How Much to Charge for House Cleaning: Building a Quote Formula
Updated
When you start a cleaning business, quoting every home from scratch is slow and inconsistent. Two similar houses end up with very different prices, and it's hard to tell whether a job made money. A simple quote formula fixes both problems. This guide shows how to build one, how to adjust it for deep cleans and recurring visits, and how to check that your prices actually cover your costs.
The dollar amounts below are examples to show the math, not recommended rates. Prices vary a lot by area, service and market. Set yours from your own costs and local research.
Why use a formula?
- Consistency: similar homes get similar prices.
- Speed: you can quote over the phone in a minute.
- Easy updates: change one number (say, the per-bathroom rate) and every future quote follows.
- Profit visibility: you can compare the formula's result with what each job actually costs you.
Step 1: Start with a base fee
The base fee covers what every visit costs no matter the home's size: travel time, setup, and the minimum time worth showing up for.
Example: $60 base fee.
Step 2: Add for bedrooms and bathrooms
Room counts are an easy proxy for workload, and customers know them off the top of their heads. Bathrooms usually take longer than bedrooms, so price them higher.
Example: $15 per bedroom, $20 per bathroom.
Step 3: Add for square footage
Room counts miss open-plan spaces, large living areas and big kitchens. A small per-square-foot charge evens that out.
Example: $4 per 100 sq ft.
Standard price = base + (bedrooms × bedroom rate) + (bathrooms × bathroom rate) + (sq ft ÷ 100 × rate)
For a 3-bed, 2-bath, 1,800 sq ft home with the example rates: $60 + (3 × $15) + (2 × $20) + (18 × $4) = $60 + $45 + $40 + $72 = $217
Step 4: Apply a deep-clean multiplier
A first-time or deep clean (baseboards, inside appliances, heavy buildup) takes much longer than a maintenance visit. Rather than pricing it separately, multiply the standard price.
Example: 1.5× for a deep clean → $217 × 1.5 = $325.50.
Step 5: Offer recurring discounts
Recurring customers give you predictable income and homes that are quicker to clean because they're maintained. A sliding discount by frequency is common:
| Frequency | Example discount |
|---|---|
| Weekly | 15% |
| Biweekly | 10% |
| Monthly | 5% |
| One-time | 0% |
Example: the $217 standard clean, biweekly → $217 × 0.90 = $195.30.
Step 6: Round to a clean number
Round up to the nearest $5 so quotes look tidy and you never round below your formula. $195.30 becomes $200 per visit.
Step 7: Check that the price covers your costs
A formula is only as good as the costs behind it. For each job, track:
- Labor hours (yours or your staff's), multiplied by a labor cost per hour
- Supplies, often easiest as a cost per labor hour
- Revenue for the job
Then look at profit per labor hour:
Profit per labor hour = (Revenue − labor cost − supply cost) ÷ labor hours
Example: a $200 job taking 4 hours, with $20/hour labor and $2/hour supplies: $200 − $80 − $8 = $112 profit → $112 ÷ 4 = $28 per labor hour.
If certain home types or frequencies keep producing a low profit per hour, adjust that part of the formula rather than raising every price.
Step 8: Keep a client list and job log
Once a customer is booked, store their standard price and frequency on a client list. When you log each visit, the price fills in automatically and you only record hours. Over a month that shows:
- Jobs completed and labor hours
- Revenue, costs and profit
- Anything still unpaid
- Jobs logged for someone not on your client list (usually a typo worth fixing)
Common pricing mistakes
- Pricing only by the hour and earning less as you get faster.
- Forgetting travel time between jobs (that's what the base fee is for).
- Discounting deep cleans to win the first job, then struggling to raise the price.
- Not tracking actual hours, so you never learn which homes are underpriced.
- Rounding down to beat a competitor.
A ready-made toolkit
Our Cleaning Business Spreadsheet ($19, one of our templates for Google Sheets & Excel) puts this whole process in one workbook:
- A quote calculator using base + bedrooms + bathrooms + sq ft, a deep-clean multiplier and recurring discounts (all editable in Settings), rounded up to $5 per visit
- A client list with frequency and standard price
- A job log where the price fills from the client list, labor and supply costs calculate, and there's an optional staff/crew column. Jobs for clients not on your list (with no price entered) are flagged and left out of profit.
- A monthly dashboard for the year you choose: jobs, labor hours, revenue, costs, profit, unpaid and profit per labor hour
The bottom line
How to price house cleaning comes down to a repeatable formula (base, rooms, size, deep-clean and frequency) checked against real costs and profit per labor hour. Build it once, review it every few months, and quoting gets faster and more consistent.
This article is general information, not financial or business advice. Example rates are for illustration only.