Excavation cost estimator

Each job starts from a published national range for that kind of job. Land clearing is priced by the acre, from HomeGuide's light, moderate or heavy range, and grading by the square foot. The other jobs use a whole-job range.

Then we apply multipliers for what makes a job harder: steep ground ×1.3, rocky soil ×1.5, tight access ×1.3 and a metro county ×1.2. Last, the Southeast is ×0.9 and the Midwest and West ×1.1, following published labor data that puts the Southeast lowest. The multipliers are our planning assumptions, not published figures. So is counting a county of 500,000 people or more as metro.

With no access yet, we add SiteX's published mobilization range for a rural job. We leave it out in metro counties.

For the published ranges behind each job, see the excavation cost guide, land clearing cost guide and grading cost guide.