How to Price a Cleaning Job (Per Visit, Per Hour, or Per Square Foot)
The short answer: Price a cleaning job by estimating the cleaner-hours it takes, costing labor at a loaded rate, adding supplies, overhead, and margin, then converting that to whichever unit the customer understands: a flat per-visit price, an hourly rate, or a price per square foot. Standard residential cleaning often lands around $0.08 to $0.15 per square foot, but the honest way to set your price is to build it up from your own time and cost, then check it against those benchmarks. CRMb tracks the real minutes your crew spends per property, so your recurring prices stay right as homes and routes change.
Cleaning is easy to underprice because the work looks simple and the quote is often given on the spot. Then the house is dirtier than it looked, the crew takes an hour longer than you said, and a job you priced at a healthy margin barely breaks even. Pricing from your real numbers, not a gut feel at the doorstep, is how you stop that.
The three ways to price a cleaning job
Customers ask for a price in different units, but underneath, every good cleaning price is built the same way, from the time it takes and what that time costs. The three models are just different wrappers on the same math.
- Per square foot is fast for quoting sight-unseen and common in commercial work.
- Per hour is transparent and suits unpredictable or first-time jobs.
- Flat per visit is what most established cleaners aim for, because it rewards efficiency and gives the customer a predictable number.
Build the price up once, then express it in whichever form fits the customer.
Method 1: per square foot
Per-square-foot pricing multiplies the property's size by a rate. It is quick, but the rate has to reflect the type of clean, because a routine tidy and a move-out scrub are entirely different amounts of work per square foot.
Rough benchmarks, which vary by region and market:
| Job type | Typical range per sq ft |
|---|---|
| Standard residential (recurring) | $0.08 to $0.15 |
| Deep clean (one-time) | $0.15 to $0.25 |
| Move-out or move-in clean | $0.20 to $0.40 |
| Office or commercial (recurring) | $0.05 to $0.12 |
A 2,000 square foot home on a standard recurring clean at $0.10 per square foot is $200. The danger of pricing this way alone is that square footage does not capture clutter, pets, the number of bathrooms, or how long since the last clean. Use it as a starting point and a sanity check, not the whole answer.
Method 2: per hour
Hourly pricing is the most honest for a job you have not seen, because you are paid for the time it actually takes. Set a billed rate per cleaner-hour that covers the loaded wage, supplies, overhead, and margin.
If your loaded cleaner cost is about $22 an hour (wage plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, and any benefits, see how to calculate labor cost per job), a billed rate in the $45 to $60 per cleaner-hour range is common for residential work. The gap between the $22 cost and the billed rate is what pays for everything the customer never sees.
The weakness of hourly pricing is that it punishes efficiency: the faster and better your crew gets, the less you earn per job. That is why most cleaners graduate to flat pricing once they know their times.
Method 3: flat per visit, the one to aim for
A flat per-visit price is a fixed number the customer pays each clean. It is the best model for an established business because it makes your income predictable, makes the customer's decision easy, and rewards a crew that works faster.
The only way to set a flat price safely is to know how long the job really takes. Guess low and you are locked into an unprofitable rate for every future visit. This is where measured times matter more than anywhere else in cleaning. Track the real minutes your crew spends per property over the first two or three visits, and your flat rate rests on data instead of optimism.
A worked example
Price a standard recurring clean on that 2,000 square foot home, built from the ground up.
| Layer | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Labor | 3 cleaner-hours × $22 loaded | $66 |
| Supplies | Chemicals, liners, wear on equipment | $8 |
| Overhead | 3 hours × $12 per hour | $36 |
| Total cost | $110 |
Now add margin. Do not just tack a percentage onto cost, that undercharges you. Divide by one minus the margin: at a 40% target, Price = 110 ÷ (1 − 0.40) = $183. Round to a clean $185.
