What does tree removal cost in New Zealand?

Set the options below for an indicative range, built from published New Zealand price guides. It is a starting point, not a quote.

How tall is the tree

Height is the strongest single predictor of what a removal costs.

Site access

Whether a truck, chipper and lift can get to the tree, or whether everything has to come out by hand.

Where you are

A directional adjustment. No published guide indexes prices by city, so see the note under the sources.

Anything else

Grind the stump outQuoted separately from the removal, and priced on stump diameter.

Indicative range

$1,000to$2,200

An estimate built from published New Zealand rates, not a quote. Arborists set their own prices and only a site visit can confirm what your job costs.

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What actually moves the price

Tree quotes vary more than most people expect, and height is only the first of the reasons. These are the five things worth understanding before you compare quotes.

Height, and then trunk diameter

A five metre tree and a twenty metre tree are different jobs, not the same job at different scales. Above about ten metres the work usually needs climbing or a lift, and that changes the crew and the gear as well as the hours.

What the truck can reach

If a chipper and a truck can park next to the tree, most of the cost is cutting. If everything has to be carried through a house or winched up a bank, the handling becomes the job. Access is the most common reason two quotes on the same tree differ.

What is underneath it

A tree in an open paddock can be felled. A tree over a roof, a fence, a glasshouse or a power line has to be dismantled in sections and lowered on ropes, which takes far longer and needs more people on the ground.

Whether the stump stays

Removal and stump grinding are separate pieces of work with separate gear. Leaving the stump is cheaper now, but it will sprout on some species and it blocks anything you want to plant or build there.

Whether the tree is protected

A protected or scheduled tree cannot be touched without an arborist report and council consent, and that process runs weeks. It is not in the estimate below, because it is a different piece of work with its own timeline.

Where these numbers come from

The size bands and the stump grinding figure come straight from the sources above. The access and regional adjustments do not. Every guide names access, structures and location as major cost factors, but none of them publish a multiplier for any of it, so those adjustments are modest directional judgements rather than measured figures. Protected trees are a separate matter again: if council consent and an arborist report are needed, that sits outside this estimate.

Rates last reviewed 8 August 2026.