Auto Detailing Pricing Guide: Size Class Times Package

Short answer: An auto detailing pricing guide is built on a grid of size class times package, and every cell in that grid prices a vehicle in average condition. Condition is what breaks it. The same 3-row SUV booked for an interior plus a one-step took 6.3 attended hours clean and 16.0 hours with pet hair, beach sand and smoke. Cost ran $361.60 against $889.60, which prices near $657 and $1,617 out of one grid cell.

The grid is worth keeping. It is fast to quote from, customers understand it, and it forces you to define what each package contains. The failure is treating a cell as a price rather than as a price plus an assumption. A cell says: this list of steps, this many attended hours, on a vehicle in average condition for its age. Break any part of that sentence and the number underneath it is wrong. Below is what sits inside a cell, what breaks it, and one vehicle run twice.

What does a cell in the grid actually price?

A step list and an hour count. Write both into your own grid, because the hours are the thing you are actually selling and the price is downstream of them.

Package	What it contains	What it assumes
Maintenance wash	Wheels, contact wash, dry, glass, quick interior wipe	The car was detailed recently
Interior deep clean	Full extraction, all rows, jambs, headliner spot, vents, leather clean and condition	No pet hair, no smoke, no biological
Exterior decon and one-step	Iron and tar removal, clay, single polish pass, sealant	Paint is swirled, not defective
Two-step correction	Cut, refine, panel-by-panel inspection	Enough clear coat to remove some
Coating	Correction, level, panel wipe, application, dwell	Indoor space for the cure

Two costs sit outside every one of those rows: the vehicle’s condition, and the time the car occupies your space without being worked on. Neither shows up in a size class.

Which measurements put a vehicle in a size class?

Not curb weight and not the sticker price. Three things, and they should be measured from the inside out.

Class	What sets it	What catches people
Sedan and coupe	Two rows, four door jambs	Convertible tops are their own line, never a package inclusion
Crossover and small SUV	Two rows, a cargo well, a taller roof	Panoramic glass adds interior and exterior work
3-row SUV and minivan	Three rows, folding seats, seat rails, sliding door tracks	The third row and its rails hold everything anybody ever dropped
Pickup	Cab configuration sets the interior, bed length sets the exterior	Bed liners, bed rails, running boards, and a roof you need a step to reach

A two-door pickup with an 8 ft bed and a crew cab with a 5.5 ft bed occupy the same parking space and are two different jobs. The long bed is a large, flat, fast-polishing surface. The crew cab is two more door jambs, a second row of carpet and a bench that comes out of nothing easily. Classify by rows and carpeted area first, paint surface second, roof reach third.

Why is condition a multiplier and not a surcharge?

Because size and package predict the steps, and condition predicts the hours. A flat “$50 pet hair fee” is a guess at something that regularly costs two hours.

Four conditions reliably double a step:

• Pet hair. It is woven into fabric, not resting on it. Every surface needs a rubber blade or brush pass before the vacuum, repeated, and it eats pads and filters as it goes.
• Smoke. The residue is in the headliner, the vents and the evaporator core. It needs an enzyme or ozone treatment, a cabin filter, and unattended dwell time, and the honest promise is reduction rather than elimination.
• Sand and salt. It lives in seat rails, sliding door tracks, the cargo well and the spare tire tub, and it has to come out before any extraction or you grind it into the carpet.
• Mold and biological. PPE, containment, and a source you did not cause and cannot fix. Some of these are refusals, and a refusal in writing is cheaper than the job.

Write each one as a conditional line on the estimate with its own rate and a cap: “pet hair extraction, $X per hour above the package, estimated 2 hours, approval required beyond that.” Attach the intake photo. A condition priced before the keys move is a line item. The same condition discovered at hour three and priced at hour three is an argument, and it is how a customer decides your pricing is improvised.

Why can paint correction not be a package level?

Because correction is an outcome, and the work required to reach it is set by the paint rather than by the menu.

Four variables decide the number of passes: paint hardness, which differs by manufacturer and even by panel; clear coat thickness, which a repainted panel changes entirely; how deep the defects run; and how much clear you are willing to remove to chase them. None of that is visible in a photograph, and a two-step quoted from a text message is a bid on somebody else’s paint.

