# How Much to Charge for House Cleaning (2026 Pricing Guide)

*Finance · 5 min read · Published 2026-09-02 · Moil Insights*

> How to price house cleaning by the job instead of the hour, what to charge for a deep clean and a move-out, and a calculator built on your own costs.

Canonical URL: https://blog.moilapp.com/article/how-much-to-charge-for-house-cleaning

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## How Much Should You Charge for House Cleaning?

Price the job, not the hour — but build the job price from an hourly figure that covers your loaded labor cost, your overhead and a profit margin. For a two-person crew that usually means a recurring three-bedroom clean priced somewhere between $140 and $200, and a first-time deep clean at roughly twice the recurring rate. Quoting by the hour punishes your fastest cleaners and invites arguments about pace; quoting flat rewards a crew that gets quicker. The test any price sheet has to pass is the one below: at the price you charge and the crew cost you carry, how many visits a month actually cover your fixed costs.

### Break-even calculator

Subtract the direct cost of a job from what you charge for it to get gross profit, then divide your monthly fixed costs by that number.

| Input | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Monthly fixed costs | $2,800 |
| What you charge for an average job | $160 |
| Materials and labor on that job | $72 |
| **Gross profit per job** | **$88** |
| **Jobs a month to break even** | **32** |
| **Revenue a month to break even** | **$5,120** |

Those defaults describe a two-person crew: a $160 recurring clean, about $72 of loaded crew wage and supplies, and $2,800 of monthly fixed costs. Cleaning has lower overhead than the trades — no van full of parts, no licensing board — so the fixed-cost side is small. What it does have is a labor cost that most owners understate, which is the next section, and that cost is the difference between a full schedule and a profitable one.

## Your Real Labor Cost Is Not the Wage

If you pay a cleaner $18 an hour, that hour costs you well above $18 once employer payroll taxes, insurance and paid drive time between homes are counted. Plan on 1.25 to 1.4 times the wage. Two cleaners at $18 in a house for 90 minutes is three crew-hours at a loaded cost of roughly $68 to $76 before you have bought a single bottle of anything.

| Metric | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Wage | $18/hour |
| Loaded cost | $22-25/hour |
| Supplies per visit | $3-6 |
| Drive time between homes | Paid, unbilled |

Drive time is the one that decides whether a route is profitable. Four homes on one street and four homes across a metro are the same billable hours and completely different days. Price by route density, or at least stop taking the outlying job at the same price as the one next door.

## A Price Sheet That Holds

| Service | Crew hours | Loaded cost | Price | Gross profit |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Recurring biweekly, 3-bed | 3.0 | $72 | $160 | $88 |
| Recurring weekly, 3-bed | 2.5 | $60 | $140 | $80 |
| First-time deep clean, 3-bed | 6.0 | $144 | $320 | $176 |
| Move-out clean, 3-bed empty | 8.0 | $192 | $420 | $228 |
| Small office, 3 nights weekly | 4.5/week | $108/week | $900/month | $432/month |

Two rules make this sheet survive contact with reality. Charge more for the first clean, always — a house that has never been professionally cleaned takes roughly twice as long, and pricing it at the recurring rate turns your best new customer into your worst first day. And quote from square footage plus condition, not bedrooms alone; a cluttered two-bedroom beats an empty four-bedroom for hours every time.

## Recurring Customers Are the Business

One-off deep cleans are marketing. Recurring biweekly customers are the business: predictable revenue, a route you can optimise, and a crew you can actually schedule. Price to make the recurring work attractive — a visible discount against the one-time rate — because a customer who books every fortnight for two years is worth many times a single deep clean.

- **Quote a range on the phone, confirm on arrival.** The condition of the house is the variable, and pretending otherwise creates the awkward conversation later.
- **Never price against a solo cleaner working cash.** They are not carrying insurance, a bond or payroll, and the customer who chooses purely on that number is not your customer.
- **Raise recurring prices annually, in writing, with notice.** Silence for three years then a 20% jump loses people; 5% a year does not.
- **Charge for what nobody wants to do.** Inside the oven, inside the fridge, interior windows, baseboards. These are add-ons, not inclusions.

