Yardbook is one of the few pieces of landscaping software you can genuinely run a business on without paying anything. That is not marketing spin. The free Starter plan really does include customers, jobs and scheduling, estimates, invoices, routing and expenses — a complete book of work for a solo operator, at $0 a month.
But free software still has to make money somewhere, and Yardbook is no exception. The costs are real; they are just not on the price tag. This is a plain breakdown of what Yardbook charges in 2026, what the free plan quietly costs you, and the point at which paying for software actually becomes the cheaper option.
Yardbook is one of the few genuinely independent products left in this market - a Y Combinator W16 company, still early stage. That cuts both ways: no parent company pushing a processing rate, but also the monetization pressure that a free tier eventually attracts. Our map of who owns what puts that risk beside the private-equity and public-company alternatives.
Yardbook is not the only free option a landscaper will be shown, and the two free tiers are not the same shape. LawnPro gives away scheduling, invoicing, online payments and a client portal at $0 as well - but caps it at one user and 25 customers, where Yardbook's constraint sits elsewhere. Whichever you lean on, the cap is the thing to plan your growth around. Here is where LawnPro's free plan ends and what the next step costs.
Yardbook pricing in 2026: the three plans
Yardbook publishes three tiers. The prices below are the ones shown on Yardbook's own pricing page, and they are annual rates — more on that in a moment.
| Plan | Price | Built for | Headline additions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Free | Solo operators | Customer management, jobs and scheduling, estimates, invoices, routing, expenses, reports, lot measurement, employee access, credit card payments, snow removal, product catalog |
| Business | $34.99/mo | Growing crews | Everything in Starter, plus bulk emails, bulk text messages (Twilio), GPS tracking, automatic backup, automatic invoice reminders, multi-step chemical programs, customized lead capture, and Yardbook processing fee waived |
| Enterprise | $49.99/mo | Established companies | Everything in Business, plus QuickBooks sync, branded company portal, and no ads |
All three plans include web and desktop access plus Android mobile app access.
What the free Starter plan actually includes
It is worth being clear about this, because plenty of "free" tools in this category are really 14-day trials wearing a costume. Yardbook's is not. On Starter you can add unlimited customers, build routes, schedule recurring jobs, send estimates, invoice, take credit card payments, log expenses and pull reports. There is lot measurement for pricing by square footage and employee access if you have help.
If you are a one-truck operation billing a few thousand dollars a month, that is a real, functioning back office for nothing. Anyone telling you it is a trap is overselling. The honest question is not "is it free" — it is "what does the free version cost me in ways that don't show up as a subscription line?"
So where does Yardbook make its money?
Four places, and the first one is the expensive one.
1. Payment processing (the clearest tell)
The giveaway is on Yardbook's own pricing page. Under the Business plan, one of the listed features is "Yardbook Processing Fee Waived."
A fee you can have waived by upgrading is a fee the free plan is paying. That is a Yardbook charge sitting on top of the normal card-processing rate you already pay to move money.
Yardbook does publish the rate. It is just not on the pricing page. It sits in the Terms of Service, and it is unambiguous: "The Yardbook processing fee for non-premium accounts is 1% of each transaction. This fee also applies to any free trial accounts. For premium paid accounts (Business Plan and Enterprise Plan), this fee is waived." The same clause states the fee is charged "in addition to transaction fees charged directly by Stripe" and that it "will be automatically deducted from each online payment from your customers to you." When this article first ran it quoted 1% as an operator estimate from forum reports; the estimate was right, and the figure is now sourced to Yardbook's own terms, read 2026-08-14. What matters is the shape of the math, and the shape is this: a percentage fee scales with your revenue, and a $34.99 subscription does not.
| Monthly card volume | Fee at 1% | Business plan | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|
| $2,000 | $20/mo | $34.99/mo | Stay on free |
| $3,500 | $35/mo | $34.99/mo | Break-even |
| $8,000 | $80/mo | $34.99/mo | Upgrade — saves about $540/yr |
| $15,000 | $150/mo | $34.99/mo | Upgrade — saves about $1,380/yr |
The break-even sits near $3,500 a month in card volume. Past that, the free plan is quietly more expensive than the paid one. Most operators never run that number, which is exactly why it is worth running: if you are processing $8,000 a month on cards and staying on Starter to save money, the free plan is costing you roughly $45 a month for the privilege.
