Cost
Excavation Cost Calculator
Price an excavation from the dimensions up, using your unit rates or your hourly rates.
Excavated volume
cubic yards
Waiting on you
Quantities are ready. Enter your rate per cubic yard to price the job — we deliberately do not assume a market rate.
- Cubic feet
- 19,200cu ft
- Cubic metres
- 543.7m³
The working
Volume = Length × Width × Depth
= 60 ft × 40 ft × 8 ft
= 711.1 cu yd
This calculator does the quantity work — volume, swell, loads — and then applies the rates you supply. It will not invent a price per cubic yard, because there is no honest national average: rates move with soil, access, depth, haul distance and who is bidding that week. Put your own numbers in and it does the rest.
How this calculator works
- Formula version
- 1.0.0
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-14
- External data
- None
This tool uses only your inputs and exact unit conversions. No benchmark, average or market figure is built into it. How we calculate
What this calculates
A priced excavation: the quantity of material to be moved, multiplied by rates you supply, plus haulage, disposal, mobilisation, overhead and profit. It returns a total, a full line-by-line breakdown, and an all-in cost per cubic yard for comparing bids.
Why there are no default rates
Excavation pricing is local and volatile. It changes with soil type, groundwater, access, depth, haul distance, tip fees, machine availability and how busy the contractors near you happen to be. A single national average would be wrong nearly everywhere it was used, and worse, it would look authoritative.
So every rate field starts empty. The calculator does all the geometry, unit conversion, swell, load counts, overhead and margin arithmetic — everything that is genuinely deterministic — and stops precisely where guessing would begin.
Unit rate versus hourly
The unit rate method multiplies bank volume by a price per cubic yard. It is how most subcontract excavation is bought and it is the right method when the quantity is well defined.
The hourly method multiplies your machine rate plus crew rate by the hours on task. It is the honest method for awkward work — restricted access, unknown obstructions, hand digging around services — where a unit rate is really a guess with extra steps.
Markup and margin are not the same thing
Markup is a percentage of your cost. Margin is a percentage of the price you charge. Applying 20% as a markup on $10,000 gives $12,000, and your margin on that is 16.7%. Applying 20% as a margin gives $12,500. The calculator asks which one you mean rather than quietly picking one.
Haulage
Spoil volume is bank volume expanded by your swell factor, because trucks carry loose material. Loads are the loose volume divided by your truck body capacity, rounded up — a part load is still a trip. Haul rate and disposal fee are then applied per load.
Worked example
The rate below is an illustrative input chosen to make the arithmetic easy to follow, not a market figure.
A 60 × 40 × 8 ft basement at a rate of $12.00 per cubic yard
- Dimensions
- 60 ft × 40 ft × 8 ft, vertical walls
- Rate entered
- $12.00 / cu yd
- Overhead
- 10%
- Markup
- 15%
- Volume= 60 × 40 × 8= 19,200 cu ft
- Cubic yards= 19,200 ÷ 27= 711.1 cu yd
- Excavation= 711.1 × $12.00= $8,533.33
- Overhead= $8,533.33 × 10%= $853.33
- Markup= $9,386.66 × 15%= $1,408.00
- Total= $9,386.66 + $1,408.00= $10,794.66
- All rates, fees and percentages come from you. No market data is used anywhere in this tool.
- Bank volume is the basis for the unit rate, which is the usual convention for excavation.
- Side slopes, when entered, are equal on all sides and the ground surface is level.
- Part loads are charged as full loads.
- It does not price rock, groundwater control, shoring, dewatering or contaminated material — those are separate line items you should add yourself.
- It does not include permits, surveys, testing or restoration.
- It has no view on whether your rates are competitive. It only arithmetic-checks the ones you give it.
Common questions
- Why does the calculator not tell me the average cost of excavation?
- Because we do not have a sourced dataset for it, and publishing an unsourced average would be worse than publishing nothing. Excavation rates vary by soil, depth, access, haul distance and local competition. Get two or three local quotes, enter one as your rate, and use the tool to check the quantities and the arithmetic behind them.
- Should I price on bank volume or loose volume?
- Excavation is normally bought on bank volume — the material measured in place — while haulage is priced on loose volume, because that is what fills the trucks. This calculator uses bank volume for the dig and swelled volume for the loads, which is why both figures appear in the results.
- Does the total include hauling the dirt away?
- Only if you add it. Open the advanced options, enter your truck capacity and your haul rate per load, and haulage and disposal appear as separate lines in the breakdown.
- What is a fair markup on excavation work?
- That is a business decision, not a calculation, and it depends on your overhead structure and risk. What the calculator does guarantee is that whichever number you pick is applied correctly — as a markup on cost or as a margin on price, whichever you select.
Where people go next
All cost tools →Ordered by what usually comes next in the same job, not by keyword.