Ask what lawn care software costs and you will get a number. The problem is that the number is usually true for twelve months, for one login, for one billing option, and for a business the size of whichever example the page had in mind. On the morning of August 17, 2026 I opened every pricing page in this category that has one, read the fine print instead of the headline, and wrote down what a landscaping business would actually pay in year one and in year two.
Eight of the eleven tools publish a price. Three publish nothing at all. And the cheapest published price in the category is a price that stops being that price after twelve months.
What eleven tools actually publish
Every figure below is annual-billing entry pricing for a single operator, read first-hand on the date shown. Where a vendor prints a promotional rate and a renewal rate side by side, both are here.
| Tool | Published entry price | Year 1 | Year 2 | Users included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landscapey | $19.99/mo, or $199.99/yr | $199.99 | $199.99 | 1 |
| Jobber Core | $21/mo for 12 months, then $29/mo | $252.00 | $348.00 | 1 |
| Yardbook Business | $34.99/mo | $419.88 | $419.88 | not stated |
| TurfHop Truck | $49/mo; annual is "2 months for FREE" | $490.00 | $490.00 | 2 |
| GorillaDesk Basic | $49/mo, or $539/year | $539.00 | $539.00 | unlimited admin |
| Housecall Pro Basic | $59/mo annual, $79/mo monthly | $708.00 | $708.00 | 1 |
| Service Autopilot Startup | $49/mo plus an unpublished sign-up fee | $588.00 + fee | $588.00 + fee | 1 office, 1 mobile |
| Arborgold Starter | $129/mo annual contract, $149/mo monthly | $1,548.00 | $1,548.00 | not published |
| LMN Starter | $297/mo | $3,564.00 | $3,564.00 | 1 office + 5 crew |
| CLIP | no software price published | - | - | - |
| Real Green | no software price published | - | - | - |
| Aspire | no software price published | - | - | - |
That is twelve rows because Service Autopilot's entry price is published and its mandatory fee is not, so it sits in both camps. Counting tools that give you a number you could act on today: eight yes, three no.
The spread between the cheapest and dearest published entry price is $199.99 to $3,564, or 17.8x, and the two ends are not the same product. LMN Starter includes six licenses and real-time job costing sits a tier above it. Landscapey includes one login and cannot serve a crew at all. More on that below, because it is the part of this comparison that goes against us.
The cheapest number in the category expires
Jobber's pricing page is the most transparent in this market and also the most conditional. Read on August 17, its Core card carries four different prices for the same plan:
| Billing option | What the card says | Cost over 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly, no commitment | "$35/mo For 3 months, then $49/mo" | $546.00 |
| 1 year commitment | "$24/mo Save $15 for 3 months, then $39/mo" | $423.00 |
| Billed annually | "$21/mo For 12 months, then $29/mo" | $252.00 |
| List price, no promotion | "$49/mo" | $588.00 |
Four prices, one plan, one page, and a 2.3x range between the top and bottom of it. Above the cards sits the line "Save up to 40%" followed by "Offer ends Aug 31" - a fourteen-day fuse from the day I read it. The footnote explains the arithmetic honestly: "Promotional savings is based on total savings over 12 months when prepaid compared to monthly (no commitment) list price."
Two details are worth slowing down for. The first is that the annual card prints its own renewal: $21/mo for twelve months, then $29/mo. For a recurring maintenance business - a business whose entire model is that customers renew - the number that matters is the second one. Year one is $252. Year two is $348, a 38.1% increase, and nothing about your business changed.
The second is that the same page disagrees with itself. Its browser title reads "Jobber Pricing: Plans Starting at $29/Month" while its plan recommender, three screens down, reads "Starting at $21 /mo*". Both are true, for different definitions of "starting at". I am not calling that dishonest; a promotion has to be advertised somewhere. But it means every article quoting a single Jobber price is quoting one of at least four, and most of them quote whichever one was showing the day they looked.
Our own breakdown of what Jobber costs uses $29 for Core and $529/mo for Plus at fifteen users. Read against today's page, those are the renewal rates, not the promotional ones. I am leaving them, because for a business that will still exist in eighteen months the renewal rate is the real price - but the reconciliation belongs in the open rather than in a footnote.
The durable rule: when a pricing page prints "X for 12 months, then Y", publish Y. X is a marketing calendar. Y is your cost of doing business.
The four-person crew test
A solo operator can price this category in ten minutes. A four-person operation mostly cannot, and that is the finding that surprised me.
