or later. The bid summary shows direct costs, break-even price, overhead recovery and profit; UGA says Hort Scape was not programmed for irrigation or hardscape estimates. They cost $100 each or $175 for both, by mailed check (UGA order form). Old software, but the cheapest way to see budget-based pricing done properly.
The trade-off with all of these is front-loaded work. LMN tells new users to bring a profit-and-loss statement, an equipment list and payroll hours, and to plan on 5 to 8 hours for the first operating budget (LMN Help Center). SynkedUP says overhead recovery takes about 20 minutes to set up in its system (SynkedUP pricing FAQ); that is a vendor claim we could not test. Either way, the numbers only exist if your books do.
Unit-price and production-rate estimating: quote from a price list
Unit-price estimating stores a price per unit of work (per cubic yard of mulch installed, per shrub planted, per square foot of sod) and multiplies it by the quantity. A production rate is the hours one unit takes; good unit-price tools keep the rate and the price connected so the labor hours are visible. Estimate Rocket’s help center describes the setup plainly: landscape items priced by count, linear foot, square foot or cubic yard, each with “budgeted time and material,” mixed with time-and-materials lines where measuring isn’t realistic (Estimate Rocket support, first landscaping project).
- Jobber: quotes are line items. Each product or service can carry a unit cost, a markup and a unit price, and the quote shows you an estimated margin, calculated as (price minus cost of goods sold) divided by price (Jobber Help, Markups on Quotes). Core ($29 a month billed annually, $49 monthly, 1 user) sends quotes; Grow ($149 annually, $199 monthly) adds optional line items and job costing. Jobber lists no budget or overhead-recovery module, so the markup you type is the markup you get. We compare it line by line with LMN in Jobber vs LMN.
- Service Autopilot: Startup is $49 a month and Pro $199, both quoted as annual-subscription rates plus a sign-up fee whose amount isn’t published. Its Smart Maps add-on saves property measurements to custom fields “for use with the Rate Matrix and Estimates”; Smart Maps is listed as call-for-pricing below the Elite plan.
- Estimate Rocket: Launch is $139 a month with 3 full users, Accelerate $259 with 7 and Expand $359 with 15; extra field users are $10 a month. A done-for-you setup package was listed at $995 (marked down from $1,595) on the day we checked.
- Arborgold: Starter is $129 a month paid annually or $149 paid monthly, on an annual contract, with user licenses priced on request. Starter includes estimating and unlimited land measurements; the Autoprice Calculator and job costing start on Professional ($299 annually, $343 monthly). Arborgold says measurements can drive bids “based on sliding scales, quantities, difficulty factors” (Arborgold land measurement page), which is the feature that addresses unit pricing’s main blind spot.
- SingleOps (Granum): Essential is $200 a month billed annually ($220 monthly) and lists “quick and easy estimating”; Plus, at $350 annually ($385 monthly), adds options-based proposals and job-site measurements and mapping. Crew users are free; office and sales users cost extra.
- QuoteIQ: Essentials is $29.99 a month for 1 user; Beginner, at $99.99 for 2 users, adds the MapMeasure Pro satellite measuring tool. Extra users are $25 a month on every plan.
Our view: unit pricing is the right default for recurring maintenance and repeatable small jobs, where the same few services sell hundreds of times a year and speed wins the work. It is the wrong default for one-off installs, because a unit price can’t tell a flat front bed from a backyard you can only reach by wheelbarrow. The worked example below puts a dollar figure on that.
Takeoff software: quantities from a plan set
If you bid commercial, municipal or design-build work from a landscape architect’s drawings, takeoff software measures the plan instead of the property. These are general construction tools with landscape templates, sold mostly to subcontractors.
- PlanSwift (ConstructConnect): Essential is $2,000 a year per seat and Core $3,000, both annual plans with a 14-day free trial. Core adds Auto Takeoff, an AI first pass at areas, lengths and counts. Its landscape page describes assemblies that convert measured beds and counted plant symbols into material, labor, waste and equipment, with Excel export, and tells users it is their “responsibility to verify” the AI results.
- STACK: offers a free version of Takeoff & Estimate; paid plans start “as low as” $299 per user per month. Its landscaping page lists an arc tool for curved beds, an auto-count tool for plan symbols and landscape assemblies that add crew labor as you measure. STACK says the cloud-based software runs from any device with an internet connection.
- On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid (On Center): the takeoff tool feeds Quick Bid, which “compiles itemized costs, labor production, change orders, overhead/profit, and materials.” Landscaping is one of the listed trades. No price is published; there is a free trial.