Check it two ways. Per square foot: $185 ÷ 2,000 = $0.09, squarely in the standard range. Per cleaner-hour: $185 ÷ 3 = about $62, healthy. The price passes both benchmarks, which tells you the build-up was sound.
The one number this all rests on is the three-hour estimate. If the crew actually takes four hours, your cost jumps to $138 and that $185 flat rate is now a 25% margin, not 40%. Measuring the real time is the whole game.
Recurring, one-time, and deep cleans
Not all cleans are priced the same, even for the same home:
- Recurring cleans are cheaper per visit because the home stays maintained, less time each visit, and the steady schedule is worth a discount off one-time rates.
- First cleans on a new recurring client often take 1.5 to 2 times a normal visit, because you are catching up on built-up grime. Price the first clean higher, then settle into the recurring rate.
- Deep cleans and move-outs are separate jobs, priced well above standard, because they involve baseboards, inside appliances, and detail work a routine clean skips.
Set your recurring price off the maintained time, not the first exhausting visit, or you will overprice every future clean and lose the client.
Do not forget supplies, overhead, and the crew's schedule
Two costs quietly eat cleaning margins. Supplies are small per job but real: chemicals, cloths, liners, and the wear on vacuums and equipment. Overhead is the cost of running the business, insurance, vehicle, fuel, phone, software, spread across your billed hours.
The third margin-killer is not a cost at all, it is route density. A crew that drives 30 minutes between two houses is paid for time that bills to no one. Tightly clustered jobs let a crew clean more homes per day, which is what actually makes a cleaning route profitable. CRMb's scheduling and capacity views help you build routes where the crew spends its day cleaning, not driving, and see whether a recurring account is still priced right against the time it now takes. When the crew punches in through Punch, the real minutes per property flow back to your reports, so a home that has crept from three hours to four shows up before it quietly costs you a season of margin. For building those routes, see how to schedule a cleaning crew.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I charge to clean a house?
Build the price from cleaner-hours at a loaded rate, plus supplies, overhead, and margin, then check it against a per-square-foot benchmark of roughly $0.08 to $0.15 for standard residential work. A 2,000 square foot recurring clean commonly lands around $150 to $200 depending on your market and the home's condition. First cleans and deep cleans should be priced higher because they take far longer.
Should I charge per hour or a flat rate for cleaning?
Hourly is safest for jobs you have not seen and for first-time cleans, because you are paid for the real time. Flat per-visit pricing is better once you know how long a property takes, because it makes income predictable and rewards an efficient crew. Most cleaners start hourly on a new client, measure the real time, then switch to a flat rate.
What is the average price per square foot for cleaning?
Standard recurring residential cleaning often runs about $0.08 to $0.15 per square foot, with deep cleans and move-outs higher and commercial recurring work sometimes lower. These are starting points, not rules, the right rate depends on your labor cost, region, and the condition of the property. Always build your price from your own costs and use the per-square-foot figure as a check.
How do I price a recurring cleaning contract?
Price it off the maintained time a home takes once it is on a regular schedule, not the longer first clean. Track the real minutes across the first few visits, then set a flat per-visit rate that covers labor, supplies, overhead, and margin at that time. Revisit the rate if the property's real cleaning time drifts up over the months.
What margin should a cleaning business target?
Many cleaning businesses aim for 30% to 50% gross margin per job after labor, supplies, and overhead, with recurring work sometimes run tighter than one-time deep cleans. The exact figure matters less than measuring it the same way on every job, so you can see which accounts beat target and which have slipped and need a price increase.
Getting started
Price your next cleaning job from the ground up: estimate the cleaner-hours, cost them at a loaded rate, add supplies, overhead, and margin, then check the result per square foot and per hour. After the job, compare your estimate to the time the crew actually spent, and let that sharpen the next quote.
CRMb runs your clients, schedule, and invoicing on one system and tracks the real time your crew spends per property from actual punched hours, so your recurring prices stay profitable as homes and routes change. It runs on Mac, iPad, and the web. Start free and price your next clean from real numbers.