Cut and fill calculator
These are in-place volumes from the average depths you enter — a pricing and planning estimate, not a survey. Real ground swells when cut and settles when filled, and unsuitable material can change the balance entirely. This tool does not design the grade or judge what soil is fit to reuse; confirm both on site.
Enter the area and an average cut depth and fill depth, and the tool works out how much soil comes off, how much goes on, and the net — the surplus you truck away or the shortfall you have to import. A density in the last field turns that net into a tonnage for the haulage.
Exemple détaillé
A pad 60 ft × 40 ft is 2,400 square feet. At an average cut of 0.5 ft that is 1,200 cubic feet cut, and at 0.3 ft fill it is 720 cubic feet fill. The net is 480 cubic feet of surplus, or 480 ÷ 27 ≈ 17.8 yd³ to export. At 1.5 tons per yard that is about 26.7 tons off site (13.6 m³).
In metric: a pad 18 m × 12 m is 216 m². An average cut of 0.15 m is 32.4 m³ cut, and 0.09 m of fill is 19.44 m³ fill. The net is 12.96 m³ to export (about 17 yd³); at 1.8 tonnes per cubic metre that is about 23.3 tonnes off site.
Sur le chantier
Getting the average depth honestly. Shoot the pad on a grid — every 10 or 20 ft — and note cut or fill at each stake against the finished grade. (On a metric job, every 3 or 5 m.) The average of the cut stakes is the cut depth, the average of the fill stakes is the fill depth, and the area each covers is the area you type. A pad that reads 0.2, 0.6, 0.8 and 0.4 at its four corners is 0.5 ft average — but four stakes is a rough pad; sixteen is a takeoff.
Fill shrinks. Cut material placed and compacted takes up less room than it did in the ground. If the geotech's figure is 15% shrink, every compacted yard of fill needs 1 ÷ 0.85 = 1.18 bank yards of cut. The 720 ft³ of fill in the example wants 847 ft³ of cut, so the true surplus is 1,200 − 847 = 353 ft³ = 13.1 yd³, not 17.8. Order trucks on 17.8 and the last one leaves half empty.
Balancing the pad. If the net comes out as export, the finished grade can come up a little until cut matches fill and nothing leaves the site. On the example, raising the grade 0.1 ft turns 0.5 cut / 0.3 fill into 0.4 / 0.4 — zero net — and saves the haul. Whether the drawings let you is the designer's call; the arithmetic is yours.
What went wrong?
Quick referencefor grading
- Net
- cut − fill · positive = export · negative = import
- Cut needed for a fill
- compacted fill ÷ (1 − shrink) — the shrink is the soil report's
- Haul volume
- bank × (1 + swell)
- One foot of depth
- over 100 ft² = 3.7 yd³ · over 1,000 ft² = 37 yd³ · over an acre = 1,613 yd³
- Tenths to inches
- 0,1 ft = 1,2 in · 0,25 ft = 3 in · 0,5 ft = 6 in
- Metric depth
- 100 mm over 100 m² = 10 m³ · 1 m³ = 1.31 yd³ · 1 yd³ = 0.765 m³
Waste & overagewhat to add, and why
- Balance a site with a margin, not to the yard: crews aim to finish slightly in cut (a few percent) because trucking in fill at the end is dearer than trucking out spoil, and fill compacts down 10–20% from loose.
- Bank yards on the cut side, compacted yards on the fill side — if you type a density, use the bank density for the cut tonnage and expect the fill to take more loose material than the net shows.
Mistakes to catchbefore you order
- Averaging the depths by eye across a sloped site — take a grid of shots and average those, or the net will be off by the same fraction your guess was.
- Typing cut and fill depths in inches when the tool is set to feet; a 6 in average cut typed as 6 ft is a twelve-fold export.
- Forgetting the topsoil strip: it is cut that never becomes fill, and it comes off before the balance is worked.
What an inspector looks forthe municipal grading inspector, and a geotechnical engineer on an engineered site
On this part of the job
- Finished grades against the approved grading plan, at the spot elevations it gives, and that surface water still drains where the plan says.
- Fill placed in lifts and compacted, on a stripped and prepared subgrade — fill dumped over topsoil or over stumps is the classic fail.
- The quality of imported fill, and that no deleterious material has been buried on site.
- Slopes left at a stable angle, with erosion control in place before the weather tests them.
- Drainage away from the building, and that a swale on the plan actually exists on the ground.
Have this ready
- The approved grading plan with the spot elevations.
- Compaction test reports for structural fill.
- Benchmarks still standing and findable.
Every figure an inspector measures against comes from the code your jurisdiction has adopted, the stamped drawing, or the manufacturer's printed instructions — so none of them are printed here. Look the number up in your own book, type it into the tool, and the arithmetic is yours.
La formule
net = (area × cut) − (area × fill)
Each volume is the area times an average depth. Subtracting the fill from the cut leaves the balance: positive means the cut makes more soil than the fill needs, so it leaves site; negative means the fill is hungrier than the cut, so soil must come in. Divide cubic feet by 27 for cubic yards; in metric, square metres times metres of depth is already cubic metres.
Questions
- How do I calculate cut and fill?
- Multiply the area by the average cut depth to get the cut volume, and by the average fill depth to get the fill volume. Subtract fill from cut and the sign tells the story: a positive net is surplus soil to export, a negative net is a shortfall you have to bring in. This tool does both volumes and the balance for you.
- What does a balanced site mean?
- It means the cut and the fill are equal, so the soil you dig out is exactly what you need to build up — no soil leaves or arrives, which saves haulage both ways. A net near zero here is a balanced grade. In practice swell, compaction and unsuitable material shift it, so treat a balance as a target, not a guarantee.
- Do I use average depths?
- Yes — this is the average-depth method, which is quick and good enough for pricing and rough earthworks. You supply one representative cut depth and one fill depth over the area. For a site with wildly varying levels, break it into zones, run each through the tool, and add the results, or move up to a grid or cross-section takeoff.
- Does this account for soil swell and compaction?
- Not on its own — the volumes are in-place (bank) figures. Cut soil swells when dug and fill soil compacts when placed, so the real haul and the real fill quantities differ from the bank numbers. Use the density field for a tonnage, and lean on the excavation tool when you need the loose, hauled volume.
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