How to start a lawn care business
What it costs, what you file, what it earns and what ends most of them. Every number below is cited to where it came from.
Starting a lawn care business costs $500 to $8,000, on figures published by a primary source. The hardest part is labour.
What it costs to start
$500 to $8,000A lean solo operation is dominated by a mower ($300 to $2,500), trimmer, blower and edger; the range jumps to $15,000 to $50,000+ once you add a truck, trailer and commercial-grade heavy equipment.
Source: source
What you have to file
Licensing is set by state, county and city, so this is what the category tends to require rather than a list for where you live. The state pages below carry the filing detail for each of the 50.
- General business licence (city/county)
- Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS
- State sales tax permit (where lawn services are taxable)
- State commercial pesticide applicator certification / licence (required by federal law for restricted use pesticides, administered by states; many states licence all commercial applicators)
- State pesticide business licence / registration (separate from the individual applicator licence in most states)
- Fertilizer applicator licence (required in some states, e.g. nutrient-management states)
- General liability insurance
- Commercial auto insurance
- Inland marine / equipment insurance (mower and trailer theft coverage)
- Workers' compensation insurance (required once you have employees)
What the margins look like
A lawn care software vendor publishes a benchmark of a 15 to 20% profit margin for residential lawn mowing work and a lower 10 to 15% for commercial property contracts.
Source: source
Whether demand is growing
Growing
Growing: BLS projects grounds maintenance employment to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, and NALP recorded 4.8% market growth in 2025 with a 6.5% average annual growth rate over 2020 to 2025.
How big the market is
The US landscape industry was worth $188.8 billion in 2025 across 692,777 landscaping service companies employing over 1.4 million people, up 4.8% from 2024 (National Association of Landscape Professionals).
Source: source
The part that ends most of them
Labour. NALP identifies the industry's top two concerns as finding qualified employees and maintaining profit levels, and projects labour costs to rise roughly 20% between now and the end of 2029. Seasonality (cash flow collapsing in winter across most of the country) is the other commonly reported difficulty.
Source: source
Before you start
- What it will cost you, since the numbers above are the category and not your version of it
- Sole proprietor, LLC or S corp, what actually differs, with no recommendation
- What your state wants filed, read from the state's own pages
- What you have to sell to break even, which decides whether the margin above matters
- Which way you actually work, if the choice between these is really a choice about you
A different business
Compare all twenty side by side
SideKix, “How to start a lawn care business”. https://sidekixhq.com/how-to-start-a-lawn-care-business.html
Questions people ask
How much does it cost to start a lawn care business?
$500 to $8,000. A lean solo operation is dominated by a mower ($300 to $2,500), trimmer, blower and edger; the range jumps to $15,000 to $50,000+ once you add a truck, trailer and commercial-grade heavy equipment.
What licences do you need for a lawn care business?
Typically: General business licence (city/county); Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS; State sales tax permit (where lawn services are taxable); State commercial pesticide applicator certification / licence (required by federal law for restricted use pesticides, administered by states; many states licence all commercial applicators); State pesticide business licence / registration (separate from the individual applicator licence in most states). Licensing is set by state, county and city, so the exact list depends on where you operate.
What profit margin does a lawn care business make?
A lawn care software vendor publishes a benchmark of a 15 to 20% profit margin for residential lawn mowing work and a lower 10 to 15% for commercial property contracts.
Is demand for a lawn care business growing?
Growing: BLS projects grounds maintenance employment to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, and NALP recorded 4.8% market growth in 2025 with a 6.5% average annual growth rate over 2020 to 2025.
What is the hardest part of running a lawn care business?
Labour. NALP identifies the industry's top two concerns as finding qualified employees and maintaining profit levels, and projects labour costs to rise roughly 20% between now and the end of 2029. Seasonality (cash flow collapsing in winter across most of the country) is the other commonly reported difficulty.