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Topsoil Calculator Guide
Volume of topsoil from your area and depth, in cubic yards, tons and bags — plus the bulk-versus-bagged comparison that usually decides it.
Cubic feet = area × depth ÷ 12 · cubic yards = cubic feet ÷ 27
500 sq ft at 3in deep = 125 cu ft = 4.63 cubic yards ≈ 5.1 tons at 1.1 tons/yd³.
Bagged Soil Is Wildly More Expensive
Run the two cost lines above against each other. Bagged topsoil routinely costs several times what the same volume costs delivered in bulk — you're paying for the plastic, the handling and the convenience.
The crossover is around one cubic yard. Below that, bags win because a bulk delivery has a minimum and a delivery fee. Above it, bags stop making sense fast: 4.6 cubic yards is around 167 bags, which is a pallet you have to lift twice.
"Topsoil" Is Not a Regulated Term
It means whatever the seller wants it to mean. It can be genuine screened loam, or it can be subsoil with a bit of compost stirred in, or fill dirt from a construction site with weed seed and building rubble in it.
Ask whether it's screened and what it's screened to. Ask where it came from. Cheap topsoil that arrives full of couch grass roots will cost you years of weeding, and you cannot un-spread it.
Depth Depends Entirely on the Job
Top-dressing an existing lawn wants ¼–½in at a time — any more and you smother the grass you're trying to help. Establishing a new lawn wants 4–6in of decent soil. Vegetable beds want 12in or more, because roots go deeper than people expect.
More is not automatically better. Piling topsoil against tree trunks or over existing roots suffocates them, and a deep layer over compacted clay just makes a bathtub.
Soil Settles
Freshly spread topsoil drops noticeably in the first season as it settles and the organic content breaks down. Spreading to your exact finished level means being slightly low by spring.
Order 10–15% more than the arithmetic if the final level matters — around a patio edge, for instance, where a settled dip is obvious and annoying.
Weight Is a Real Constraint
A cubic yard of topsoil is roughly a ton, and wet soil is heavier. A modest pickup is legally over its payload with less than a cubic yard in the bed, and most people who "just fetch it themselves" are overloaded and don't know it.
Related: raised bed soil calculator, mulch calculator, cubic yard calculator.
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