The Best Tools to Measure Lawn Size Online

Knowing your exact lawn size will mean you know exactly how much grass seed, fertilizer, pre-emergent, lime, and other products you need to spread in each section of your lawn. That saves you money by giving your lawn all the nutrients it needs without wasting anything. Measuring your lawn may sound confusing or complicated, but there are ways to measure lawn size online that will simplify the task and help you ensure you’re using the correct amount of product to keep your lawn healthy and green.

That said, it can still be confusing for lawn care novices who are not sure where to start.

In this article, I’ll go over some of the best tools to measure lawn size that you can find online. At the end, I’ll let you know which tool I consider to be the best and most effective for you to try (good news, it’s free!).

Let’s get started.

Why You Should Measure Your Lawn

Whenever you buy a bag of product for your lawn, you will see that it states approximately how much square footage of ground it will be able to cover.

That’s great, but only if you know what size your lawn actually is … otherwise you’re guessing.

It’s important that you buy enough product to cover your lawn, but over-applying can burn your grass or alter your soil’s chemistry in a way that can permanently damage your lawn.

Measuring your lawn ahead of time allows you to buy right (and save a second trip to the store), and apply right (ensuring you’re cutting costs and not wasting product or damaging your grass).

5 Reliable Tools to Measure Lawn Size Online

The five online lawn size measurement tools I like and suggest you try are:

• LawnChick’s Lawn Size Calculator (you’re already here, give it a try!)
• Measure My Lawn
• Google Maps
• Planimeter, and
• Global Syn-Turf.

I’ll explain how each works and which I like most (and why) below.

My Lawn Size Calculator

After becoming frustrated with some of the shortcomings of other tools, I decided to hire a developer to create exactly what I wanted.

My Lawn Size Calculator (which leverages the Google Maps API and satellite imagery to allow you to measure your lawn accurately) has some functions and features that set it apart from anything else currently found online, including:

• The ability to save your lawn map and have a private link emailed to you so you don’t have to re-created your lawn map again and again.
• A dynamic fertilizer recommendation with the exact number of bags you’ll need to purchase to cover the property you’ve mapped.
• The ability to map individual lawn areas (front yard, back yard, side yard, etc.) as part of a single lawn measurement/map … so you can spread your products with greater accuracy.
• The option to highlight and subtract floating outbuildings, garden beds, patios, driveways, etc. from your square footage total to save time and money by accurately measuring your lawn’s size.

My tool is brand new, free to use, and I hope you’ll check it out and give it a try by clicking right here.

Here’s a demonstration of how you can map out a section of your property for a precise measurement:

And here’s a quick demonstration about how you can highlight and subtract any area of your mapped yard (in this case, subtracting the square footage of an outbuilding):

You can give my free tool a try right here.

Measure My Lawn

This online tool lets you quickly and easily calculate your lawn’s square footage. This is accomplished through the use of satellite maps from Google.

If you’re planning a lawn care treatment or major project, like laying new sod, Measure My Lawn is a valuable tool that allows you to quickly measure the square footage of different sections of your property so you know exactly how much product you’ll need for each part of your lawn.

Measure My Lawn is also free to use, which I love.

Google Maps

Did you know you can use the distance measuring function in Google Maps to measure the size of your lawn? To do this, you just need to follow a few easy steps:

• First, look up the property address on Google Maps to bring up a bird’s eye view of your land.
• After that, select a starting point. You can do this by right-clicking on the point from which you’d like to start.
• Then select Measure Distance. You can now use clicks to trace around the area of your lawn that you want to measure, using the left button on your mouse.
• Keep doing this until you are back at the starting point. If it’s especially important for you to get a really precise reading, you’re able to add further marks after you are done with this.
• Next, you can adjust the form. Click on the measuring line at any point, and then move the mark.

Once you have done all of this, read the information about area size. It will also list the distance or length of the line that is drawn in.

The value you are given will provide a general picture of the amount of boundary wire you’ll require for your project, if that is necessary.

Using Google Maps in this way to find out the size of your lawn is especially useful. It’s necessary for people who are planning to use a robot mower.

Planimeter

Planimeter is a tool for measuring field area and land surveying. With this tool, you will be able to measure perimeter, distance, angle, bearing, and even GPS coordinates, if you need them. You will be able to view these qualities in a variety of formats on Google Maps. With Planimeter, you’ll be able to save, label, edit, and view your measurements. You can also share them as screenshots and KML data files.

Planimeter is popular with gardeners because of how it makes it easy to do landscape planning, lawn mowing and general care, grass seeding, and fencing. It is easy to download and use. It comes at a small fee of $2.99.

Global Syn-Turf

With the Global Syn-Turf app, you can measure not only your lawn but also things as small as your deck or patio. Like other apps, you can use this one on any desktop, laptop, tablet, or cell phone.

This app can be downloaded and used for free, and you can use it as often as you like. It’s also possible to save your information on file, so you can refer back to it later.

In my experience this app is intuitive, and very easy to use. All you need to do is provide your address and then indicate your lawn on a Google map. Once you’ve done that, you’ll find out the size of your lot (or smaller sub-sections of your lawn (like the front yard, the back yard, the side yard, etc.) on the screen. I like that it’s possible for you to outline several different areas of your property for this reason … I always find it easier to apply product to sections of your lawn vs. the entire lawn all at once with one hopper of product.

The Global Syn-Turf app allows you to search for unlimited addresses and you have unlimited access. You don’t even have to sign up to use the app, which I like as well.

My Pick for the Best Tool to Measure Lawn Size Online

When it comes to convenience and ease of use, the Global Syn-Turf app has historically been my recommendation, but now that I’ve created my own tool (with some improvements), I suggest you start right here on this site.

After these, Google Maps is probably a close third. That said, there’s some limited functionality when you compare Google Maps to other tools specifically created for lawn measurement.

For now try my lawn size calculator and create a saved map to come back to any time, or try the Global Syn-Turf app for free and decide for yourself which you prefer.

I think you’ll find either tool helpful.