Here is the same question - what does software cost for an owner plus three people who need to log in - asked of every tool that publishes anything:
| Tool | Cost for 4 users, published annual rate | Priceable from the page? |
|---|---|---|
| TurfHop Office | $79/mo, "Up to 4 Users" = $948/yr, or $790 with the annual offer | Yes |
| Jobber Core | $21 + 3 x $29 = $108/mo year 1 ($1,296); $29 + $87 = $116/mo year 2 ($1,392) | Yes |
| Housecall Pro | Basic is 1 user; Essentials $149/mo includes 5 = $1,788/yr | Yes, but the additional-user rate is quoted three ways on one page |
| LMN Starter | $297/mo includes 1 office + 5 crew licenses = $3,564/yr | Yes |
| GorillaDesk | "Unlimited Admin Users"; paid seats are technicians with assigned schedules, and no per-schedule price is published | No |
| Arborgold | "Scalable license pricing and only pay for what you need... Meet with Sales" | No |
| Service Autopilot | 1 office user until the Elite tier, which has no published price | No |
| Yardbook | Multi-user arrangements are not described on the pricing page | Not established |
| Landscapey | One login per account. We cannot serve this business. | Not applicable |
Of eleven tools, four let a four-person crew compute its own bill. Three publish an entry price and then put the seat behind a sales call, which is a strange place to hide it: the seat count is the first thing an operator knows about their own business and the last thing these pages will price.
The gap that opens up is not small. At ten seats, TurfHop's Headquarters plan is $129/mo - $1,548 a year - and Jobber Core with nine additional users is $290/mo, or $3,480 a year at renewal rates. Same headcount, 2.25x the bill.
And a coincidence worth printing because it makes the point better than an argument would: Arborgold Starter and TurfHop Headquarters are both $129/mo. One of them tells you that ten people can log in. The other does not publish a user count anywhere on the page.
Cost per seat, where the models actually differ
Per-seat cost is the only unit that lets you compare a $49 plan against a $297 one, and the three pricing models in this category behave completely differently as you grow.
| Tool | Seat math from published prices | What happens as you add people |
|---|---|---|
| TurfHop | $49 / 2 = $24.50; $79 / 4 = $19.75; $129 / 10 = $12.90 | Falls 47% across the range - bands, not seats |
| LMN | $297 / 6 = $49.50; $648 / 18 = $36.00 | Falls 27% at 2.18x the price |
| Housecall Pro | $59 / 1; $149 / 5 = $29.80; $299 / 8 = $37.38 | Not monotonic, and the additional-user rate appears as $35, $75 and $100 on the same page |
| Jobber | $29 per additional user, flat | Linear forever - the simplest model here, and the most expensive at scale |
| GorillaDesk | Unlimited admins; billed on scheduled technicians | Unknowable from the page |
| Landscapey | $19.99 for the one seat that exists | Does not scale. This is a real limitation, not a pricing model. |
Read that TurfHop row again, because it is the most useful thing on this page for a growing business. Their cheapest plan has the highest cost per seat. A two-truck outfit paying $49 is paying $24.50 a seat; the ten-user shop paying $129 is paying $12.90. Banded pricing rewards the bigger buyer, per-user pricing does not, and the crossover between Jobber and TurfHop happens somewhere around the third employee.
The card rate is a second subscription, and one vendor's is printed in the search results
Every figure so far is the subscription. It is not the largest software-adjacent number in a landscaping business, and yesterday's look at invoicing software went through the processing side in detail. The short version, on the 60-client book this site uses throughout - 1,920 visits a season at $52, $99,840 of revenue, 60% of it paid by card, invoiced monthly:
| Published rate | Whose | Season cost on $59,904 of card volume |
|---|---|---|
| 1% ACH bank payment | Jobber (no cap published) | $599.04 |
| 2.7% + 30c tap to pay | Jobber | $1,703.81 |
| 2.9% + 30c card | Jobber, Landscapey (Stripe Connect direct) | $1,823.62 |
| 2.85% + $0.00, plus $14.95/mo | CLIP | $1,886.66 |
| 3.9% + 30c "starting at" | TurfHop | $2,422.66 |
Three things fall out of that table that I have not seen anywhere on this search results page.
One: seven of the eight published subscription prices are smaller than the card bill. At 2.9% + 30c, processing costs $1,823.62 a season - 9.1x Landscapey's annual price, 2.6x Housecall Pro Basic, 1.2x Arborgold Starter. Only LMN Starter is bigger. The line item everybody shops is not the line item that costs the most.
Two: TurfHop's extra 1.0 percentage point costs $599.04 a season - which is, to the cent, the same as Jobber's entire ACH bill on the same volume, and the same as Yardbook's 1% surcharge that we priced on this same book. Three different mechanisms, one number, because a point of $59,904 is a point of $59,904 however it is labelled. TurfHop's own words are "Process credit cards starting @ 3.9% + $0.30 per transaction" - and "starting at" means that is the floor.