The fix is a test section. Take gauge readings, tape off a panel, run one pass, inspect it under the light you actually trust, and quote the vehicle from the result. Put the test section in the estimate visit if you have to. And write the refusal in advance: a panel reading thin or repainted does not get corrected, and that sentence belongs on the estimate rather than in a phone call afterward.

What does a coating cost in bay time you cannot sell?

More than the application, which is the cheapest part of it.

Prep is where the hours go, because a coating locks in whatever is underneath it. Correction has to be finished, then leveled, then panel-wiped. Application runs panel by panel with flash times that cannot be rushed. Then the vehicle sits indoors, untouched, for the manufacturer’s stated period before it can see water.

That last block is capacity cost, not labor cost, and it is the line most detailers never put in the grid. A coating that occupies a bay for a day after a ten-hour job has consumed a bay-day, and the cell has to carry it. Price coatings in bay-days plus hours. Then hand over a written aftercare sheet and a plain statement of what the warranty covers, because a coating complaint two years out is always about expectations set at the counter.

What does mobile work change about the number?

Five things, and only one of them is travel.

Water: no hose bib means a tank, which means weight, fill time and a route planned around where you can fill. Power: a household 15A circuit will not run an extractor and a heater together, so it is a generator with fuel and noise limits, or battery machines with pack swaps and a charging plan. Weather and light: polishing in direct sun at 100°F is not possible, and correction cannot be inspected in a driveway at dusk, so a mobile day is genuinely shorter than a shop day.

Wash water is the one that can carry legal weight. EPA’s stormwater fact sheet on vehicle maintenance and washing is written for municipalities rather than for you, but it lays out the logic every local rule is built on: storm drains run to waterways rather than to treatment, so detergent-laden wash water should be kept out of them — directed onto pervious ground like grass or gravel, captured with a kit or mat, or handled at a facility that recycles or treats it before release to sanitary sewer.

The binding requirement is local, not federal. Many municipalities run ordinances prohibiting unpermitted commercial car wash water from entering the storm drain system, and the fact sheet cites Fairfax County, Virginia as one example. Check your own municipality before you build the rate, because the answer ranges from “wash on the grass” to a reclaim mat and a pump-out. In practice that means a containment mat and a reclaim setup, a driveway that drains to pervious ground, or rinseless and waterless products for exterior work. Whichever applies to you is a real equipment cost and belongs in the mobile rate.

Then travel: paid drive time both ways plus the miles, which are deductible and worth logging at the IRS mileage rate 2026.

What does the same SUV cost in two conditions?

One model, one grid cell: 3-row SUV, interior deep clean plus exterior decon and one-step polish.

Vehicle A — two-year-old lease return, garage kept, no pets, no smoking, light swirl marks. In the shop, keys dropped off.

Vehicle B — same model, six years old, two dogs, sand from a summer at a beach house, a spilled protein shake under the third row, smoked in for a year. Mobile, at the customer’s house, hose bib available, one 15A garage outlet.

Step	A (hr)	B (hr)
Intake, photos, tape	0.3	0.5
Wheels, tires, wells	0.6	1.1
Wash and decon — iron, tar, clay	0.9	1.6
Vacuum, all three rows	0.8	1.4
Pet hair extraction, carpet and cargo	—	2.2
Sand from seat rails, tracks, spare tub	—	0.7
Hot-water extraction, spill and odor	0.4	1.9
Enzyme and ozone for smoke, cabin filter	—	1.5
One-step polish	2.6	3.4
Glass, trim, final inspection	0.7	0.9
Mobile setup, containment, pack down	—	0.8
Attended hours	6.3	16.0

Vehicle B also carries four hours of unattended ozone dwell, which makes it a two-day job that displaces a second booking.

Now the money. Shop work at a loaded $52 per hour — wage and burden, bay, insurance, equipment, chemicals amortized, overhead. Mobile at $48, since there is no bay but there is a van, a tank and a generator. Both figures are placeholders; build yours from your own year.