For the full financial picture behind the sheet, [the cleaning business plan walkthrough](https://blog.moilapp.com/article/cleaning-business-plan-template-pricing-numbers) has the startup costs and break-even, and [cómo iniciar un negocio de limpieza](https://blog.moilapp.com/article/c-mo-iniciar-negocio-de-limpieza-con-ia-gu-a-completa-para-hispanos) covers the same ground in Spanish.

## Getting the Price Accepted

Cleaning is bought on trust more than on price, because the customer is handing over a key. Insurance and a janitorial bond, named cleaners rather than anonymous staff, a written checklist per room, and photographs of the finished work all justify a price a cheaper competitor cannot match. In a bilingual service area, quoting and confirming in the customer's own language does more for close rates than a discount would.

## Office and Commercial Cleaning Prices Differently

Residential cleaning is priced per visit and sold on trust. Commercial cleaning is priced per month against a scope of work, and sold on reliability and paperwork. If you take an office contract using residential arithmetic you will almost certainly underprice it, because the things that make commercial work expensive are invisible on a walkthrough.

- **It happens after hours.** Evening and overnight work commands a wage premium, and your loaded cost per hour rises accordingly.
- **The scope is contractual.** What counts as done is written down, and anything omitted from the scope is work you will do for free for the length of the contract.
- **Supplies are often yours to provide.** Restroom consumables, liners and paper are a recurring cost most first-time bids forget entirely.
- **Payment is on terms.** Thirty days is normal, so you pay your crew three or four times before the first invoice clears.
- **Insurance requirements are higher.** Many buildings require specific liability limits and a bond before you can hold keys.

Price a commercial contract by building it up from crew hours per visit, visits per month, the loaded after-hours wage, supplies, and then your margin — never by quoting a monthly number that feels competitive. And read the cancellation clause before signing: a thirty-day termination on a contract you bought equipment for is a real risk that belongs in the price.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much should I charge for house cleaning?

Build the price from crew hours rather than guessing: estimate the hours, multiply by your loaded labor cost, add supplies and overhead, then add your margin. For a two-person crew a recurring three-bedroom clean commonly lands between $140 and $200, with a first-time deep clean at roughly double the recurring price.

### Should a cleaning business charge hourly or a flat rate?

Flat rate. Hourly billing penalises an efficient crew and invites the customer to watch the clock and argue about pace. Estimate hours internally, price the job flat, and let a faster crew earn you a better effective rate rather than less revenue.

### How much more should a deep clean cost than a regular clean?

Roughly double the recurring price. A first-time or deep clean takes about twice the hours because nothing has been maintained: build-up in bathrooms and kitchens, baseboards, inside appliances. Charging the recurring rate for that first visit is the most common way new cleaning businesses lose money on their best customers.

### What is the true cost of a cleaner per hour?

Plan on 1.25 to 1.4 times their wage. An $18 hourly wage costs roughly $22 to $25 once employer payroll taxes, insurance and paid drive time between houses are included, before supplies. Pricing against the bare wage is why crews look busy and the business makes nothing.

### How do I compete with cheaper solo cleaners?

Not on price. A solo cleaner working for cash carries no payroll, insurance or bond, so their number will always be lower. Sell what they cannot: insurance and bonding, consistent named staff, a written room-by-room checklist, and reliability when someone is sick — which is exactly what a customer handing over a key is buying.

**Get the pricing built into your plan** — Moil Professional at $25/month writes your cleaning business plan with pricing built from your own costs, the route maths and a break-even, in English and Spanish. Market Pro at $75/month adds the Moil360 marketing calendar. [Start Professional at $25/month](https://moilapp.com/business)

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*Reviewed and published by the Moil team. Drafted with Moil, the AI co-founder this blog is published by.*

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