Three, and this is the one I would want to know as a buyer: CLIP's structure wins or loses purely on how often you invoice. Its rate is 2.85% with no per-transaction fee, which is the best percentage on the sheet, plus a $14.95 monthly fee - $179.40 a year. Against 2.9% + 30c, the percentage saves you $29.95 and each avoided 30c fee saves 30c, so the fee pays for itself at 499 card transactions a season. Invoice monthly (288 transactions) and CLIP's rail costs $63.04 more. Invoice per visit (1,152 transactions) and it costs $196.16 less. Same two vendors, same book, opposite answers, decided by a billing setting.
What Google shows you is not what the pages say
Three of the numbers on the first page of results for this query are not what they look like, and one of them is ours to point out because it looks like the cheapest software in the category.
CLIP. The search result for clip.com carries the description "a flare rate of 2.85% + $0.00 per transaction and a low monthly fee of $14.95." Read as a price - and it is the lowest figure on the whole results page - it says CLIP costs $14.95 a month. It does not. That $14.95 is the monthly fee on their payment processing, and CLIP publishes no software price at all: the page routes you to a demo, a phone number and an email address. The cheapest-looking number in the category is not a software price.
Capterra. Google's result for Capterra's lawn care category lists "RealGreen ... $199.00 Flat Rate, Per Month" and "Arborgold ... $129.00 Flat Rate, Per Month." The Arborgold figure matches Arborgold's own published annual price exactly, which lends the RealGreen one some credibility - but Real Green publishes no price anywhere on its own site, so a third party is the only source for a $2,388-a-year commitment. Capterra blocks our fetches, so that row is what Google's snippet shows, not something I read on the page.
LawnStarter. Their comparison, updated August 3, 2026 and ranking fourth for this query, states "Pricing starts at $21 a month, $70 a month, and $105 per month for an individual" for Jobber. Those are exactly Jobber's three promotional annual rates. The renewal rates on the same cards - $29, $99 and $149 - do not appear, and neither does the August 31 expiry. It is a careful page in other respects: its Yardbook figures ($34.99 Business, $49.99 Enterprise, free Starter) match our own first-hand read exactly, and it correctly reports that Real Green does not publish prices. It also reports two tools I did not read myself today - LawnPro at "$39 a month for up to 3 employees, $129 a month for 7 employees, $249 a month for 15 employees" and RazorSync at "$85 a month" for up to two users - which are useful for the census and which I have deliberately kept out of every calculation above.
Arborgold deserves the same treatment applied to itself. Its plan cards, read today, are $129/$299/$499 a month on an annual contract and $149/$343/$573 month to month. The toggle above them promises "Save up to $100/mo!" - the largest actual gap on the page is $573 minus $499, or $74. And its own FAQ block, further down the same page, advertises "Pricing & Plans Starting As Low as $119 Per Month," a fourth number that appears in none of its plan cards and undercuts its own cheapest published tier.
What it costs against the work
Software cost per visit is the unit that settles arguments, because it puts a monthly figure next to the $52 the truck earns when it stops. Same 60-client book, 1,920 visits, $99,840:
| Entry plan, annual billing | Per year | Per client | Per visit | Share of season revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landscapey | $199.99 | $3.33 | $0.10 | 0.20% |
| Jobber Core, year 1 | $252.00 | $4.20 | $0.13 | 0.25% |
| Jobber Core, year 2 | $348.00 | $5.80 | $0.18 | 0.35% |
| Yardbook Business | $419.88 | $7.00 | $0.22 | 0.42% |
| TurfHop Truck | $490.00 | $8.17 | $0.26 | 0.49% |
| GorillaDesk Basic | $539.00 | $8.98 | $0.28 | 0.54% |
| Housecall Pro Basic | $708.00 | $11.80 | $0.37 | 0.71% |
| Arborgold Starter | $1,548.00 | $25.80 | $0.81 | 1.55% |
| LMN Starter | $3,564.00 | $59.40 | $1.86 | 3.57% |
| Card processing at 2.9% + 30c | $1,823.62 | $30.39 | $0.95 | 1.83% |
The honest conclusion from that table is not "buy the cheap one." Every subscription on it, including LMN's, is under 3.6% of season revenue, and the whole published range from top to bottom is $3,364 a year - about the same as one LMN Starter subscription and about a fifth of what forty person-minutes per stop instead of thirty does to the same book. If a $297 tool wins you one $1,200 installation job you would otherwise have lost, it has paid for four months of itself. Judge these prices against what they save, not against zero.
What the table does argue is that the decision is not where the money is, and the pricing pages are built to make you think it is. Pick on the seat model and the renewal rate, not the headline.