	Vehicle A	Vehicle B
Attended labor	6.3 × $52 = $327.60	16.0 × $48 = $768.00
Paid travel, round trip	—	0.7 hr = $33.60
Consumables — pads, chemicals, towel laundering	$34.00	$88.00
Total cost	$361.60	$889.60
Price at a 45% margin	361.60 ÷ 0.55 = $657	889.60 ÷ 0.55 = $1,617

One cell of the grid, two and a half times the price. A menu reading “3-row SUV, interior plus one-step — $675” collects $675 on Vehicle B against $889.60 of cost, which is $215 lost across two days of work.

And the arithmetic that quietly costs more than any single job: adding 45 percent markup to Vehicle B’s cost gives $1,290, which is a 31 percent margin, not 45. Markup is added to cost. Margin is taken out of price. Divide by one minus the margin, every time.

How do I sanity-check the grid against my market?

Compare step lists, not package names. “Full detail” means a two-hour wash-and-vacuum at one shop and a nine-hour decon-and-polish at another, and the published prices you find online are averaging both without saying so, across markets with different rent and different wage floors.

If your calculated cell lands far outside what comparable local shops charge, check your attended hours against a stopwatch, your loaded hourly figure against last year’s actual costs, and the point at which your condition lines get written — at intake, or at hour three. Move the inputs, not the price.

What do I record when the keys go back?

Intake photos of every panel and every interior surface before you open a door, gauge readings on anything you corrected, the signed conditional lines, the actual attended hours against the quoted hours, and every chemical and pad receipt.

Keel is an iOS app that keeps that on the phone and nowhere else — no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. Photograph the supplier receipt for pads, polish and coating and Apple Intelligence reads it on the device, so the consumables row above is measured rather than assumed. Mobile jobs log their drives as mileage without a second app. When the keys go back, the invoice goes out from the driveway in about a minute with your own numbering, your logo, your brand color, and a payment link the customer scans as a QR code — a filled-in ticket is walked through in auto detailing invoice example, and the follow-up habits are in how to get clients to pay. Freeboard shows cash minus tax reserve, minus committed invoices, minus a buffer, which is a useful correction in a trade where a deposit on a coating package can sit in the account for weeks looking like profit — the reserve side of it is in how much to set aside for 1099 taxes. Free covers unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How do detailers price by vehicle size?

By interior rows and carpeted area first, paint surface and panel count second, and roof reach third — not by curb weight or sticker price. A crew cab pickup and a two-door long bed take the same parking space and are different jobs, because one has two extra door jambs and a second row of carpet while the other has a large flat surface that polishes quickly.

How much should I charge extra for pet hair?

Price it by the hour rather than as a flat fee, because pet hair is woven into fabric and needs a rubber-blade or brush pass on every surface before repeated vacuum passes. In the example above it added 2.2 hours to a three-row vehicle. Write it as a conditional line at intake with an estimated duration, a rate and a cap requiring approval beyond it.

Can I quote paint correction from photos?

No. The number of passes is set by paint hardness, clear coat thickness, defect depth and how much clear you are willing to remove, and none of that is visible in an image. Take gauge readings, run a taped test section, inspect under proper lighting, and quote from the result. Write in advance that thin or repainted panels will not be corrected.

Why does a ceramic coating cost so much more than a polish?

Because the application is the smallest part of it. The paint has to be corrected, leveled and panel-wiped first, since a coating locks in whatever is beneath it, and afterward the vehicle occupies indoor space untouched through the manufacturer’s cure period. That is a bay-day you cannot sell to anyone else, and it belongs in the price as capacity rather than as labor.

What does mobile detailing add to the price?

Water and power you have to bring, a shorter working day because of sun and light, containment for the wash water, and paid travel both ways. EPA’s stormwater education material explains why wash water should be kept out of storm drains, but the rule that actually binds you is your municipality’s — commonly an ordinance on unpermitted commercial car wash water — so options range from washing over pervious ground to a reclaim mat and pump-out, or rinseless products. All of that is equipment and time that a shop bay already provides.

Should detailing packages be priced by the hour instead?

Packages, with the hours written into each cell for your own use. Hourly billing invites the customer to watch the clock and hands every efficiency gain from better technique straight back to them. The exception is condition work — pet hair, smoke, mold, sand — which should be quoted hourly as a conditional line, because those hours genuinely cannot be predicted from a photo.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.