Answer First: A one-time fall cleanup in Toronto runs $149 to $600, with about $300 typical for a standard detached lot (Absolute Home Services), before 13% HST. The price is driven by leaf volume and tree count more than lawn size, and whether the quote includes bagging, hauling, and disposal. Since the City ended its curbside leaf-vacuum program, your leaves now go in kraft yard-waste bags on the biweekly pickup, which is part of what you are paying a crew to handle.
The bill for clearing leaves swings more than almost any other lawn service, and the reason is simple. A crew is not really pricing your lawn. It is pricing how many maples hang over it and where all those leaves have to go.
How much does a fall cleanup cost in Toronto?
A single fall cleanup in the GTA runs $149 to $600, with about $300 typical for a standard detached lot, and 13% HST added on top (Absolute Home Services). That range covers the same core work most crews bundle: a full leaf clear, cutting back perennials and beds, a last mow, and bagging the debris for collection.
Where you land inside that range is mostly about volume. A downtown semi with one street tree and a postage-stamp yard sits near the low end. A North York detached lot under three mature maples, with garden beds and a boulevard strip to clear, sits near the top. Dethatching or a power-rake, when added, pushes a fall visit into the same $300 to $600 band many GTA firms use for their heavier cleanups.
Quotable: A one-time fall cleanup in Toronto runs $149 to $600, about $300 for a typical detached lot, before 13% HST. Leaf volume and tree count move that number more than lawn square footage does.
What is included in a Toronto fall cleanup?
A standard fall cleanup is a bundle of end-of-season tasks, not just raking. Most GTA crews include the same core list, and it helps to see it written out so you can check each quote against it.
A typical fall cleanup covers leaf removal across lawn and beds, cutting back spent perennials and ornamental grasses, a final mow of the season, light edging, and bagging everything for collection. Some crews add gutter-level debris off the lawn, blowing out beds, and a first-frost tidy of the boulevard strip. Disposal, meaning the actual hauling or curb-bagging of the debris, is the piece most likely to be quoted separately, so it is the first line to confirm.
Fall cleanup — the end-of-season service that clears fallen leaves, cuts back garden beds, and gives the lawn its last mow, so the yard goes into winter clean and the spring cleanup has less to fight.
Does the City of Toronto pick up my leaves?
Not from a curbside pile anymore. Toronto discontinued its mechanical vacuum leaf-collection program, the one that let some residents rake leaves to the roadside for a City truck to vacuum up. It only ever covered parts of Etobicoke, York, and Scarborough, and it is gone.
What replaces it is regular yard-waste collection. You rake leaves into kraft paper yard-waste bags or rigid open-top containers (55 to 95 cm tall), and set them out on your normal collection day, which for yard waste runs about every two weeks from mid-March to mid-December (City of Toronto). Plastic bags are not accepted because they do not break down, each bag or bundle has to stay under 20 kg, and branches must be tied and kept under 1.2 metres.
Quotable: Toronto no longer vacuums leaves from the curb. The City ended its mechanical leaf-collection program, so residents now bag leaves in kraft yard-waste bags for biweekly pickup, mid-March to mid-December.
This matters for your quote. When a crew "handles disposal," part of what you are buying is the labour of bagging leaves to the City's exact rules and staging them so nothing over 20 kg gets left at the curb.
What makes one fall-cleanup quote higher than another?
Four things explain almost all of the spread between a $150 quote and a $600 one, and none of them is the size of your grass.
Leaf and tree load. A yard under mature maples generates several times the leaf volume of a treeless lot the same size. More leaves means more bags, more labour, and more trips.
Disposal. Bagging and hauling debris to the City's rules, or paying tipping fees at a transfer station, is the single most variable line. One quote folds it in; another leaves it out and you either bag it yourself or pay extra.
Add-on services. A power-rake or dethatching visit, bed mulching, or a fertilizer application pushes a plain cleanup into the $300 to $600 band GTA firms use for heavier fall work.
Site access and beds. Extensive garden beds, a fenced backyard reached only through a narrow side gate, or a corner lot with a long boulevard strip all add hours. The same reasons landscaping quotes vary two to three times across Toronto apply to cleanups too, which is worth reading about before you compare bids on our breakdown of why Toronto landscaping quotes vary.
From the data: YardQuote tracks 249 lawn-care companies across the GTA. Of the 220 that carry three or more reviews, the average rating is 4.75 and 88% hold 4.5 stars or higher (YardQuote tracking, July 2026). For a seasonal job like this, a well-reviewed crew is not scarce, so you do not have to gamble on the cheapest unknown to get a fair price.
Is a fall cleanup worth paying for, or should you DIY?
It depends on your tree cover and your tolerance for bagging leaves in the cold. The work itself is not hard, but on a heavily treed lot it is a full weekend of raking and 15-plus bags to stage at the curb. A crew does it in a couple of hours.
There is also a light bylaw reason not to skip it entirely. Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 489 requires grass and weeds on private property to stay under 20 cm, and homeowners are expected to maintain the grassed City boulevard fronting their lot. A yard left to go wild can be cut by the City with the cost added to your property-tax bill. A final fall cut and clear keeps you clear of that, and gives your spring cleanup less to undo. If you want to see how the two visits split the year, our guide to spring cleanup cost and what's included covers the other half.
For a full picture of seasonal lawn pricing, from mowing to aeration, see the Toronto lawn-care cost guide, browse every service on the costs hub, or compare vetted crews in your area on the lawn-care directory for North York.
Want to know what a fall cleanup should cost for your yard? Request a quote and compare up to three vetted local crews side by side, on the same scope, so the numbers actually mean something. Your contact details only go to the one you pick.