Cubic Yard Calculator
Soil, gravel, mulch and concrete all sell by the cubic yard. Measure your area in feet, your depth in inches, and this works out how much you're ordering.
Split the area into rectangles, run each one, and add the yards — same trick as the square footage calculator. For a circle, use 3.14 × radius² as the square footage, then depth as usual.
How this is calculated
Cubic yards = (length ft × width ft × depth ft) ÷ 27. Depth usually gets measured in inches, so divide inches by 12 first: a 10 × 10 ft bed at 3 inches is 10 × 10 × 0.25 = 25 cubic feet, and 25 ÷ 27 ≈ 0.93 cubic yards.
27 is because a cubic yard is 3 ft × 3 ft × 3 ft.
Common questions
How much does a cubic yard cover?
One cubic yard covers 324 square feet at 1 inch deep — divide 324 by your depth in inches. At 3 inches, that's about 108 square feet per yard.
How heavy is a cubic yard?
Depends on the material: mulch runs roughly 400–800 lb, topsoil about 1,500–2,200 lb, and gravel or sand 2,400–3,000 lb. A half-ton pickup genuinely can't take a yard of gravel — plan on delivery.
Should I order extra?
Ordering 5–10% extra covers settling and uneven ground. For mulch, err high; for concrete, calculate carefully and round up — a short pour is a much worse problem than a small surplus.
Part of MeasureTwiceMath — free construction and DIY calculators. Estimates only; measure your own project.