Free online measuring tool for any U.S. property. See satellite imagery of an address and trace boundaries to get square footage or linear feet.
Free instant results · No signup required
Total lot area: trace your full boundary and read square footage and acreage. Individual features: paint the grass, driveway, patio, and garden beds in separate categories, and each surface is tallied on its own. That's the number you need for fertilizer rates, sealcoating quotes, and paver orders.
Linear distances: the tape measure mode drops points on the map and reads the distance between them, which is how you get fence perimeter in linear feet or the distance between any two points on your property. And because you're painting cells rather than drawing formulas, custom shapes, corner lots, cutouts, curved beds, measure just as easily as rectangles.
Enter an address and LotSite centers high-resolution satellite imagery on the property, with a measuring grid overlaid. Each cell a known number of square feet. You identify what you're measuring from the visible features: the lawn edge, the driveway seam, the fence line.
Then you paint. Pick a category, grass, driveway, patio, garden, and tap or drag across the cells that belong to it. The area calculation is automatic: totals update in real time as you paint, per category and overall. Made a mistake? Erase or undo and keep going. Switch to tape measure mode for straight-line distances.
The imagery viewing and tracing take a couple of minutes; the math takes none. Try it in the measurement tool directly, or follow the step-by-step measure my lot walkthrough.
Every option has a place. Here's the honest breakdown.
| Tool | Cost | How It Works | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| LotSite | Free | Trace visible features on satellite imagery; area calculated live | Fast planning-grade measurements |
| Google Earth Pro | Free | Draw polygons and paths manually on satellite view | Users comfortable with GIS-style drawing |
| Tape / measuring wheel | $10–40 | Physically walk and measure each segment | Small areas and exact placements |
| Licensed survey | $300–800 | Surveyor stakes legal boundaries on the ground | Disputes, permits, construction |
Comparing measuring approaches more broadly, including assessor lookups and plat maps? See the property measurement tool overview.
1. Lawn area: paint the grass and feed the number into the lawn calculator for fertilizer and seed rates. 2. Fence perimeter: measure your boundary length, then estimate materials with the fence calculator.
3. Driveway area: for sealing and paving, via the concrete calculator. 4. Garden beds: mulch and topsoil are sold by the cubic yard; the mulch calculator converts your square footage. 5. Total lot size: trace the whole boundary for square footage and acreage, or start from the property size lookup page.
Bid preparation is where the numbers pay off most. Contractors price landscaping, sealcoating, and fencing off area and footage, and a homeowner who opens with "the lawn is 6,400 square feet and the fence run is 210 feet" gets tighter, more comparable bids. When every quote is against the same measured numbers, dividing price by square footage makes the outlier obvious, and signals that you're not a customer who can be quoted a vague lump sum.
Insurance documentation is the quiet second use. After storm damage, claims go smoother when you can state the size of what was hit. The linear feet of downed fence, the area of the damaged deck or patio. Measuring and recording those numbers while the property is intact is a ten-minute job that pays off exactly when you least want to be out measuring things.
Real estate works in both directions. Sellers can describe the yard in concrete terms: "fenced 7,000 sq ft backyard" beats "big yard" in a listing. Buyers can measure any listing from home before an offer and compare the usable, visible yard across candidate houses; two lots with identical total size can hold very different amounts of flat, usable ground once driveways and slopes are subtracted.
Enter your address, trace what you see, and get square footage and linear feet. Free.
Free. No signup. Works nationwide. Or open the measurement tool directly.