Lawn calculator: seed, sod and fertilizer for your square footage
Measure the lawn, say what you are doing, and get the pounds of seed, pallets of sod or pounds of fertilizer to buy, with a 2026 price range.
What are you doing?
2,000 sq ft of tall fescue, bare soil
16 to 20 lb of seed
$48 to $100 in materials, 2026 US prices
Buy the high end. Bags come in 3, 7, 10, 20 and 50 lb sizes, so round up to the next bag: 20 lb minimum.
How to measure a lawn
Everything in lawn care is priced per 1,000 square feet, so the first job is a decent area number. Pace it or tape it: length times width for each roughly rectangular section, added together, minus the beds, patio and driveway. A typical suburban front lawn is 1,500 to 3,000 square feet, a back lawn 2,000 to 6,000. If you have a survey or a property listing, the lot size minus the house footprint gets you close, and Google Maps' measure tool is accurate to a few percent for an irregular shape.
The calculator takes length and width, or the total if you already know it, and converts every product into an amount for your lawn. Seed and fertilizer rates are given per 1,000 square feet in the tables below; the tool multiplies by your area divided by 1,000. Sod is sold by the pallet, and the tool adds 10 percent for cuts around curves and edges before rounding up to whole pallets.
Grass seed: how much per 1,000 square feet
Seeding rates vary by a factor of ten between grasses, because seed size does. Kentucky bluegrass seed is tiny, so 2 to 3 pounds covers 1,000 square feet of bare soil. Tall fescue and perennial ryegrass have big seeds and need 8 to 10 pounds. Overseeding an existing lawn takes about half the new-lawn rate, since you are only filling gaps. Warm-season grasses (Bermuda, zoysia, centipede) are mostly established from sod or plugs, and their seed is expensive per pound but goes a long way.
Buy the high end of the range. Germination on a bag is rarely above 90 percent, birds and washouts take a share, and a thin first stand invites weeds. What you should not do is double the rate: crowded seedlings compete, damp off, and produce a weaker lawn than the right amount would have. Check the label for the actual grass and the weed seed percentage, and skip anything with "annual ryegrass" as a major ingredient, which dies after one season.
| Grass | New lawn, lb per 1,000 sq ft | Overseed, lb per 1,000 sq ft | 2026 seed price per lb |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kentucky bluegrass | 2 to 3 | 1 to 1.5 | $6 to $10 |
| Tall fescue | 8 to 10 | 4 to 5 | $3 to $5 |
| Perennial ryegrass | 8 to 10 | 4 to 5 | $3 to $5 |
| Fine fescue | 4 to 5 | 2 to 3 | $4 to $7 |
| Bermuda (hulled) | 1 to 2 | 0.5 to 1 | $8 to $14 |
| Zoysia | 1 to 2 | 0.5 to 1 | $15 to $25 |
| Centipede | 0.5 to 1 | 0.25 to 0.5 | $15 to $25 |
| St. Augustine | sod or plugs only | n/a | n/a |
Sod: pallets, price and the 10 percent
A pallet of sod covers about 450 square feet in most of the country (some farms cut 400 or 500, so ask). The calculator adds 10 percent for waste because every curve, bed edge and sprinkler head costs you a partial roll, and a lawn that is 2 percent short of sod has a very visible bare strip. A 2,000 square foot lawn is therefore 2,200 square feet, or 5 pallets.
Sod prices in 2026 run $150 to $300 per pallet picked up for cool-season blends and Bermuda, $200 to $380 for St. Augustine, and $250 to $450 for zoysia. Delivery adds $50 to $150. Installed by a crew, add $1 to $2 per square foot on top of the material, which is why professionally sodded lawns land at $1.50 to $3 per square foot all in. The material is the cheap part; the labor and the soil prep are not.
Sod is alive and shipped on a pallet with no light or water. Order for the morning you plan to lay it, have the ground prepped, raked and moist before the truck arrives, and get it down the same day. Sod that sits on a pallet in July for 24 hours is compost.
