About the Cut and Fill Calculator
This cut and fill calculator estimates how much soil has to be dug out (cut) and brought in or placed (fill) to bring a site to a new grade. It uses the grid or borrow-pit method that surveyors and site contractors use for quick takeoffs: shoot existing elevations at regular grid points, enter the proposed elevation for each point (or one flat pad elevation), and the calculator works out the volume in every grid cell.
It is aimed at builders levelling a house pad, driveway or patio area, landscapers regrading a yard, and estimators checking an earthwork bid. Cells that are partly in cut and partly in fill are split with the standard transition-cell formula instead of simply netting them out, so you see both quantities.
Volumes are bank (in-place) cubic yards. Compacted fill usually needs more bank soil than its final volume, so a shrinkage factor is applied to fill, and the export or import is converted to loose truck volume with a swell factor. Typical factors vary widely by soil type — use values from your geotechnical report when you have one.
With the default inputs, the net earthwork (+ surplus / − shortfall) is 8.1 yd³. Change any value above to recalculate instantly.
How to use the cut and fill calculator
- 1Lay out a regular grid over the area and record the existing elevation at each point.
- 2Paste the elevations row by row, separated by spaces or commas.
- 3Enter one flat proposed elevation or a matching grid of proposed elevations.
- 4Set the grid spacing in each direction.
- 5Adjust shrink and swell for your soil and read the net, cut, fill and haul volumes.
Formula and method
At each grid point the depth is existing minus proposed elevation: positive values are cut and negative values are fill. For a cell whose four corners are all cut (or all fill) the volume is the cell area times the average corner depth, A × Σh ÷ 4. For a transition cell with both cut and fill corners, the standard borrow-pit formulas above split the volume between cut and fill; they reduce to the simple average when one side is zero.
Cell volumes are summed and divided by 27 to get cubic yards. Bank soil needed for fill is the compacted fill × (1 + shrinkage), the net is cut minus that, and the haul volume converts the surplus or shortfall to loose yards with the swell factor.
- A
- Area of one grid cell = dx × dy (sq ft)
- Σc
- Sum of cut depths at the cell corners (ft)
- Σf
- Sum of fill depths at the cell corners, as positive numbers (ft)
Worked examples
40 × 40 ft pad graded to 100.3 ft
The high corner is 0.9 ft above the pad and the low corner 0.7 ft below. Summing the four 400 sq ft cells gives 352.3 ft³ of cut (13.05 yd³) and 122.3 ft³ of fill (4.53 yd³). Fill needs 4.98 yd³ of bank soil, leaving 8.07 yd³ surplus, or about 10.1 loose yd³ to haul off.
Same site with the pad lowered to 100.0 ft
Dropping the pad 0.3 ft turns almost every corner into cut: 26.95 yd³ of cut and only 0.66 yd³ of fill, so roughly 32.8 loose yd³ must be exported.
75 × 50 ft sloping lot (4 × 3 grid at 25 ft) levelled to 50.0 ft
Six 625 sq ft cells give 48.8 yd³ of cut on the high side and 12.9 yd³ of fill on the low side. With 15% shrinkage the fill uses 14.8 yd³ of the cut, leaving about 34 bank yd³ to export.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate cut and fill?+
Divide the site into a grid, find the depth of cut or fill at each grid point (existing minus proposed elevation), multiply each cell’s area by its average corner depth, and add up the cells. Divide cubic feet by 27 for cubic yards.
What is the difference between bank, loose and compacted yards?+
Bank yards are soil in its natural place. Excavated soil swells into more loose yards for trucking, and when placed and compacted as fill it usually ends up smaller than its bank volume. Shrink and swell factors convert between them.
What shrink and swell factors should I use?+
They depend on soil type and compaction: common clays and loams often swell 20–40% when dug and shrink 10–20% when compacted, while rock swells much more. A geotechnical report gives site-specific values.
What grid spacing should I use?+
Smaller grids give more accurate volumes on uneven ground. 10–25 ft spacing is typical for residential sites; use closer points where the ground changes slope sharply or along cut and fill boundaries.
What does a balanced site mean?+
A balanced site is graded so the soil cut on site supplies all the fill needed, with no import or export. Adjusting the pad elevation slightly up or down is the usual way to reach balance and save trucking costs.