A buyer in Texas opens a factory quote that reads $9 per square metre and reads it as $9 per square foot. Forty rolls later, the artificial turf price per square foot on the invoice is nearly eleven times what the spreadsheet promised. The product never changed. Only the unit did.
This walkthrough builds the bridge between the two units and shows what each number actually covers. You will convert square metres to square feet, read material-only and installed quotes as separate animals, and run a square-foot budget of your own. The factory-direct band applies to specifications cut to your order, which is why it rarely matches a shelf price.
What a Square Foot Price Really Buys You
A per-square-foot number is not one price. It is at least two, and they differ by a wide margin. Material-only, sometimes called supply-only, covers the artificial turf roll alone. Fully installed covers the roll, the base, the labour, the infill and the freight to site.
That single distinction explains most of the spread a buyer sees. Two vendors can quote the same grade and still differ threefold, because one number carries the groundworks and the other does not. The same product is not magically cheaper in one column.
Think of it like buying a car and comparing a bare chassis price with a drive-away price. Both are real prices for the same vehicle, but nobody would call them a gap in the market. A square-foot rate works the same way: it means whatever the scope behind it means.
Where the number lands depends on the scope, the unit and the order size, not on the brand on the roll. Detailed project totals and the full price band belong to our guide to what artificial grass costs in total. The per-metre view of the same drivers sits in our guide to how artificial grass cost per m2 is priced. The groundworks and crew side is covered in our separate installation cost breakdown.
Square Feet and Square Metres Are Not the Same Quote
One square metre equals 10.7639 square feet, and one square foot equals about 0.0929 square metres. Those two constants are the whole game. Every imported quote that arrives in square metres has to cross that line before it can meet a US quote in square feet.
The arithmetic runs in two directions. Divide a per-square-metre figure by 10.764 to reach per square foot. Multiply a per-square-foot figure by 10.764 to reach per square metre. Nothing else about the roll changes.
