Is free lawn care software actually free? Yardbook, TurfHop and LawnPro compared

Upfront disclosure: I build Sorvius, which is paid software for home-service businesses. So read this with that in mind. I’ve tried to be straight about where these free tools genuinely beat what I sell — and there are places where they do. If you just want the free recommendation and nothing else, skip to the last section.

There are three real free options in lawn care software right now: Yardbook, TurfHop, and LawnPro’s Solo plan. Not trials. Not “free for 14 days.” Actually free, indefinitely.

That’s unusual. Most software categories have a free tier that’s a demo in disguise — three customers, then a paywall. These are not that. You can run a small lawn business on any of them without paying, and thousands of operators do.

So the honest question isn’t “is it real?” It’s “what does free actually cost you?” Because it always costs something, and the price is rarely money.

What you actually get

	Yardbook	TurfHop	LawnPro Solo
Free plan	Yes, indefinitely	Yes, indefinitely	Yes, indefinitely
Customer management	✅	✅	✅
Scheduling	✅	✅	✅
Invoicing	✅	✅	✅
Card / ACH payments	✅	✅	✅
Route optimization	✅ (basic)	✅	Limited
Lot measurement	✅	—	Paid add-on (DeepLawn)
Chemical / application tracking	✅	—	—
Job costing	—	✅ (actual vs estimated)	—
Users included	Unlimited ⚠	1	1
Ads in the product	Yes	No	No
First paid tier	$34.99/mo	$39/mo	$39/mo ($29 annual)

Yardbook is the most generous free product in this category, full stop. CRM, scheduling, invoicing, routing, lot measurement, and chemical tracking, at no cost, with no per-user fee — a five-person crew pays the same as a solo operator, which is genuinely rare. If your problem is “I’m running my schedule out of my head and a notebook,” Yardbook solves that this afternoon for $0. I’d recommend it to someone in that position without hesitating.

TurfHop’s free tier is narrower but includes actual-vs-estimated job costing, which is unusual to give away. If you’re trying to work out which jobs are actually making you money, that’s a real tool.

LawnPro Solo is the most limited of the three — one user, capped records — and is best understood as the on-ramp to their $39/mo Startup plan.

Where “free” has a price

1. Ads

Yardbook shows advertising inside the product. Removing them requires the Enterprise plan at $49.99/mo — the top tier. That’s a legitimate business model and the software is still a bargain, but be clear about the trade: your daily working tool has someone else’s marketing in it, and the way out is the most expensive plan.

2. You may not be able to leave

This is the one that matters most and the one nobody mentions.

As of April 2026, Yardbook does not offer a public API. ⚠ There’s no supported way to pipe your data into another tool, no way to bolt on a third-party booking system, and no integration path if you later need one. Your customer list, your schedule, and your history live inside a product you don’t control and can’t connect to anything.

For a business whose entire value is its customer list, that’s not a small thing. Ask any tool you’re considering — free or paid — two questions before you commit:

• Can I export everything, including customers, jobs, and history?
• Is there an API or a webhook?

If the answer to both is no, you’re not choosing software. You’re choosing a landlord.

3. The upgrade trigger is where the real pricing lives

Free tiers are designed around a moment where you have to pay. Know where yours is before you build your business on it:

• Yardbook → GPS tracking, customer engagement tools, multi-step programs (Business, $34.99), QuickBooks sync and ad removal (Enterprise, $49.99)
• TurfHop → a second user (Solo, $39; Team, $119)
• LawnPro → basically anything past a single user (Startup, $39/mo or $29 billed annually)

Notice that TurfHop and LawnPro both charge at your first hire. If you’re planning to add a person next season, you’re on a $39–119/mo product with an extra step, not a free one.

4. Support is what you’d expect

Free software has free support: forums, docs, email when they get to it. That’s a fair trade at $0. It’s worth knowing before it’s April, your schedule is broken, and you have eleven lawns to cut.

What none of them do

Here’s the thing that surprised me when I went through all three properly.

All of these are back-office tools. They’re built to help you manage work you’ve already won — schedule it, route it, invoice it, track what it cost you. They’re good at that, and Yardbook in particular is remarkably good at it for free.

None of them puts a price in front of a customer on your website.

Yardbook has no native 24/7 self-scheduling calendar ⚠, and with no public API you can’t add one from elsewhere either. TurfHop’s free plan is built around you building quotes, not a homeowner getting one. LawnPro has a client login widget on its paid tiers — a portal for existing customers, not a way for a new one to get a price and book.

So the flow for a new customer is the same on all three, and it’s the same flow you have now:

Homeowner finds your site at 9pm → fills in a contact form → waits → you see it in the morning → you call → maybe you drive out → you text a price that night → they’ve already hired whoever answered first.

That’s not a criticism of the software. It’s just not what the software is for. But it’s worth being clear-eyed that adopting any of these makes your admin faster without changing anything about how you get customers in the first place.

So which should you use?

Use Yardbook if you’re solo or a small crew, you need scheduling, invoicing and routing, you’re currently running on paper or a spreadsheet, and you don’t mind ads. It’s the best free product in the category and it isn’t close. Just export your data periodically so you’re never trapped.

Use TurfHop if job profitability is the thing you’re trying to figure out, and you’re a single operator for now.

Use LawnPro if you expect to be on a paid plan soon anyway and want to grow into one product — their $39 tier is competitive with the rest of the market.

Consider paying for something if your bottleneck isn’t admin. If you’re already organized and the problem is that leads go cold before you can quote them, no amount of back-office software fixes that — because that’s not the job it does.

That last case is the one I built Sorvius for: an instant-quote and booking button that goes on your own website, so a homeowner gets a price and books at 9pm without waiting for you. It’s $39/mo and it does none of the things Yardbook does. Plenty of people run both, which is honestly the setup I’d suggest — keep the free tool for the back office, add a front door.

But if you’re just starting out and you need to get organized? Go install Yardbook. It’s free, it’s good, and you can read the rest of my site later.

Last verified July 2026. Pricing and features change — check the vendors’ own pages before deciding.