How much to charge for house cleaning

Price too low and you're working for free. Price too high without explaining why, and customers balk. Here's a straightforward way to land on rates that win the job and protect your margin.

Start from your target hourly rate

Every price works backward from one number: what your business needs to earn per cleaner-hour after wages, supplies, drive time, and overhead. If you don't know that number yet, figure it out first — everything else is guessing.

Price by the home, not by the hour (out loud)

Charge a flat price the customer can say yes to, but build it from the things that actually drive time:

• Bedrooms and bathrooms — your biggest time drivers (bathrooms and kitchens are the slowest rooms)
• Square footage band — nudges the baseline up or down
• Condition — a neglected first-time clean can take twice as long

Set your three core services

Most cleaning businesses price three tiers:

1. Standard / recurring clean — your bread and butter; discount for frequency.
2. Deep clean — 1.5–2× a standard clean for the extra time and detail.
3. Move-out clean — the most intensive; price it for the work, not the label.

Charge for add-ons separately

Inside the oven, inside the fridge, interior windows, baseboards, cabinet fronts — each is real time. List them as line items so the quote reflects the actual job and customers feel in control of the price.

Reward frequency

Weekly and bi-weekly cleans are predictable revenue and faster per visit — pass some of that efficiency back as a discount to lock in recurring clients.

Want a shortcut? Our free cleaning quote calculator uses exactly this structure — try it and tune the numbers to your market.

Get your pricing right once and it stops being the thing you dread on every call.