- PropertyIntel (Aspire) also does PDF takeoffs: it says its AI reads plan legends to build item lists and places objects by symbol recognition.
The catch with general takeoff tools is that they know quantities, not your company. PlanSwift and STACK will multiply a measured area by whatever labor rate you load; they don’t build that rate from your overhead. Pair one with a budget, or with a sell rate you have already worked out.
Aerial measurement: quantities from imagery, before you drive out
Aerial measuring tools let you trace turf, beds, hardscape and edges on a satellite or aerial image and get areas and lengths back, often while the client is still on the phone. For maintenance bids it removes the drive-out; for installs it gives a first pass before the site walk.
| Tool | How it is sold | Published price (checked Oct. 7, 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Google Earth | Free measuring tool; area of any closed shape | Free |
| Jobber | No built-in measuring; Deep Lawn integration (separate account) or manual Google Maps measuring saved to custom fields | Jobber plan plus Deep Lawn account |
| Arborgold | Unlimited land measurements on every plan | From $129/mo (annual payment) |
| QuoteIQ | MapMeasure Pro on Beginner and up | From $99.99/mo |
| SingleOps | Job-site measurements and mapping on Plus and up | From $350/mo (annual) |
| Service Autopilot | Smart Maps add-on; included in Elite | Call for pricing |
| SiteRecon | Self-measuring plus done-for-you takeoffs; $200 of takeoff credits included | Growth $250/mo, Teams $400, Partner $500 (5% off yearly) |
| PropertyIntel | AI measuring, aerial imagery, PDF takeoffs; free trial | Not published |
| LMN | Digital takeoffs from aerial images in its estimating module | Part of LMN (plan tier not stated on the page) |
If you used Go iLawn: on Oct. 7, 2026 goilawn.com redirected to Aspire’s PropertyIntel page, which says former Go iLawn and LandOne clients get help transferring their existing projects.
What the image can’t tell you
Aerial measurements are plan-view: they measure the footprint as seen from above. Google’s own help page says its measurements “don’t account for changes in elevation” and may not be fully accurate in areas with 3D terrain (Google Earth Help); Service Autopilot’s guide calls its measurements “approximate” (Smart Maps User Guide). On a slope, the surface you mulch, seed or mow is larger than the footprint, and the correction is simple geometry:
| Slope (run:rise) | Angle | Surface area vs aerial footprint | 1,000 sq ft footprint is really |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4:1 | 14.0° | +3.1% | 1,031 sq ft |
| 3:1 | 18.4° | +5.4% | 1,054 sq ft |
| 2:1 | 26.6° | +11.8% | 1,118 sq ft |
Imagery also misses access (gates, steps, how far a wheelbarrow travels), soil and drainage, and bed edges hidden under tree canopy. Use the aerial number to price the first draft and the site walk to correct it.
One bed, four methods: a worked example
This is an illustration, not a benchmark. It reuses the 600-square-foot bed renovation from our bidding guide: strip and re-edge the bed, work in 2 cubic yards of garden mix, plant 15 five-gallon shrubs and top-dress with 6 cubic yards of mulch, for a hypothetical two-crew company. Labor costs $30.02 per billable person-hour including payroll taxes and workers’ comp, overhead adds $22.06 per billable hour, profit is a 10 percent margin and materials carry a 20 percent markup. That makes the selling rate for labor $57.87 a person-hour. Material prices are dated published lists: mulch $46 and garden mix $57 a cubic yard (Adams Landscaping and Supply 2026 price list) and five-gallon shrubs $26.75 (Nevada Division of Forestry 2026 nursery price list).
