Tree removal cost dataset
This is the complete dataset behind the tree calculator, at national rates. It is built on one correction to how this job is usually priced: height is not the variable. A tree’s weight goes with its trunk diameter squared times its height, and what is underneath decides whether it can be dropped or has to be roped down piece by piece. Both tables below make that visible. Last reviewed 2026-08-23.
Three trees of exactly the same height
National figures, 50 feet tall, suburban garden, everything chipped and hauled. Only the trunk changes.
| Trunk | Size index | Crew hours | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 in | 88.9 | 5 | $1,545 |
| 22 in | 168.1 | 7 | $2,067 |
| 30 in | 312.5 | 9 | $2,878 |
Same height, $1,334 apart. Any table that prices trees by height alone is answering a different question from the one a contractor is answering when they quote, which is why the two so rarely agree. Measure the trunk: a tape around it divided by three gives the diameter in inches, and it takes a minute.
Six real trees, and what is underneath them
National figures, alive and sound, spring or summer, everything chipped and hauled.
| Tree | Open ground | Restricted | Over a structure | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 ft × 10 in | $741 | $940 | $1,218 | A young ornamental or a small fruit tree |
| 40 ft × 16 in | $1,104 | $1,402 | $1,899 | A mature garden tree |
| 50 ft × 20 in | $1,463 | $1,880 | $2,537 | The tree most people are asking about |
| 60 ft × 26 in | $2,107 | $2,724 | $3,658 | A large suburban shade tree |
| 75 ft × 32 in | $3,148 | $3,983 | $5,295 | A big oak or maple |
| 95 ft × 44 in | $5,836 | $7,227 | $9,375 | A landmark tree, and a crane job |
Read across rather than down. The same tree costs about two and a half times as much over a roof as over open lawn, because nothing is allowed to fall: every piece is roped to a rigging point and lowered under control, or a crane picks it out.
Read backwards: what a budget buys
Suburban garden, sectional felling, everything hauled. Trees where the trunk grows with the height, as real ones do.
| Budget | Largest tree it covers | Modelled cost |
|---|---|---|
| $750 | 12 ft × 5 in | $706 |
| $1,500 | 40 ft × 16 in | $1,402 |
| $3,000 | 66 ft × 26 in | $2,868 |
| $6,000 | 96 ft × 38 in | $5,908 |
Useful for checking a quote in the other direction. If somebody has offered to take a 40-foot tree for a figure well below the row it belongs in, the question is what is missing — usually the stump, the haulage, or the insurance.
The three multipliers
Applied to the crew hours, on the default 50 by 20 inch tree. All three are our estimate of trade practice rather than published figures.
What is underneath
| Option | Factor | Total | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open ground — it can be felled whole | ×1 | $1,463 | A clear drop zone at least as long as the tree is tall, and room to bring a chipper alongside. One cut at the base, one direction, one morning. It is the cheapest tree there is. |
| Restricted — sectional felling | ×1.55 | $1,880 | A fence, a shed, a neighbour or a driveway inside the drop zone. The tree comes down in sections from the top, each one cut and lowered rather than dropped. Half again the hours, and it is the commonest case in a suburb. |
| Over a house, a wire or a pool | ×2.4 | $2,537 | Every piece is roped to a rigging point and lowered under control before it is cut free, or a crane picks it out. Nothing is allowed to fall. It is the same tree and two and a half times the work, and it is where the price of a tree job actually comes from. |
Condition of the tree
| Option | Factor | Total | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alive and sound | ×1 | $1,880 | Predictable wood: it holds a climber, it hinges where it is cut, and it comes apart the way the crew expects. |
| Dead but still standing | ×1.28 | $2,218 | ⚠️ Dearer than a live tree, not cheaper, and people are surprised by that every time. Dead wood is brittle and unpredictable: nobody should be climbing it, so it usually needs a lift, and limbs break where they were not cut. |
| Storm-damaged, hung up or leaning | ×1.45 | $2,417 | ⚠️ The most dangerous of the three. Wood under tension releases when it is cut, and a tree resting on something else is holding energy nobody can see. This is emergency work and it is priced as such. |
When you book it
