How Much to Charge for House Cleaning, Per Visit

Short answer: How much to charge for house cleaning starts with bathrooms, not square feet. Count full baths, half baths, bedrooms, and the kitchen, assign minutes you have timed yourself to each, total the cleaner-hours, add the drive from the previous stop, multiply by your loaded cleaner-hour cost, then divide by one minus your margin. A 3-bed, 2.5-bath house at 2.75 on-site cleaner-hours costs roughly $148 and prices near $210. The first deep clean is a separate, higher number.

Cleaning is priced wrong more often than any other residential service, and the reason is that the two figures people reach for — square footage and an hourly rate — are both poor proxies for the work. A 3,200 sq ft open-plan house with two bathrooms can be faster than a 1,600 sq ft house with four. The build below prices the visit from timed room work instead, which is also what makes the number defensible when a client asks why theirs is higher than their neighbor’s. The document you send before the first visit is covered in cleaning estimate template.

Should I charge by the hour or by the job?

By the job, for anything that repeats. Hourly is for the jobs where nobody can predict the finish line.

Work	Charge this way	Why
Recurring maintenance clean	Per visit, fixed	A faster team earns more, not less
First deep clean	Per job, fixed, from its own task list	The condition is known after the walkthrough
Move-out and move-in	Per job with a written scope, or hourly with a cap	Empty houses hide surprises inside cabinets
Post-construction	Per phase, per job	Rough, final, and touch-up are three different jobs
Organizing, laundry, dishes, inside-cabinet work	Hourly add-on, opt-in	Genuinely open-ended
One-time clean of an unknown house	Deep-clean pricing, no recurring discount	You have no history to price from

Hourly recurring pricing has one specific failure: the moment your team gets good, your revenue on that house drops. A crew that finds ten minutes of efficiency should keep the ten minutes, not hand it back.

What sets the clock, square feet or bathrooms?

Bathrooms, by a wide margin, and it is not close. A bathroom is the densest square footage in a house — a tub or shower surround, glass, a toilet inside and out and behind, a vanity, a mirror, fixtures, and a floor with an obstacle in the middle of it. A bedroom is a flat surface, a floor, and a bed.

Count these on the walkthrough, in this order:

1. Full bathrooms, and note whether each has a glass shower door and whether the water is hard.
2. Half bathrooms.
3. Kitchen, and note the stovetop type — a glass top wipes, a gas grate comes apart.
4. Bedrooms, and note furniture density and how many small objects sit on surfaces.
5. Living, dining, den, office, and note electronics, blinds, and rugs.
6. Stairs, which are vacuumed by hand and take longer than the same area of floor.
7. Pets, by number and coat type.
8. Square footage, last, as a cross-check on floor time rather than as the price driver.

Square footage still earns a place in the estimate, because a long floor pass is real work. It just does not belong at the front.

How do I turn the room count into cleaner-hours?

Time your own team on five houses and build this table with your numbers. The figures below are starting points for a recurring maintenance visit — not a first deep clean — with one cleaner working.

Area	Recurring minutes, one cleaner	What moves it
Full bathroom	20 – 28	Glass shower door, hard water scale, grout, second sink
Half bathroom	8 – 12	Pedestal sink, decorative fixtures
Kitchen	24 – 35	Stovetop type, counter clutter, appliance front finish
Bedroom	9 – 14	Furniture density, objects on surfaces, whether beds are made
Living or family room	12 – 18	Electronics, blinds, rugs, pet hair
Dining room	7 – 11	Chair count, table finish
Stairs and halls	6 – 12	Carpet vs. hard, spindles, handrail
Entry, laundry, final walk	8 – 12	Where the mop water gets dumped
Pet load	8 – 20 added	Number of animals, shedding season

Two rules keep the table honest. Time in cleaner-minutes, not clock minutes, so a two-person team on a 166-minute house is on site for 83 minutes. And time the same house at two different frequencies before you trust the numbers, because the same bathroom is not the same job at seven days and at twenty-eight.

What does one cleaner hour and one visit’s supplies cost me?

Layer	Example calculation	Per cleaner hour
Wage plus burden	$18.00 × 1.27 for payroll taxes, comp, and liability	$22.86
Equipment	Vacuums, mop systems, caddies, cords, extension poles, replacement — $6,600 a year ÷ 2,600 paid cleaner hours	$2.54
Operating cost		$25.40
Overhead	$41,600 a year — vehicle, insurance, bonding, scheduling software, phone, marketing, uninvoiced admin — ÷ 2,600 cleaner hours	$16.00
Fully loaded cost		$41.40

Supplies are their own small line, and worth building once because it settles an argument you will have with clients.