| Method and scenario | How the number is produced | Bid | vs. a correct cost-up bid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Budget-based (overhead per field labor hour) | 24 person-hours × $57.87, plus truck and disposal, plus $866.25 of materials and delivery at a 20% markup | $2,506.50 | Baseline |
| 2a. Unit-price list built from the same budget | 600 sq ft × $0.58 + 2 cu yd soil × $155.20 + 15 shrubs × $61.03 + 6 cu yd mulch × $113.07 + cleanup $165.02 + delivery $90.00 | $2,507.29 | +$0.79 (rounding) |
| 2b. Same unit prices, backyard with no trailer access | Unit prices don’t change; in reality soil and mulch move 50% slower by wheelbarrow, adding 4.5 person-hours, so a cost-up re-estimate is $2,766.88 | $2,507.29 | $259.59 low (9.4%) |
| 3. Plan takeoff vs. eyeballing the plan | Takeoff traces the curved bed at 600 sq ft. Treating it as a 20 × 25 ft rectangle gives 500 sq ft, 5.0 cu yd of mulch and less strip-and-edge labor | $2,336.22 | $171.07 low (6.8%) |
| 4. Aerial measurement on a 3:1 slope | Imagery shows a 600 sq ft footprint; the sloped surface is 632 sq ft, which needs 2.5 cu yd of soil instead of 2 and more edging labor; the correct bid is $2,603.71 | $2,507.29 | $96.42 low (3.7%) |
Three things come out of the table. First, a unit-price list and a budget give the same answer on the job the unit prices were built for; the methods diverge only when the job differs from the template, and that’s exactly when it matters. Second, quantity errors cost as much as pricing errors: a 100-square-foot measuring miss took $171 off a $2,500 job, about two-thirds of the wheelbarrow penalty. Third, no tool in this article fixes all four failure modes. The aerial tool can’t see the slope or the gate; the budget can’t fix a bad measurement; the takeoff tool doesn’t know your overhead. That is why the strongest setups pair a quantity tool with a pricing tool and keep the site walk.
How we built the worked example
The company, production rates and job are hypothetical; we have no job-cost data of our own. The $30.02 loaded labor cost per billable person-hour, the $22.06 overhead per billable hour ($180,000 assumed overhead over 8,160 billable person-hours), the 85 percent billable share and the production rates (6.0 person-hours to strip and edge 600 sq ft, 1.5 per cubic yard of soil, 0.5 per shrub, 1.0 per cubic yard of mulch, 1.5 for cleanup) come from the worked bid in our bidding guide, where each input is sourced. Selling rate per person-hour = ($30.02 + $22.06) ÷ 0.90 = $57.87. Unit prices = hours per unit × $57.87 + material cost × 1.20, rounded to the cent; cleanup includes the $70.40 truck and disposal cost divided by 0.90. Scenario 2b raises soil to 2.25 and mulch to 1.5 person-hours per cubic yard (an assumed 50 percent wheelbarrow penalty). Scenarios 3 and 4 scale strip-and-edge labor and garden mix with area and round bulk materials up to the next half cubic yard; shrub count, cleanup and delivery don’t change. The 3:1 slope factor is 1 ÷ cos(18.43°) = 1.054.
What estimating software costs, and the estimator hours it has to save
Subscription prices mean more when you set them against the time they are supposed to save. The last column divides each tool’s published monthly price by the $32.73 median wage of a landscaping cost estimator (BLS OEWS, May 2025): it is the number of estimator hours a month the tool has to save to pay for itself on wages alone. Add payroll taxes and the break-even falls a little; add onboarding fees and it rises.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Tool | Method it leads with | Plan with the estimating feature named | Fees or limits on the page | Estimator hours/month to break even |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LMN | Budget-based | Starter $297/mo (billed monthly) | Onboarding fee, amount not published; 1 active budget on Starter | 9.1 |
| SynkedUP | Budget-based | Standard $359/mo (annual) or $399 monthly | $1,000 activation on monthly billing; $20 per extra user | 11.0 |
| Aspire | Budget-based | Not published | Payments, payroll, GPS quoted separately | n/a |
| DynaScape Manage360 | Budget-based | Sales & Estimating $2,497/yr | $599 onboarding; annual discount first year only | 6.4 |
| UGA Hort Scape | Budget-based (Excel) | $100 one-time ($175 with Hort Management) | Windows and Excel; mail-in order | 3.1, once |
| Jobber | Unit price | Grow $149/mo (annual) for markups and optional items; Core $29 sends quotes | Per-user pricing | 4.6 |
| Service Autopilot | Unit price | Startup $49/mo (annual rate) | Sign-up fee not published; Smart Maps call for pricing | 1.5 |
| Estimate Rocket | Unit price | Launch $139/mo, 3 full users | Optional setup package $995 | 4.2 |
| Arborgold | Unit price + aerial | Starter $129/mo (annual payment) | Annual contract; user licenses priced on request | 3.9 |
| SingleOps | Unit price + aerial | Plus $350/mo (annual) | Office and sales users $100 to $115/mo each on Plus | 10.7 |
| QuoteIQ | Unit price + aerial | Beginner $99.99/mo, 2 users | $25 per extra user | 3.1 |
| PlanSwift | Plan takeoff | Essential $2,000/yr per seat | Annual plan only; Core $3,000 | 5.1 |
| STACK | Plan takeoff | Free version; paid from $299/user/mo | Paid tiers not itemized on the page | 9.1 (paid) |
| On-Screen Takeoff / Quick Bid | Plan takeoff | Not published | Free trial | n/a |
| PropertyIntel | Aerial + PDF takeoff | Not published | Free trial | n/a |
| SiteRecon | Aerial | Growth $250/mo | $39 per extra creator seat; takeoff credits | 7.6 |
| Google Earth | Aerial | Free | Measurements ignore elevation | 0 |
Read the break-even column as a sanity check, not a verdict. A tool that saves an owner 10 hours of evening spreadsheet work a month clears every subscription on the list. A tool nobody keeps updated saves nothing. Vendor-written roundups can also lag the vendor’s own pricing page: on the day we checked, one vendor’s “top 10” article listed its own second-tier plan at $74.99 a month while its pricing page showed $99.99. Use the pricing page.
