Select Shape
Optional Cost Calculation
Knowing how to calculate cubic yards is essential when working on landscape projects or handling materials like mulch, fill, gravel, or cement. Getting the correct volume helps you save both money and time. A cubic yards calculator, sometimes called a yardage calculator, makes this process fast, simple, and accurate by automatically converting your measurements into the correct units.
This calculator helps you calculate the total volume of various materials used in containers, garden beds, or large-scale projects. You simply enter your dimensions in US units, such as inches, feet, or yards, or in metric units like centimeters and meters. The tool then automatically converts them into cubic feet, cubic yards, or cubic meters, depending on your needs.
Whether you’re working in ft, in, yd, cm, or m, the cubic yard calculator ensures that every conversion is accurate. For example, if you want to convert cubic inches to cubic yards or determine how many cubic feet are in one cubic yard, this tool gives you the answer instantly.
Another helpful feature is cost estimation. By entering the price per cubic foot, cubic yard, or cubic meter, you can easily calculate the total cost of your materials. This makes budgeting for cement, mulch, or other supplies much simpler.
If you’ve ever wondered how much yardage is needed for a given square foot area, this cubic yard calculator is the ideal solution. It helps you evaluate, find, and convert every volume measurement with accuracy, whether you’re calculating for fill, gravel, or landscape containers.
Before we are going to explain how do you calculate cubic yards, you need to know what a cubic Yard is. A cubic yard is a unit of volume that measures how much space an object or material takes. Imagine a box or cube that is 3 feet high, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet deep. This equals 27 cubic feet and serves as a standard unit in construction. When working with cubic yards of materials like mulch, soil, gravel, or poured concrete, you often need to calculate how much you need.
To do this, you measure the length, width, and depth of your area in feet, then multiply these numbers together and divide by 27 to get the total cubic yards. Using a calculator makes the math easy, helping you buy the correct amount of material for your project. From my experience, understanding this simple unit helps save both time and money on construction or landscaping work.
How Our Cubic Yards Calculator Works
Our Cubic Yards Calculator is a powerful tool designed to simplify how to calculate a cubic yard or volume calculations for construction, landscaping, and DIY projects. Whether you’re ordering materials like mulch, gravel, concrete, or soil, our calculator provides accurate measurements in multiple units with cost estimation features.
Multiple Shape Support
Our calculator supports 9 different shapes, allowing you to calculate the volume for virtually any project type.
Available Shapes:
- Rectangle – for slabs, driveways, and foundations
- Square – for uniform areas
- Circle – for circular pits, holes, or tanks
- Triangle – for wedge-shaped spaces
- Trapezoid – for sloped surfaces or irregular bases
- Annulus – for ring-shaped structures
- Rectangle Border and Circle Border – for hollow or framed sections
- Known Area – directly enter an existing area for quick cubic yard conversion
Each shape has customized inputs so you can calculate volume effortlessly.
Flexible Input Options
Enter the dimensions based on your preference in inches, feet, yards, millimeters, centimeters, or meters.
You can also input:
- Depth (height or thickness) of the material
- Shape-specific dimensions such as radius, diameter, base, height, or border width
- Quantity, if you want to calculate for multiple identical areas
This flexibility ensures accurate results for both small DIY tasks and large-scale construction projects.
Smart Calculating Cubic Yards Process
Step 1: Select Your Shape
Choose from our intuitive shape selector:
- Basic shapes (rectangle, square, circle, triangle)
- Complex shapes (trapezoid, annulus)
- Border calculations (rectangle border, circle border)
- Known area input for irregular shapes
Step 2: Enter Dimensions
- Depth: The height or thickness of material needed
- Shape-specific dimensions: Length, width, diameter, sides, or border widths
- Multiple units: Input in any preferred measurement system
- Quantity: Calculate for multiple identical areas
Step 3: Instant Results
Once you click “Calculate,” the tool automatically computes both volume and area values.
Accurate Volume and Area Results
Volume Outputs:
- Cubic Yards (yd³) – standard for material ordering
- Cubic Feet (ft³) – for smaller projects
- Cubic Meters (m³) – for global or metric use
Area Outputs:
- Square Yards (yd²)
- Square Feet (ft²)
- Square Meters (m²)
Advanced Cost Estimation
Take your calculations a step further with our built-in material cost estimator.
- Enter cost per cubic unit, choose cubic yard, cubic foot, or cubic meter
- Get the instant total cost for your selected material
- Compare prices across different materials to make smarter budget decisions
This helps you plan and manage expenses efficiently before starting your project.
How the Calculations Work
Our calculator for cubic yards uses precise geometric and mathematical formulas to provide highly accurate results for all supported shapes. Each calculation automatically converts your dimensions into cubic yards, cubic feet, and cubic meters for easy comparison.
Each formula ensures that your results are mathematically accurate, whether you’re filling, pouring, or removing material.
Our system then instantly converts the computed volume into:
- Cubic Yards (yd³) – for bulk material orders
- Cubic Feet (ft³) – for smaller-scale tasks
- Cubic Meters (m³) – for metric projects
Frequently Asked Questions
A cubic yard measures volume, not just length, so we’re looking at cubic feet.
1 yard = 3 feet, so a cubic yard is a cube with:
- 3 feet high
- 3 feet wide
- 3 feet deep
To find the volume in cubic feet, multiply:
3 × 3 × 3 = 27
The area that a cubic yard covers depends on the depth of the material you spread. A cubic yard equals 27 cubic feet, so:
- If spread 1 yard deep (3 feet), it covers 1 square yard.
- If spread 6 inches deep (0.5 feet), it covers about 2 square yards.
- If spread 3 inches deep (0.25 feet), it covers about 4 square yards.
For smaller projects, typical coverage examples:
- 10′ x 16′ x 2″ depth
- 9′ x 12′ x 3″ depth
- 9′ x 9′ x 4″ depth
- 7′ x 9′ x 5″ depth
- 6′ x 9′ x 6″ depth
In short, the shallower you spread the material, the more area one cubic yard will cover.
Yes, you can use inches or meters in a cubic yard calculator, but you need to convert them first because a cubic yard is based on feet.
- For inches, divide by 12 to get feet (since 12 inches = 1 foot).
- For meters, multiply by 3.28084 to convert to feet (since 1 meter ≈ is 3.28084 feet).
Once everything is in feet, you can calculate the volume in cubic yards using the usual formula:
Cubic Yards= { Length (ft) × Width (ft) × Depth (ft) } / 27
This lets you buy the right amount of material for your project.
The main difference between square yards and cubic yards is dimension:
- Square yards measure area, which is two-dimensional. For example, a patch of grass that is 3 yards long and 3 yards wide is 9 square yards. It tells you how much surface something covers.
- Cubic yards measure volume, which is three-dimensional. For example, a pile of soil that is 3 yards long, 3 yards wide, and 3 yards deep is 27 cubic feet or 1 cubic yard. It tells you how much space the material occupies.
In short: Square yards = area, Cubic yards = volume. One is flat, the other has depth.