Soil, dirt and topsoil are sold by the cubic yard
Almost every soil or dirt estimate comes down to the same three numbers: the area you are covering, the depth you want, and whether you are buying screened soil, cheap fill, or a compost blend. Loose material is sold by volume — the cubic yard — and sometimes by weight, in tons. Get the volume right and ordering is straightforward; get it wrong and you either make a second trip or leave a heap of soil sitting in the driveway. Both are avoidable with one division.
This is the soil and dirt calculator for all of it: a low spot in the yard, a raised bed, a new lawn, or the backfill behind a wall. The arithmetic is identical in every case — only the product and the depth change.
How to calculate cubic yards of dirt
Volume is area times depth, with one conversion to keep the units honest:
cubic feet = length (ft) × width (ft) × depth (in) ÷ 12
cubic yards = cubic feet ÷ 27
There is a shortcut worth memorising, because it does both steps at once: one cubic yard covers 324 square feet at one inch deep. Divide your square footage by 324 and multiply by the depth in inches, and you have cubic yards directly. That single number is the whole trick behind every dirt calculator, dirt estimator and cubic-yard soil calculator you have ever used.
When the area is irregular, split it into rectangles and circles, work each out, and add them up. A border that wraps around a bed is either one shape or two — decide before you measure, not after the second delivery arrives.
Three worked examples
Filling a 20 × 10 ft low spot, 6 inches deep
Area 200 sq ft; depth 6 ÷ 12 = 0.5 ft.
- Volume: 200 × 0.5 = 100 cu ft
- Cubic yards: 100 ÷ 27 = 3.7 cu yd
- Weight at 1.3 tons/yd³: about 4.8 tons
A 4 × 8 ft raised bed, 12 inches deep
The standard kitchen bed, filled to the top.
- Volume: 4 × 8 × 1 = 32 cu ft
- Cubic yards: 1.2 cu yd
- Weight: about 1.5 tons, half a pickup load
Backfilling a 30 × 3 ft trench, 18 inches deep
- Volume: 30 × 3 × 1.5 = 135 cu ft
- Cubic yards: 5 cu yd
- Weight: about 6.5 tons, a full delivery rather than a bag job
Notice how fast the tonnage climbs. Soil is heavy enough that anything past about two cubic yards stops being a wheelbarrow project and becomes a delivery, which is why the weight column matters as much as the volume.
Coverage at a glance
| Depth | 1 cubic yard covers | A 10-yard delivery covers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 in | 324 sq ft | 3,240 sq ft |
| 2 in | 162 sq ft | 1,620 sq ft |
| 3 in | 108 sq ft | 1,080 sq ft |
| 4 in | 81 sq ft | 810 sq ft |
| 6 in | 54 sq ft | 540 sq ft |
| 12 in | 27 sq ft | 270 sq ft |
Read it the other way and it becomes a check on any quote: a cubic yard covering 200 square feet is a half-inch layer, not two inches. Spread thin, a yard of soil goes a surprisingly long way; spread deep, it disappears fast.
Fill dirt, topsoil or compost blend?
The word soil on a delivery docket is a label, not a specification, and the three products are not interchangeable.
- Fill dirt is mineral subsoil with almost no organic matter. Its one job is changing grade: filling a hollow, raising a low corner, or building a base under a patio or shed. It does not grow plants, and it compacts hard.
- Topsoil is the dark, biologically active layer that plants actually root in. Screened topsoil is what goes on top of fill dirt, or into any bed you intend to plant.
- Compost blends mix topsoil with organic matter to hold water and feed the soil, and are worth the upcharge for beds but usually wasted on a lawn that will be fed anyway.
The right sequence for a level-and-plant job is fill dirt first to set the grade, then 4 to 6 inches of topsoil to grow into. Buying topsoil to do a fill-dirt job is simply paying more for the same volume.
How deep should the soil be?
Depth is set by the job, and it is the number people get wrong most often — usually too little for beds, and too much for a top-dressing.
| Task | Depth |
|---|---|
| Filling low spots and ruts (fill dirt) | Match the surrounding grade |
| Base under a patio, shed or driveway (fill dirt) | Compacted in 2–4 in lifts |
| Top-dressing an existing lawn | 1/4–1/2 in per pass |
| New lawn from seed or sod (topsoil) | 4–6 in |
| Planting beds and borders (topsoil) | 6–8 in |
| Raised vegetable beds (blend) | 8–12 in |
Two rows cause most of the trouble. Top-dressing more than about half an inch at a time smothers the grass you are trying to help. And building a bed as a thin layer over compacted clay looks fine for a month, then the roots hit the barrier underneath and the plants stall in the first hot spell.
Ordering: tons, truckloads and settling
Loose soil settles 10 to 20 percent as air pockets collapse and organic matter breaks down, and a raised bed can drop several inches in its first season. Order the calculated volume plus about 15 percent, and expect to top up the following spring.
Weight is the other constraint. Screened topsoil runs roughly 1.2 tons per cubic yard and the general fill this calculator assumes about 1.3, but wet soil is 20 to 30 percent heavier again. A dump truck runs out of legal payload before it runs out of volume, which is why a large order splits into several loads even when the arithmetic says one truck would fit. For planning, assume about 6 to 8 cubic yards per load unless the supplier says otherwise.
Loose material is measured as it is loaded, so a yard scooped from a loader bucket can be appreciably under. Buy by the stated volume or weight, and ask for it dropped on a tarp or a hard surface — a heap of soil left on grass kills the patch beneath it within a fortnight.
Where dirt estimates go wrong
- Mixing feet and inches. A 6-inch depth entered as 6 feet multiplies the answer by twelve. Any calculator will cheerfully do this for you; only you can catch it.
- Ordering for area instead of volume. Two inches sounds shallow, but two inches across 1,000 sq ft is over six cubic yards, a serious delivery.
- Using dry density on wet soil. A 20 to 30 percent weight difference is easily enough to overload a truck.
- Layering over compacted ground. Break up the subsoil first; good soil on a bad base is still a bad bed.
- Forgetting the settling allowance where the surface must finish level. Grass, a graded path and a raised bed all settle, so plan for it.
Tools for moving and placing soil
Loose soil is sold by volume but moved by hand, and a cubic yard is heavier than it looks. These are the tools that filling a low spot, a bed or a trench actually calls for.
- Round-point shovel — Fill dirt and topsoil are moved a shovel at a time. A round point loads loose soil cleanly, where a flat spade is for cutting an edge rather than lifting.
- Wheelbarrow — The page counts wheelbarrows per cubic yard for a reason: a yard is six to ten barrow loads depending on the tray, and most soil work is carried that way.
- Hand tamper — Fill dirt compacted in 2 to 4 inch lifts holds the grade it was placed at. Loose soil under a shed pad or low spot settles and drops the surface above it.
- Heavy-duty tarp — A tarp keeps a delivery off the driveway and gives you somewhere to blend a compost mix with the soil before it goes in the ground.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The links above are affiliate links — if you buy through one, the price you pay is unchanged and a small commission helps keep these calculators free. Tools are listed because the job calls for them, not because of commission rates.
Sources and standards
Where these figures come from
Every formula on this page is computed from the published reference material below rather than copied from another calculator.
- National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association — Our Products — how aggregate, sand and fill are graded and sold by volume and by weight.
- US EPA — Composting At Home — organic matter, compost blends and improving soil structure.
- USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service — soil texture classes, bulk density and soil survey data.
Figures, formulas and reference tables last verified: 29 September 2026.