Free and low-cost ways to start
- Google Earth measures areas and distances for free; it ignores elevation, so add the slope correction above on banks and berms.
- STACK offers a free version of its takeoff and estimating product, and PlanSwift a 14-day trial with no credit card.
- Jobber’s free service price calculator adds labor, materials, overhead and profit for a single job; it doesn’t store a budget, so you re-enter overhead each time.
- UGA’s Hort Scape ($100) is a worked, faculty-built budget-and-bid workbook if you would rather learn the method in Excel first.
- A spreadsheet that follows the method in our bidding guide does everything budget software does except keep itself current and connect to scheduling and job costing.
Matching the tool to the company
Small firms dominate the trade: 70.6 percent of landscaping employer establishments had 1 to 4 employees in 2023 (Census County Business Patterns 2023). That shapes the sensible default for most readers.
- Owner-operator or one maintenance crew. A line-item quoting tool plus free or bundled aerial measuring: Jobber with Google Earth, QuoteIQ Beginner, Arborgold Starter or Service Autopilot. You give up automatic overhead recovery, so set your hourly sell rate by hand once a year.
- Two to five crews doing installs and enhancements. A budget-based tool: LMN Starter or SynkedUP Standard, or SingleOps Plus if map-based measuring matters more than a formal budget. Our position: if you bid installs and have never built an overhead budget, buy the budget before the measuring tool. You give up speed in the first month.
- Commercial and public bid work from drawings. Add PlanSwift or STACK to a budget-based platform rather than replacing it; takeoff tools don’t calculate your overhead.
- Multi-branch commercial maintenance. Aspire with PropertyIntel, LMN Enterprise, or SiteRecon feeding your existing system, all by quote or volume pricing. Get written quotes on the same crew count and scope.
Wage levels change every sell rate in these tools, and they vary widely by state; our landscaper salary data and state industry data have the inputs.
Estimating software questions landscapers ask
What is the best software for landscaping estimating?
It depends on how you price. For installation and design-build work, budget-based tools that tie every estimate to an overhead budget (LMN from $297 a month, SynkedUP from $359 a month billed annually, Aspire by quote) give the most consistent prices. For recurring maintenance, a line-item quoting tool with aerial measuring, such as Arborgold or QuoteIQ, is faster and cheaper.
What is the best estimating software for landscape construction?
For construction bid from your own site visits, a budget-based platform (LMN, SynkedUP, Aspire or DynaScape Manage360) that converts production rates and overhead into a sell rate. For construction bid from architects’ plan sets, add a takeoff tool such as PlanSwift ($2,000 a year per seat) or STACK (free version; paid from $299 per user per month).
What is the best app for estimating landscaping costs?
For a phone or tablet quote at the property, the field-service apps lead: Jobber (from $29 a month billed annually), QuoteIQ (satellite measuring from $99.99 a month) and Arborgold (unlimited land measurements from $129 a month). LMN’s pricing page notes its mobile estimating works only for its Standard estimate type.
What is the best software for landscape takeoff and estimating?
If the quantities come from plans, PlanSwift, STACK and On-Screen Takeoff measure areas, lengths and symbol counts and attach labor and materials through assemblies. If they come from the property, aerial tools such as SiteRecon ($250 a month and up) and PropertyIntel (price not published) do the measuring. Neither type builds your overhead rate.
Is there free landscape estimating software?
Partly. STACK has a free version of its takeoff and estimating product, Google Earth measures areas free, and Jobber’s price calculator is free for one job at a time. Full landscaping platforms with budgets and job costing are paid; most offer a trial or demo instead.
How much does estimating software cost?