Fertilizer: the 1 pound of nitrogen rule
Lawn fertilizer is applied by nitrogen, not by bag. The standard rate is 1 pound of actual nitrogen per 1,000 square feet per application, and the first number on the bag is the percentage of nitrogen by weight. So a 24-0-6 is 24 percent nitrogen, and it takes 1 divided by 0.24, or 4.2 pounds of product, to put down a pound of nitrogen on 1,000 square feet. A 10-10-10 takes 10 pounds to do the same job. The calculator handles that division for the common analyses.
Bag labels that say "covers 5,000 sq ft" are working from the same rule, and they are usually right, but they assume you set the spreader correctly. Weigh out the calculated amount for your lawn, spread it in two passes at half rate crossing each other, and you cannot really overdo it. Going past 1 pound of nitrogen in a single application burns cool-season grass in summer and pushes soft growth that disease loves. Three or four applications a year, spaced six to eight weeks apart in the growing season, is the whole program for most lawns.
| Bag analysis | Nitrogen | Lb of product per 1,000 sq ft for 1 lb N | Lb for a 5,000 sq ft lawn |
|---|---|---|---|
| 32-0-4 | 32% | 3.1 | 15.6 |
| 29-0-4 | 29% | 3.4 | 17.2 |
| 24-0-6 | 24% | 4.2 | 20.8 |
| 16-4-8 | 16% | 6.3 | 31.3 |
| 10-10-10 | 10% | 10.0 | 50.0 |
| 5-5-5 (organic) | 5% | 20.0 | 100.0 |
Seed or sod?
Seed is a tenth of the cost and gives you the exact variety you want, but it takes a season to become a lawn you can use and needs daily watering for the first three weeks. Sod is a lawn the day it goes down and holds a slope that seed would wash off, at $1.50 to $3 per square foot installed against 10 to 30 cents for seed. For a new build with bare dirt and kids, sod the back and seed the front. For a patchy but mostly intact lawn, overseed in early fall (cool-season) or late spring (warm-season) and save the sod budget for the beds.
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Design my backyardFrequently asked questions
How much grass seed do I need for 1,000 square feet?⌄
For a new lawn on bare soil: 2 to 3 pounds of Kentucky bluegrass, 8 to 10 pounds of tall fescue or perennial ryegrass, 4 to 5 pounds of fine fescue, 1 to 2 pounds of Bermuda or zoysia. Overseeding an existing lawn takes about half those amounts. Buy the high end of the range and do not double it.
How many square feet does a pallet of sod cover?⌄
Usually 450 square feet, though some farms cut 400 or 500 square foot pallets, so confirm before ordering. Add 10 percent for waste from cutting around curves and edges. A 2,000 square foot lawn needs 2,200 square feet of sod, which is 5 pallets at 450 each.
How much does it cost to sod a lawn in 2026?⌄
Material is $150 to $450 per pallet depending on the grass, or roughly 35 to 90 cents per square foot picked up. Installed by a crew, including grading and soil prep, expect $1.50 to $3 per square foot, so $3,000 to $6,000 for a 2,000 square foot lawn. Seeding the same lawn professionally is $600 to $1,500.
How much fertilizer per 1,000 square feet?⌄
Enough to deliver 1 pound of nitrogen. Divide 1 by the nitrogen percentage on the bag: a 24-0-6 needs 4.2 pounds per 1,000 square feet, a 10-10-10 needs 10 pounds, a 5-5-5 organic needs 20 pounds. Apply three or four times a year during active growth, never more than 1 pound of nitrogen at once.
When is the best time to seed a lawn?⌄
Early fall for cool-season grasses (bluegrass, fescue, ryegrass): the soil is warm, the air is cooling and weeds are done for the year. Late spring, once soil is above 65°F, for warm-season grasses (Bermuda, zoysia, centipede). Spring seeding of cool-season grass works but fights crabgrass and summer heat, so expect a thinner result.