How much to charge for house cleaning
House cleaning is priced per visit, and the single biggest mistake is quoting a recurring rate after seeing a house that has never been deep cleaned.
Below: the published wage for this work, why your billing rate has to be well above it, how this job is actually priced, and what moves the number. Put your own rate into the generator and you get a real itemized estimate built on it.
Generate this estimate now
Describe the job in plain words. No email needed to see your first estimate — about fifteen seconds for a small job, a little longer for a big one.
What you get — see the format first
A complete estimate you can send to the customer, built from the rate you enter:
| Description | Qty | Unit | Unit price | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labor — itemized by task | hrs | hour | your rate | — |
| Materials — with your markup applied | qty | ea / sq ft | cost + markup | — |
| Permits, disposal, access | — | — | — | — |
Plus a plain-English scope summary, assumptions (what had to be guessed), exclusions (what you are not doing — the section that prevents most change-order arguments), and a validity period. Printable, or send the link.
Every figure comes from the rate and markup you supply. We never fill in a market price for you.
How house cleaning is priced
Recurring cleans are priced per visit, usually scoped by bedroom and bathroom count rather than square footage, because bathrooms and kitchens carry most of the labour. The first clean is quoted separately and higher — it is a deep clean that brings the house to a baseline the recurring rate can then maintain. Hourly pricing is the honest fallback when condition is unknown, and add-ons such as interior windows, inside the oven or fridge, and laundry are listed individually rather than assumed.
What moves the number
- Number of bathrooms and whether the kitchen is heavily used — these dominate the time
- Frequency: weekly, fortnightly and monthly are genuinely different amounts of work per visit
- Current condition, which is why the first visit is priced as a deep clean
- Pets, and how much hair ends up on floors and furnishings between visits
- Clutter levels — tidying before cleaning is time customers rarely count
- Add-ons: inside oven, inside fridge, interior windows, baseboards, blinds, laundry
- Whether products and equipment are supplied by you or the customer
How house cleaning gets underpriced
- Quoting the recurring rate for the first visit and losing hours to built-up grime
- Scoping by square footage when bathroom count predicts the labour far better
- Letting add-ons creep in unpriced because they only take a few minutes each
- No cancellation or lockout policy, so a wasted trip is unpaid
- Holding a rate for years while the house, the pets and the clutter all changed
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How to estimate
How to write a contractor estimate · Estimate vs quote vs bid — and which one you should send · What to include in a contractor estimate · How to price a job as a contractor · Should you charge for estimates? · How to follow up on an estimate · How to handle change orders · Estimate vs invoice: what's the difference? · How to raise your prices as a contractor