One caveat that cuts the other way: this only applies to payments you actually take through Yardbook. If most of your customers pay by check or cash, the fee is close to irrelevant and free stays free.
2. Ads
"No ads" is listed as an Enterprise feature. Removing advertising is something you buy at the $49.99 tier, which means the free and Business tiers carry it. Whether that bothers you is a matter of taste, but it is a cost of the free plan, and it is the most traditional way free software has always been funded.
3. QuickBooks sync is top-tier only
If your books live in QuickBooks, Yardbook's sync sits on Enterprise at $49.99/mo — $599.88 a year. That is the single biggest jump in the lineup, and it catches people out, because QuickBooks integration reads like table stakes rather than a premium add-on. If you are already paying a bookkeeper to hand-key invoices every month, price that labor against the tier before deciding it is expensive. If you are not, it is a real cost to plan for. We wrote a full guide to landscaping software with QuickBooks integration if you want to compare how different tools handle it.
4. The prices you see are annual
Yardbook's pricing page carries a footnote: prices shown are for annual plans, and different rates apply to month-to-month. The month-to-month numbers are not published, so if you are not ready to commit for a year, ask before you plan around $34.99. This is standard practice across the category — Jobber does the same thing, and the gap there is significant, as we broke down in how much Jobber costs.
A fifth thing worth checking: mobile
Yardbook's pricing page specifies "web and desktop access, and Android mobile app access." iPhone is not named. Roughly 70 people a month search for a Yardbook iPhone app, which suggests this trips up more than a few crews. If your team is on iOS, confirm what is available before you build your workflow around a phone app.
The honest case for staying on the free plan
Plenty of software companies would like you to believe free tools are a false economy. For a lot of operators, they are not. Stay on Yardbook Starter if most of this describes you:
- You are solo or running one truck with occasional help.
- You take most payments by check, cash or bank transfer, or your card volume is under roughly $3,500 a month.
- Your books are simple enough that you or your accountant can handle them without a live QuickBooks feed.
- Ads do not bother you.
- You are in a season where every fixed cost matters more than every hour saved.
There is also one area where Yardbook is genuinely strong and worth paying for on its own terms: multi-step chemical programs. If you are a lawn treatment company that lives in application tracking and compliance records, that depth is built into Yardbook Business and it is a legitimate reason to choose it over tools that treat chemical tracking as an afterthought.
When free starts costing you money
The switch tends to be triggered by one of five things, and none of them are about features on a checklist:
- Card volume past roughly $3,500 a month. The percentage fee overtakes the subscription. Run your own number before assuming free is cheaper.
- You hire. The moment two people need to see the same schedule and not step on each other, scheduling and assignment friction turns into real payroll waste.
- Month-end takes a full day. If you are re-keying invoices into QuickBooks by hand, you are already paying for sync — in your own hours, at your own hourly rate.
- You start losing bids on presentation. Branded quotes that arrive fast beat a spreadsheet emailed two days later, on jobs worth thousands.
- You need someone to pick up the phone. Free plans rarely come with priority support, and the day your invoicing breaks in peak season is the day that matters.
What $20 to $50 a month buys elsewhere
Once you accept you are paying something, the question changes from "free or not" to "what am I getting per dollar." Here is how the tiers line up on the two things that actually move money — accounting sync and payment markup.
| Option | Price | QuickBooks sync | Payment markup on top of card rates | Plans to choose between |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yardbook Starter | Free | No | Yardbook processing fee | — |
| Yardbook Business | $34.99/mo | No | Waived | 3 |
| Yardbook Enterprise | $49.99/mo | Yes | Waived | 3 |
| Jobber Core | $29/mo annual | Yes | Standard card rates | 4 |
| Landscapey | $19.99/mo | Yes | None — direct Stripe | 1 |
If you want the wider field rather than a head-to-head, we keep an honest roundup of the best landscape management software, and a direct comparison of Jobber vs Yardbook for the two most common finalists. There is also a broader list of Yardbook alternatives if you have already decided to move.
