Tree removal cost in Washington and Oregon

Modeled ranges by tree height

The model prices a three-person crew at $225 per crew-hour in Oregon and $210 in Washington. Both start from the BLS May 2025 mean hourly wage for tree trimmers and pruners, $35.40 in Oregon and $32.20 in Washington, multiplied by 1.6 for payroll burden and overhead, plus the truck, chipper, saws and fuel [1]. Each height band gets a crew-hour range; the range times the rate, rounded to $50, gives the figures below.

The ranges cover felling or dismantling, chipping and hauling. They exclude the stump, a crane and permit fees.

Modeled estimate, not quotes (method). Bands and rates from the Westcoast-Tree.org model, wages from BLS [1].

A tree that tops out around a two-storey roofline is in the 25–50 ft band; most mature Douglas firs on Portland and Seattle lots are in the 50–80 ft band. The tree removal cost calculator runs the model with your inputs.

Labor index by metro

Labor is the biggest input in the model. The index divides each area’s BLS mean wage by its state’s mean wage, and, in the last column, by the US mean wage for the same occupation, $26.91 an hour [1].

Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, SOC 37-3013, May 2025 [1]. Tree trimmers in the Portland metro earn about 30 percent more than the national mean and in the Seattle metro about 26 percent more, which is one reason Northwest crew rates sit above figures quoted in national cost articles. Spokane is the exception, slightly below the national mean. The spread inside each state is wide too: BLS puts the 10th to 90th percentile hourly wage at $24.63 to $45.42 in Oregon and $21.41 to $45.01 in Washington, so a crew led by a senior climber costs more per hour than one built around entry-level ground workers [1].

What moves the price

Height sets the band. Everything else changes the crew-hours inside it.

• Trunk within 10 ft of a structure: ×1.25. The tree comes down in pieces lowered on ropes, and the big wood is rigged over the roof rather than dropped.
• No truck or chipper access: ×1.3. A fenced backyard, a steep lot or a house with no side yard means every round and armload of brush is carried to the street.
• Crane day: adds $1,500–$3,500. Operator and mobilization, rising with distance from the crane yard. A crane cuts climbing hours, so the net increase is smaller than the line item. See crane tree removal.
• Stump grinding: $150–$450 by diameter. Modeled at $4–$6 per inch of stump diameter with a $150 minimum; details on stump grinding cost.
• Haul versus leave the wood. Chipping and hauling are inside the bands. A quote that leaves rounds and brush on your lot should land below the range; the model does not price that discount, so ask for both.
• Permit fees. Zero in some cities, $600 plus surcharge in Kirkland. The next section has the published amounts.

Within 10 ft of an energized line only a qualified line-clearance tree trimmer may work, under WAC 296-45-035 in Washington and OAR 437-002-0306 in Oregon [13][14]. Read tree removal near power lines before asking for bids on a tree in the wires.

City permit fees that can show up on the bill

The fee is rarely the expensive part. Skipping the permit is: Renton’s code allows a mitigation fee of up to $2,000 per tree [10], and Edmonds lists fines of $1,500 per tree under 12 inches [11]. These are the fees on official city pages as of 2026-10-02, for private-property trees unless marked.

Thresholds, allowances and issuing departments for 40 cities per state are in tree removal permits in Oregon and tree removal permits in Washington. Fees change each fiscal year; the table shows the amount on the check date.

How to read a quote line by line

A one-line quote, “remove fir, $2,800”, hides every assumption. Ask for these lines in writing.

1. Scope. Which tree, its height, and what “removed” means. A flush cut at grade and a stump left at knee height are different jobs.
2. Method. Climb and rig, straight fell, or crane. A crane’s mobilization and operator hours should be separate from the crew’s hours.
3. Debris. Brush chipped and hauled, rounds hauled, or wood left bucked for firewood. Leaving wood should take the price down.
4. Stump. Included, separate, or not offered; if separate, the per-inch rate and the depth.
5. Protection and cleanup. Mats on the lawn, a rake-and-blow, who repairs a cracked driveway.
6. Permit. Who applies, who pays, and whether the fee passes through at cost. In Portland the removal application is free [2]; in Kirkland it is $600 plus surcharge [7].
7. Utility. If the service drop is in the way, who schedules the disconnect. Puget Sound Energy asks for at least 5 business days’ notice, Avista for at least 3 [18][19].
8. Credentials. Washington: an L&I contractor registration number, since the statutory definition of “contractor” includes tree removal (RCW 18.27.010) [20]. Oregon: a CCB or LCB number, since ORS 701.005 covers anyone hired to remove or prune trees or stumps [21][22]. Check it at the Washington license lookup or the Oregon license lookup.

Why two quotes differ by thousands

Two crews looking at the same fir can be $3,000 apart and both be honest. The usual reasons:

Crane or climb. One bid includes a crane day at $1,500–$3,500 in the model; the other plans two extra climbing days. Over a house, the crane bid is often the safer one and sometimes the cheaper one.

Who is allowed near the wires. If the canopy reaches within 10 ft of a primary line, only a qualified line-clearance trimmer may work there [13][14]. A crew without that qualification bids the job without that work, or bids it wrong.

Bond, insurance and registration. A registered Washington contractor carries a bond and insurance under chapter 18.27 RCW [20]; Oregon requires a CCB or LCB license for tree work [21][22]. An unregistered operator skips those costs, and you carry the risk when a limb goes through the neighbor’s roof.

Disposal. Dump fees, drive time, and whether the wood is sold or chipped. In Oregon’s Washington, Yamhill, Marion, Clackamas and Multnomah counties, ash wood, chips, stumps and roots may not leave the emerald ash borer quarantine without an ODA compliance agreement (OAR 603-052-1075) [23], which adds a disposal line to an ash removal.

Permits and penalties. A bid that assumes no permit in a city that requires one is a different job, not a lower price. Tigard cites a minimum penalty of $250 per tree for illegal removal (2015 figures) [6], and Lakewood triples the replacement value for malicious cutting [24].

Pricing habits. Even professional bidders disagree widely on identical work. When the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma took bids for emergency tree work in 2024 (TAC 1326), it priced removal per trunk in diameter bands (6 to 13 in, 13 to 25 in, 25 to 37 in, and 37 in and up) and hanging limbs per tree, and the nine bids for the same 25-to-37-in trunk ranged from $250 to $1,475 [29]. Those are Oklahoma municipal bulk-contract figures, not Washington or Oregon prices; the lesson that carries over is to get at least two written quotes with the same scope.

Storm week. After a windstorm every crew is booked and emergency rates apply. Insurance usually pays only when the tree hit a covered structure: Washington’s insurance commissioner says cleanup is usually not covered unless the tree fell on the house, garage or car, with debris removal typically capped at an extra 5 percent of the dwelling limit [25][26]; Oregon’s Division of Financial Regulation says a tree that falls without damaging the residence is typically not covered [27]. National industry guidance from the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) is that when a tree hits an insured structure, many homeowners policies cover removing the tree, commonly up to about $500 to $1,000 depending on the insurer and policy [28]; your own policy and the state regulator’s guidance govern. The tree removal hub covers the emergency path.

What is not on this page