Sod wins the first year and loses the decade; the interesting question is where the lines cross. Below is a five-year table for a 1,000-square-foot Dallas yard, built only from published figures with the sources linked, and with the two things nobody can price for you, your water bill and your Saturdays, left visibly blank rather than invented.
The inputs
Sod. Lawn by Season’s 2026 Texas guide puts professional sod installation at “$1.00 to $2.00 per square foot installed” with a typical rate of $1.40, plus old grass removal at “$0.50–$2.00/sq ft” where a dead lawn has to come out first (source). Upkeep. Today’s Homeowner (updated March 18, 2025) lists mowing at “$30 per week ($120 per month)” and fertilization at “$50–$150 per treatment (needed 3–4 times per year)” (source). Turf. Published 2026 cost guides put an installed turf lawn between about $5 and $20 per square foot, typically $12 to $19, as summarised on our cost page. Water. A typical 1,800-square-foot lawn can save approximately 99,000 gallons of water annually, potentially reducing water bills by 70%.
Five years, 1,000 square feet
| Line | Sod lawn | Turf lawn |
|---|---|---|
| Install | $1,000 to $2,000 (new); add $500 to $2,000 to remove a dead lawn first | $12,000 to $19,000 at typical rates |
| Mowing, 5 years | about $7,200 at $120 a month | $0 |
| Fertilization, 5 years | $750 to $3,000 (three to four treatments a year at $50 to $150) | $0 |
| Water, 5 years | roughly 275,000 gallons in proportion to the figure above; priced from your own bill | an occasional rinse |
| Care | your weekends | power brooming and infill top-up when needed; quoted on site |
| Five-year cash, before water | $8,950 to $12,200 | $12,000 to $19,000 plus occasional care |
Read it straight: over five years, before water, sod is still cheaper in cash. The gap is about $3,000 at the low end and widens at the top of the turf range. Water closes it, and the years after five reverse it: the sod column keeps adding $1,590 to $2,040 a year plus water, and the turf column adds almost nothing across a 15-year material warranty. The crossover for the typical install lands between five and a half and seven years on upkeep alone, earlier once water is counted; the working is in our worth-it guide.
What the table cannot show
Three things sit outside it. The watering calendar: every city in our watering rules guide now restricts when a sod lawn may be watered at all, and a brown August lawn has no line in a spreadsheet. Replacement risk: a sod lawn that dies in a drought summer goes back to the install line, at $1,500 to $4,000 a time. And use: a dog run or a putting green is not a sod-versus-turf question in the first place, because sod does not survive the one and cannot be the other.
When sod is the right answer
A short ownership horizon, a shaded yard where turf would be a lawn nobody uses, or a family that likes the work. Sod is the cheaper lawn to own for three years, and there is no arithmetic that changes that. Turf is the cheaper lawn to own for fifteen, provided it is built to last them; our lifespan guide explains what that takes.