Where Landscapey fits — and where it does not
We build landscaping software, so treat this section with the skepticism it deserves and check the claims yourself.
Landscapey is one plan at $19.99/mo (launch pricing, listed at $29.99) or $199.99/year, with a 14-day trial. QuickBooks sync is included rather than reserved for a top tier. Card payments run through Stripe as direct charges with no platform fee on top — you pay Stripe's rate and nothing to us. Every signup also gets a public profile page that can be found in search, which is a lead source rather than a line item.
Where we are honestly not the answer: we are a younger product than Yardbook, which has been at this since 2013. We do not do landscape design, CAD or takeoff. We do not have GPS crew tracking or bulk SMS — both of which Yardbook Business includes. And we do not match Yardbook's multi-step chemical program depth, so if compliance tracking for applications is the center of your business, Yardbook Business is genuinely built for that and we are not. We are built for the operator who wants scheduling, routing, invoicing and getting paid to be one uncomplicated system.
Frequently asked questions
Is Yardbook really free?
Yes. The Starter plan is free to use and includes customers, scheduling, estimates, invoices, routing and expenses with no trial clock. The costs show up elsewhere: a Yardbook processing fee on card payments, ads, and no QuickBooks sync.
How much does Yardbook cost?
Starter is free, Business is $34.99/mo and Enterprise is $49.99/mo at annual rates. Yardbook notes that month-to-month pricing differs but does not publish those figures, so ask before budgeting.
What is the Yardbook processing fee?
It is a Yardbook charge on card transactions, applied on top of standard processing rates, and it is waived on the Business and Enterprise plans — that is how you can tell the free plan pays it. The rate is 1% of each transaction, stated in Yardbook's Terms of Service rather than on its pricing page, and by the same clause it applies during free trials of the paid plans too. On a $52 invoice that is 52 cents to Yardbook on top of about $1.81 to Stripe.
Does Yardbook sync with QuickBooks?
Yes, but only on the Enterprise plan at $49.99/mo. If a live QuickBooks feed matters to you, that is the tier you are pricing, not the free one.
Yardbook free vs paid: which should I pick?
Run one number: your monthly card volume. Under about $3,500 a month, free is genuinely cheaper. Above it, the percentage fee overtakes the $34.99 subscription and free costs you money. Then check whether you need QuickBooks sync, because that is a separate $15/mo step up to Enterprise.
Does Yardbook have an iPhone app?
Yardbook's pricing page lists web, desktop and Android mobile access. iOS is not named there, so confirm current availability with Yardbook directly if your crew runs iPhones.
What the 1% actually costs on a real book
A percentage is easy to wave away, so here it is in dollars, on the same example book this site uses throughout: 60 weekly clients at $52 a cut across a 32-week season, which is 1,920 invoices and $99,840 of revenue. Stripe's published US rate for online domestic cards is 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.
| What comes out of a $52 card payment | Amount | Share of the ticket |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe, 2.9% + $0.30 | $1.81 | 3.48% |
| Yardbook processing fee, 1% | $0.52 | 1.00% |
| Total | $2.33 | 4.48% |
Every rate in this stack is priced side by side against Jobber, Square, Zoho and the rest in our breakdown of what landscaping invoice software really costs to get paid through. Now run the season, assuming card payments across the whole book. The point is not that this is your card mix — it is to see the scale of a percentage against the scale of a subscription.
| Season line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Yardbook processing fee at 1% on $99,840 | $998.40 |
| Stripe, 2.9% plus 30 cents on 1,920 invoices | $3,471.36 |
| Combined cost of taking cards | $4,469.76 (4.48% of revenue) |
| Business plan, $34.99/mo for 12 months | $419.88 |
Paying $419.88 a year to make a $998.40 fee go away is not a close call. The fee is 2.38 times the subscription that waives it, and upgrading nets about $578 a season. Which is the whole argument of this article expressed as one number: on a full book, the free plan is the expensive plan.