Among the 17 tools we reviewed, published prices ran from free (Google Earth, STACK’s free version) and $100 one-time (UGA Hort Scape) to $3,000 a year per seat for PlanSwift Core and $648 a month for LMN Professional. Aspire, PropertyIntel and On Center don’t publish prices. Several add onboarding or activation fees, such as DynaScape’s $599 and SynkedUP’s $1,000 on monthly billing; LMN charges one but doesn’t publish the amount.
Is SketchUp free for landscape design?
A browser version is. SketchUp Free runs the core 3D modeler in a web browser with 10 GB of cloud storage. The desktop modeler and LayOut for 2D drawings are on SketchUp Pro, $33.25 a month billed annually. SketchUp is a design tool, not an estimating tool; it produces no prices.
How do you bid a landscaping job?
Measure the scope, convert quantities to crew hours with your production rates, price those hours at a loaded wage plus equipment and overhead, add profit as a margin, then add materials at a markup. Our step-by-step bidding guide works through two full bids with sourced inputs.
How we compiled this comparison
We listed the estimating tools named most often in the search results and landscaper forum threads for this topic, plus the takeoff and aerial tools those sources mention, and grouped them by the estimating method their own documentation leads with. Every price, plan name, included user count and fee comes from the vendor’s own pricing page, and every feature description from the vendor’s product or help pages, read on Oct. 7, 2026. Where a vendor doesn’t publish a price we say so rather than repeat a figure from a review site or forum. Vendor claims we couldn’t check, such as setup times and accuracy, are attributed. Industry figures come from BLS and Census files, cited inline. We did not use the products on real jobs and accepted nothing from any vendor. Prices change; check the vendor page before you buy. Our editorial standards cover corrections.
Sources
- Granum, LMN Plans & Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Granum, LMN landscape estimating software, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- LMN Help Center, How LMN Calculates Overhead, Labor Burden, and Profit in Estimates, Aug. 20, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- LMN Help Center, Budget Types, Updated September 2026; read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- SynkedUP, Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Aspire Software, Aspire Plans (pricing FAQ), Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Aspire Software, Estimating features, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Aspire Software, PropertyIntel (goilawn.com redirect target), Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- DynaScape, Pricing (Manage360 packages), Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- DynaScape, Manage360 Sales and Estimating, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- University of Georgia Extension, Dept. of Horticulture, Cost Estimating and Job Bidding Software for Landscape Professionals, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- University of Georgia Extension, Dept. of Horticulture, Hort Scape / Hort Management order form, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Jobber, Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Jobber Help Center, Markups on Quotes, Updated March 26, 2024. Accessed October 2026.
- Jobber Help Center, How to Measure Property Distance and Size, Updated March 30, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Jobber, Service price calculator, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Service Autopilot, Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Service Autopilot, Smart Maps, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Service Autopilot, Smart Maps User Guide, 2025 edition. Accessed October 2026.
- Estimate Rocket, Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Estimate Rocket Support, Your First Landscaping / Hardscaping project in Estimate Rocket, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Arborgold, Plans and Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Arborgold, Land Measurement Estimating Tool, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Granum, SingleOps Plans & Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- QuoteIQ, Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- PlanSwift, Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- PlanSwift, Landscape Takeoff & Estimating Software, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- STACK Construction Technologies, Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- STACK Construction Technologies, Landscaping Estimating, Bidding & Takeoff Software, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- On Center Software, On-Screen Takeoff, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- On Center Software, Quick Bid, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- SiteRecon, Pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Google, Measure distances and areas in Google Earth (Help), Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Trimble, SketchUp Free, Read Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Trimble, SketchUp plans and pricing, Checked Oct. 7, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025 industry-specific estimates (oesm25in4.zip, file nat5d_6d_M2025_dl.xlsx), NAICS 561730 Landscaping Services, incl. SOC 13-1051 Cost Estimators, May 2025 (released May 15, 2026). Accessed October 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025 national estimates (oesm25nat.zip): 37-3011 and 37-1012, May 2025 (released May 15, 2026). Accessed October 2026.
- Internal Revenue Service, Publication 15 (Circular E), Employer's Tax Guide, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, 2026 Hourly Rates by Risk Classification Code and Fund, 2026 rates. Accessed October 2026.
- Adams Landscaping and Supply, 2026 Price List, Retail (bulk materials), Dated April 9, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- Nevada Division of Forestry, Las Vegas Nursery 2026 Spring Plant List and pricing, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
- U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, U.S. file (NAICS 561730 size classes), Reference year 2023. Accessed October 2026.
- U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, product lines by industry (ECNNAPCSIND2022), NAICS 561730, Reference year 2022; posted Apr. 23, 2026. Accessed October 2026.