Where Landscapey sits, and what it does not do
Our price is on our pricing page: $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year, one plan, everything in it, unlimited service ZIP codes, and no percentage taken from your invoices. Card payments run through Stripe Connect directly to your own account at 2.9% + 30c - the same rate Jobber charges, not a discount, and we take nothing on top of it.
Three things about that, in the spirit of the rest of this page.
We are doing a version of the thing this article is about. Our page says $19.99 against a listed $29.99 and calls it launch pricing, 33% off, "lock it in before it goes up." That is a promotional price with the renewal risk pointed the other way - we are promising today's price, not 2029's. Read our number with the same suspicion you should read Jobber's $21.
The seat limit is the real gap and it is not a pricing choice. Landscapey is one login per account. If you have an office manager and three crew leads who need to see the schedule, we do not do that yet, and no price makes us the right answer for you - TurfHop's bands or Jobber's per-user model will serve you better. There is also no employee time clock, no payroll, no chemical or application tracking, and no equipment or asset register. If any of those is the thing you are shopping for, the tools above are the honest recommendation.
What we do cover at that price is the recurring-maintenance spine: clients, recurring jobs and visit generation, a schedule, route optimization, quotes, invoices with online card payments, expenses, financials, QuickBooks Online sync, and a public profile page that brings in local quote requests. For a solo operator or a two-person outfit running a weekly-mow book, that is the list. You can see all of it on a 14-day trial, and our wider roundup of landscape management software and the landscaping software overview both name the competitors we would send you to instead.
Questions operators actually ask
How much does lawn care software cost? Published entry prices in August 2026 run from $199.99 a year to $3,564 a year for a single operator, with most of the market between $250 and $750. Three of the eleven tools I checked publish no price at all. Expect to add card processing of roughly 2.7% to 3.9% plus 30c per transaction on top of whatever subscription you choose, which on a $100,000 book is usually the larger number.
Is the free plan actually free? Sometimes, with a fee somewhere else. Yardbook's Starter plan is free and its Terms of Service state a 1% processing fee on non-premium accounts, waived on paid plans. TurfHop's trial downgrades to a free plan when it expires. Square's invoicing free plan charges 3.3% + 30c rather than the 2.9% most people quote. Free software plus a percentage is a pricing model, not a gift.
Why do two sites quote different prices for the same tool? Usually because they read different billing options on different days. Jobber's Core plan showed four prices on one page the day I read it, and its browser title and its plan recommender disagree by $8 a month. When comparing, fix the billing option first - annual prepaid against annual prepaid - then compare.
Which is cheaper, annual or monthly? Annual, everywhere, by wildly different margins: Jobber's annual is 57% below its no-commitment list in year one and 41% below at renewal, TurfHop offers two months free, GorillaDesk's annual is 8.3% off, Housecall Pro's is about 25% off, and Arborgold's is 13.4% off but requires a contract. The discount is worth reading as a number, not as a badge.
What should a four-person crew budget? On published prices, between $790 and $3,564 a year, and only four of the eleven tools let you work that out without talking to sales. TurfHop Office at $948 (or $790 annually) and Jobber Core at $1,392 in a renewal year are the two cheapest fully-priceable options.
Do I need the expensive tier? Check where route optimization and job costing sit before you look at the entry price. Service Autopilot puts route optimization on its $199 Pro tier rather than its $49 Startup, LMN puts real-time job costing on the $648 plan, and Housecall Pro includes job costing on its $59 Basic. The entry price and the tier that does your work are frequently not the same row.
Sources and limits
Read first-hand on August 17, 2026: getjobber.com/pricing, gorilladesk.com/pricing, turfhop.com/page/pricing, arborgold.com/pricing, clip.com, realgreen.com/pricing, landscapey.ai/pricing, and lawnstarter.com's software comparison (updated August 3, 2026). Housecall Pro's figures were verified on August 7, Service Autopilot's on August 1, Yardbook's on August 14, LMN's on August 5 and Aspire's on August 10, each in the linked post - see Housecall Pro pricing, the Service Autopilot review and what Aspire costs.
Limits, stated plainly. Capterra blocks our requests, so its RealGreen and Arborgold figures are what Google's result shows rather than what I read on the page. LawnPro and RazorSync are LawnStarter's reported figures and were not verified first-hand today, which is why they appear in no calculation here. TurfHop's pricing page returned a server error at first and read normally at turfhop.com/page/pricing. The 60-client book - 1,920 visits, $52 a visit, $99,840 of revenue, 60% paid by card, invoiced monthly - is a model this site uses so numbers stay comparable across posts, not a claim about your business; change the card share or the invoicing frequency and the processing figures move a lot, which is the point of the CLIP crossover above. Promotional prices expire: Jobber's offer says August 31, and anything you read here about year-one pricing should be re-checked against the page before you buy. Nothing here is tax, legal or procurement advice.