The break-even is easy to run on your own numbers, because it is just the subscription divided by the rate: $34.99 at 1% is $3,499 of monthly card volume. What most operators forget is that only the card share counts — checks and bank transfers pay no percentage, so the revenue figure you need is higher than the card figure.
| Share of revenue taken by card | Monthly revenue where upgrading starts paying |
|---|---|
| 100% | $3,499 |
| 70% | $4,999 |
| 50% | $6,998 |
| 30% | $11,663 |
For scale on the example book: a 32-week season is about 7.4 months, so $99,840 of revenue is roughly $13,520 a month while you are cutting. At full card share that is $135 a month of processing fee against a $34.99 subscription — the free plan costs 3.9 times the paid one, in season.
One clause worth reading twice, because it is the kind of thing that surprises people: the fee "also applies to any free trial accounts." Trialling a paid plan does not stop the meter; the waiver arrives with the paid account, not with the trial.
The honest counterweight, because it would be easy to overstate this. Yardbook's 1% is the smallest of the three numbers in that stack. Stripe's percentage is 2.9 times larger and you pay it on any platform, including ours; even Stripe's 30-cent fixed fee is 0.58% of a $52 ticket. Nobody should switch software over 1%, and if most of your customers hand you a cheque, the fee is close to theoretical. What the 1% does is settle the free-versus-paid question inside Yardbook, and it settles it earlier than most people expect.
What Yardbook still does not publish
Two things, and both matter if you are budgeting rather than browsing. The pricing page carries the footnote "Prices are for annual plans. Different rates apply to month-to-month plans" — and the month-to-month rates are not shown anywhere, so the no-commitment option cannot be priced before you sign up. The prices that are shown are therefore commitments: $419.88 a year for Business, $599.88 for Enterprise. And the platform line still reads "web & desktop access, and Android mobile app access," with no mention of iOS — worth confirming directly if your crew runs iPhones.
The short version
Yardbook's free plan is real and it is generous, and for a solo operator taking checks it is hard to argue with $0. The trap is not the free plan — it is staying on it out of habit after your business outgrew the math. Once your card volume passes roughly $3,500 a month, or the day month-end starts eating a whole day of re-keying invoices, "free" has already become the more expensive choice.
Sources and limits
Plan names, prices, feature lists, the annual-plan footnote and the platform line are from Yardbook's own pricing page, read 2026-08-14: Starter free, Business $34.99/month, Enterprise $49.99/month, with "Prices are for annual plans. Different rates apply to month-to-month plans." The 1% processing fee, its waiver on the two paid plans and its application to free trial accounts are quoted from Yardbook's Terms of Service, read the same day. Stripe's 2.9% plus 30 cents is Stripe's published US rate for online domestic cards.
The 60-client book, the $52 cut and the 32-week season are this site's standing example, not a measurement of your business, and the season figures above assume every invoice is paid by card, which is deliberately the worst case rather than a typical one. Your card share is the variable that decides everything here, and only you have it.
What is not verifiable from outside: Yardbook's month-to-month prices, which are referenced but not published; whether an operator connects their own Stripe account or transacts on Yardbook's platform rate; and current iOS availability, which the pricing page does not address. This article was first published 2026-07-29 and expanded 2026-08-14, when the processing-fee rate moved from an operator estimate to a first-party quotation.
Whichever way you go, run the arithmetic on your own numbers rather than the sticker price. If you want to see what a single-plan alternative looks like with QuickBooks sync and no payment markup included, our pricing page shows the whole thing on one screen, and you can start a 14-day trial without talking to anyone.