| Option | Factor | Total | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring or summer | ×1 | $1,880 | Full canopy and peak demand. Every leaf is volume that has to be chipped and hauled, and every crew is booked. |
| Late autumn or winter (dormant) | ×0.86 | $1,647 | The cheapest window, and the reason is physical rather than commercial: a bare tree is a fraction of the debris volume, firm or frozen ground carries the machines without ruining the lawn, and it is the quiet season. Book in November for a job that is not urgent. |
| Immediately after a storm | ×1.32 | $2,258 | Every crew in the county is committed for weeks and the work itself is the dangerous kind. If the tree is not threatening anything, waiting is worth real money. |
What happens to the wood
| Option | Chip | Total | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chip and take everything away | 7.3 cu yd | $1,880 | The default and what most quotes assume. Brush through the chipper, logs onto a truck, the site raked. |
| Chip and leave the mulch | 7.3 cu yd | $1,654 | The chips stay in a pile for you to spread. It saves the haulage and it is a surprisingly large pile — a mature tree makes several cubic yards. |
| Cut the trunk to firewood lengths and stack it | 7.3 cu yd | $1,955 | The brush is still chipped and taken; the trunk stays, cut to stove length and stacked where you want it. Sensible if you burn wood, and none of it will burn this year — split hardwood needs a year under cover before it is dry enough. |
On the default tree the chip alone is 7.3 cubic yards, and in the dormant season it falls by about a third on its own. That is the clearest single reason winter work is cheaper: a bare tree is simply less material to move.
Line items
| Line item | Unit | Material | Equipment / hr | Trade | Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Climber or aerial operatorcrew hours from the size index × access × condition × season | hour | — | — | Tree Trimmers and Pruners | sourced |
| Ground crew, two people2 ground workers for every crew hour | hour | — | — | Construction Laborers | sourced |
| Chipper, lift and truckone machine hour per crew hour | hour | $32 – $95 | — | — | estimated±50% |
| Getting the crew and the kit to your street1 per visit | job | $140 – $390 | — | — | estimated±47% |
| Haul the chip and the logs away (conditional)cubic yards of chip where everything is hauled away | cu yd | $16 – $46 | — | — | estimated±48% |
| Cut the trunk to firewood lengths and stack it (conditional)1 h + 1 h per 25 units of size index where the trunk is left cut and stacked | hour | — | — | Construction Laborers | sourced |
| Coordination where the tree is near a power line (conditional)1 where a conductor is within reach of the canopy | job | $140 – $460 | — | — | estimated±53% |
| Grind the stump (allowance) (conditional)1 where the stump is ground afterwards | allowance | $160 – $620 | — | — | estimated±59% |
| Rake, blow and make good1.5 h + 0.2 h per 10 units of size index | hour | — | — | Construction Laborers | sourced |
The reasoning behind each figure
Written out so an arborist can point at the exact assumption that is wrong.
- Climber or aerial operator
- The person in the tree, or in the lift. Hours come from the size index — trunk diameter squared times height — raised to the power 0.62, then multiplied by the access, condition and season factors. A tree twice the volume is roughly one and a half times the work, not twice.
- ⚠️ The wage is official BLS data for tree trimmers and pruners adjusted to your area, but that occupation is published for only 192 of the 530 areas in our index. Outside those, this hour comes from the broader group for the same area, which is a real approximation on a page where this is the main trade.
- Tree work is among the most hazardous jobs there is, which OSHA, Tree care operations sets out. The practical consequence for you is that the cheap quote is usually cheap because somebody is not insured, and a groundworker hurt on your property is your problem before it is anybody else's. Ask for the certificate, not the promise.
- Ground crew, two people
- Two people on the ground for every hour the climber is up: one on the rope, one feeding the chipper and keeping the drop zone clear. It is not optional and it is why a tree job is never one person.
- The ground crew is also what makes the job safe. Nobody in a tree can see what is happening underneath them.
