A skid steer hires for about $250 to $400 a day and a small dozer for $700 to $1,200, so the comparison is worth ten minutes. The short answer: a skid steer carries, loads and does a dozen jobs with different attachments, while a dozer pushes volume and holds a grade. Pick by which of those two verbs describes your week.
One carries, the other pushes
A skid steer picks a bucket up and moves it, which suits loading trucks, shifting material around a site and working in tight yards. A dozer never lifts anything; it pushes a blade through material and leaves a surface behind. Stripping topsoil off half an acre is a dozer's afternoon and a skid steer's long week.
Grading is where the honest split sits
A dozer's blade, long track base and blade controls hold a line over distance, which is what a driveway or a pad needs. A skid steer can level and tidy, especially a tracked one with a grading attachment, but it rides every bump it drives over. For finish grade across open ground, the dozer earns its higher rate.
Access, ground and getting it there
A skid steer fits through a wide gate, sits on a normal trailer and can be collected by a contractor with a suitable truck. A dozer needs a lowboy and a drop point that suits it, and that delivery is a line on the quote each way. On a small residential lot, the dozer may not be deliverable at all.
Attachments change the arithmetic
The skid steer's case rests on the coupler: a bucket in the morning, an auger at lunch, a breaker or a brush cutter after that, each hired for a few dollars a day beside the machine. A dozer does one thing extremely well. Where the week holds five different tasks, the cheaper machine is also the more useful one.
The middle option nobody mentions
A compact track loader is a skid steer on rubber tracks, and it closes much of the gap: lower ground pressure, better traction on slopes and soft going, and it still takes every attachment. It hires for somewhat more than a wheeled skid steer and far less than a dozer, and it is often the right answer.
Questions people ask about skid steer vs bulldozer
Can a skid steer grade a driveway?
It can spread and level material well enough for a gravel drive, particularly a tracked machine with a box blade or a grading attachment. What it struggles with is holding a consistent slope over a long run, because the machine follows the ground it is standing on.
Which is better for clearing brush?
A skid steer with a brush cutter or a grapple, for anything short of trees. A dozer clears by pushing everything into a pile, which is faster on a large overgrown parcel but leaves soil disturbance and a pile to deal with afterwards.
Which is easier for a first time operator?
Neither is a machine to learn on unsupervised, but most people find a skid steer more intuitive because the controls map onto lifting and tipping a bucket. Dozer blade control takes practice before the surface stops looking wavy. Ask the yard for a handover on either.