By the YardQuote Team · Updated April 2026
YardQuote vs LMN: Honest Comparison for Landscaping Businesses
LMN (now under the Granum brand) gets recommended a lot in landscaping Facebook groups, and for good reason — their budget-based estimating is seriously thorough. If you want to know your exact cost per man-hour on a mulch install including fuel, equipment depreciation, and overhead allocation, LMN will get you there. But there's a catch: all that detail comes with complexity and a price tag that starts at roughly $197/month.
We've heard from a lot of landscapers who tried LMN, loved the concept, but found themselves spending more time inputting data than actually doing landscape work. That's not an LMN failing — that's a fit problem. (If you're still exploring, our landscaping software guide covers all the major options.) So let's figure out which camp you fall into.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | YardQuote | LMN |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | Free ($0/mo) | ~$197/mo (Essential) |
| Full Plan | $29/mo (Pro) | ~$357/mo (Professional) |
| Core Strength | Speed — fast proposals from your phone | Depth — detailed job costing and budgeting |
| Estimating Approach | Template-based, quick-build | Budget-based with full cost breakdown |
| Time Tracking | No | Yes — with budget vs actual comparison |
| Job Costing | No | Yes — this is LMN's bread and butter |
| Setup Time | Minutes | Days to weeks (need to input all your costs) |
| Mobile Experience | Built for phone-first field use | Has mobile app, better on desktop |
| Time to Send Estimate | ~3 minutes on site | 15-30 min (more detailed) |
| Best For | 1-5 person crews, fast turnaround | Companies wanting detailed profitability data |
Speed vs Precision: The Core Tradeoff
This comparison isn't really about "better or worse" — it's about what problem you're trying to solve. LMN wants to help you understand exactly where your money goes on every job. YardQuote wants to help you get the estimate in the client's hands before your competitor does.
With LMN, you build an estimate from the ground up: labor hours at your actual crew rate, material costs with markup, equipment hours factoring in depreciation and fuel, overhead allocation per job. It's genuinely impressive. If you fill all that out, you'll know your exact margin before the client even sees a number. After the job, you compare actual hours and costs against the budget.
The catch? You need to actually input all that data. Your hourly rates, material costs, equipment inventory, overhead percentages — all of it needs to be in the system before you can build your first estimate. For a company with a bookkeeper who can sit down for a few days and set this up, great. For a solo operator who mows 25 lawns a week and does estimates between jobs? That setup process is a wall.
The Pricing Gap Is Bigger Than It Looks
LMN's Essential plan runs about $197/month. Their Professional plan is around $357/month. Text messaging is an add-on ($30/month extra after a $75 setup fee). Annual cost at the entry level: $2,364. YardQuote Pro's annual cost: $348. And there's a free plan if you just need a quote or two a month.
That's a $1,400-$2,000 per year difference. For a crew doing $150K-$300K in revenue, that gap is real money. It's a used mower. It's a month of ads. It's a couple days of paying your guy while it rains.
Now, LMN fans will argue (and they're not wrong) that the detailed job costing pays for itself because you stop underpricing jobs. Fair point. But that assumes you actually use the system consistently. From what we've seen, a lot of small crews buy LMN with good intentions, get through maybe 60% of the setup, and end up using it as a glorified estimate template anyway. At that point you're paying $197/month for something YardQuote does for $29.
When LMN Is Worth the Investment
LMN genuinely shines if you're disciplined about tracking. If you have 3+ crews, you suspect you're losing money on certain job types but can't prove it, and you want to build estimates that guarantee your target margin — LMN's budget-based approach is one of the best in the industry.
Their time tracking tied to job budgets is especially powerful. When your crew logs hours against the estimate, you can see in real time whether a job is on budget or bleeding. If that level of visibility is worth $200-$350/month to you (and for companies doing $500K+ it often is), LMN earns its keep. Mark Bradley's team built something genuinely useful for the industry.
When YardQuote Makes More Sense
If your main problem is "I need to stop hand-writing estimates and texting clients unprofessional photos of paper quotes" — YardQuote solves that today. Not next week after you finish inputting your material costs. Today.
You already know what you charge for a yard cleanup or a weekly mow. You've been doing this long enough that you don't need software to calculate your margin on a $400 mulch job. What you need is a fast, clean way to put that number in front of the customer before they call the next guy on the list. That's the problem we solve, and we do it for $29/month with zero setup friction.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does YardQuote do any kind of job costing?
Not in the way LMN does. You can set your service prices to reflect your costs and desired margins, and we track which estimates get accepted vs declined. But we don't have labor hour tracking, material cost databases, or budget-vs-actual reporting. That's a deliberate choice — we keep the tool focused on getting estimates out fast. If job costing is critical to your operation, LMN is probably the better fit.
I tried LMN and couldn't get through the setup. Is YardQuote really that much simpler?
We hear this a lot, and yes. There's no cost database to populate. You add your services (e.g., "Weekly Mowing - Standard Lot" at $45), maybe upload your logo, and you're sending estimates. Most people send their first real estimate within 10-15 minutes of signing up. The tradeoff is you don't get LMN's depth of analysis — but if you never finished LMN's setup, you weren't getting that analysis anyway.
Can I switch from LMN to YardQuote mid-season?
Absolutely. There's no data migration needed since YardQuote starts fresh with your service list. You can sign up, set up your services in one sitting, and start using it for new estimates the same day. Your existing clients and accepted quotes in LMN stay there — just use YardQuote going forward for new proposals. You might also want to compare us with Jobber, Aspire, Yardbook, HouseCall Pro, and Service Autopilot to round out your research.
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