- Chipper, lift and truckestimated, ±50%
- A chipper and a chip truck on every job; a bucket lift or a crane where the tree cannot be climbed or the work is over a structure. Priced per crew hour rather than per day because a small tree does not tie up a crane all day.
- ⚠️ Every other machine on this site is priced from the FEMA Schedule of Equipment Rates. FEMA does publish rates for chippers and aerial lifts, but that document is a PDF whose text could not be extracted and checked here, so this band is our estimate and is not presented as a FEMA figure. We do not cite what we have not read.
- Getting the crew and the kit to your streetestimated, ±47%
- Towing the chipper, driving the truck and the lift, setting up cones and rigging points, and taking it all away again. It costs the same for a small tree as for a large one, which is why a single small tree is expensive per foot and why doing three at once is not three times the price.
- If a neighbour also needs work, asking the crew for a price on both at the same visit is the single easiest saving available on this page.
- Haul the chip and the logs awayestimated, ±48%
- Chip volume scales with the canopy, which scales with the size index. A mature tree makes several cubic yards of chip and it has to go somewhere — a yard, a compost site or a biomass plant, all of which charge to receive it.
- In the dormant season this line falls by about a third on its own, because a bare tree is far less brush. It is the clearest single reason winter work is cheaper.
- Cut the trunk to firewood lengths and stack it
- About an hour per twenty-five units of the size index, plus one. Cutting a trunk into rounds is quick; moving and stacking them is not, because green hardwood is astonishingly heavy.
- None of it will burn this year. Firewood needs a year under cover, split, before it is dry enough to burn cleanly, and burning it wet is how a chimney fire starts.
- Coordination where the tree is near a power lineestimated, ±53%
- ⚠️ Nobody who is not qualified for line-clearance work may bring a tool or a limb inside the minimum approach distance of an energised conductor. That is not a company policy, it is the substance of OSHA 1910.269, and it is why a normal tree crew will stop and wait rather than reach across a wire.
- What this line pays for is arranging it: getting the utility to drop or cover the service, or bringing in a line-clearance qualified crew. What it does not pay for is the utility itself, which usually costs nothing and takes weeks to schedule.
- If the tree is threatening the utility's own line rather than your service drop, the utility may do the work at no cost to you. It is always worth one phone call before paying anybody.
- Grind the stump (allowance)estimated, ±59%
- A separate machine, a separate visit and a separate trade skill, which is why it is quoted separately by nearly every crew and why it is an allowance here rather than a built-up cost.
- Our stump grinding calculator prices it properly, by the inch of diameter, which is how the trade actually quotes it. ⚠️ It is also the point at which the job becomes an excavation activity in the federal sense, with everything that follows from that.
- Rake, blow and make good
- An hour and a half plus a fifth of an hour per ten units of size index. Chips get everywhere, and the difference between a crew that leaves a lawn tidy and one that does not is entirely in this line.
- It is the part most often trimmed from a cheap quote, and the part you notice for a month afterwards.
Not included in this dataset
- The stump, unless you ask for it
- Felling leaves a stump at ankle height. Grinding it is a different machine on a different visit and it is priced as its own allowance here, with a dedicated calculator on this site that does it by the inch.
- Roots, and what they were holding up
- Grinding removes the stump and the top of the root plate, not the roots. A large root under a path or a drive stays where it is, and taking it out can be more disruptive than the tree was. Nothing here prices root removal or the repair of what a root had lifted.
- Repairs to anything the tree damaged
- A tree that has already come down on a fence, a roof or a car is two jobs: getting it off safely, which is this one, and repairing what is underneath, which is not. Photograph everything before anybody touches it if there is an insurance claim in it.
- Permits and protected trees
- Many municipalities require a permit to remove a tree above a certain size, and some species or street trees cannot be removed at all without approval. This varies so completely by locality that any figure would be invented. One call to the local authority costs nothing and can save a fine larger than the job.
- Emergency call-out at night or in a storm
- A tree on a house at two in the morning is a different price from the same tree on a Tuesday, and rightly so. The season factor here covers the weeks after a storm, not the night of it.
Use the calculator, price the stump at stump grinding cost, or read the full method.