Supply item	Per visit
Concentrates at dilution — bath, glass, neutral floor, degreaser	$1.15
Microfiber — 16 cloths and 2 mop pads, cost spread over the launderings they survive	$0.55
Laundry — water, power, detergent, and the paid time to run it	$1.90
Liners, gloves, scrub pads, pumice, vacuum bags and belts	$1.20
Per visit	$4.80

Now the argument. When a client offers to supply the products in exchange for a lower price, they are offering to save you $4.80 and asking for a discount an order of magnitude larger. They are also handing you unfamiliar chemicals, no dilution control, and liability for a finish you did not choose. Decline politely, and say the number out loud.

What does the math look like on a recurring biweekly clean?

Three bedrooms, two full baths, one half bath, 1,950 sq ft, two shedding dogs, every two weeks, two-person team.

Cleaner-minutes: two full baths at 22 is 44, half bath 9, kitchen 28, three bedrooms at 11 is 33, living 14, dining 8, stairs and hall 8, entry and final pass 10, pet load 12. Total 166 cleaner-minutes = 2.75 cleaner-hours, which is 83 minutes on site for a pair. Drive from the previous stop is 21 clock minutes, which costs two people, so 0.70 cleaner-hours.

Step	Calculation	Amount
Operating cost	3.45 cleaner-hours × $25.40	$87.63
Overhead	3.45 × $16.00	$55.20
Supplies	Per visit	$4.80
Cost per visit		$147.63
Price at 30% margin	$147.63 ÷ 0.70	$210.90
Per-visit rate	Rounded	$210.00

Note what is inside that number and what is not. Drive time is in it, because the team is paid for it. Windows, inside the oven, inside the fridge, blinds, and baseboards are not, because those belong on the deep clean or on an opt-in add-on line.

Markup or margin — what does the wrong one cost over a year?

Margin is the share of the price you keep. Markup is a percentage added to cost. On this house, adding a 30 percent markup to $147.63 gives $191.92 — a 23.1 percent margin, $18.98 under the correct figure. Across 26 biweekly visits that is $493 a year, on one client, invisible, forever.

To hit a target margin, divide cost by one minus the margin: 25 percent means dividing by 0.75, 30 percent by 0.70, 35 percent by 0.65.

One caution about market comparison. Published cleaning rates swing by more than double between metros and move with local wages, and recurring rates in a dense urban route look nothing like rates in a spread-out suburb. Use any published range only to catch an order-of-magnitude error. If your computed number lands well above local quotes, the fix is almost always route density and task list, not your rate — 21 minutes of drive time across six houses a day is real payroll with nothing to invoice against it. If it lands well below, your overhead or your paid-hours denominator is wrong.

How much should frequency change the price?

By the amount of extra soil, measured — not by a loyalty percentage.

Frequency	Visits per year	Condition at arrival	Effect on the per-visit rate
Weekly	48 – 52	Light, predictable	Lowest per visit
Every two weeks	24 – 26	Noticeable kitchen and bath buildup, more floor traffic	Above the weekly rate
Every four weeks	12 – 13	Approaching deep-clean condition each time	Well above the weekly rate
Quarterly or on request	2 – 4	Deep-clean condition	Deep-clean pricing

The direction surprises people, so say it plainly to the client: a house cleaned monthly costs more per visit than the same house cleaned weekly, because a month of soap scum, cooking film, and floor traffic is more work than a week of it. Discounting a monthly client toward the weekly rate is the most common self-inflicted wound in this trade.

Also write the cancellation rule into the agreement. A skipped visit turns a biweekly house into a monthly house for one cycle, and the next visit should bill accordingly.

Why does the first deep clean get its own number?

Because it is a different task list, and because the recurring rate assumes the house arrives in the condition the last visit left it in. On a new client you are inheriting somebody else’s backlog.

The deep clean on the same 3-bed, 2.5-bath house adds baseboards, door and window frames, switch plates, light fixtures, blinds, cabinet fronts, shower glass descaling, grout detail, behind and under moveable furniture, and inside the microwave. Timed, it runs 6.5 on-site cleaner-hours instead of 2.75.

Step	Calculation	Amount
Operating cost	7.20 cleaner-hours including drive × $25.40	$182.88
Overhead	7.20 × $16.00	$115.20
Supplies	Heavier chemical and pad use	$9.50
Cost		$307.58
Price at 30% margin	$307.58 ÷ 0.70	$439.40
Quoted	Rounded	$440.00

That lands at 2.1 times the recurring rate, which sits inside the range most operators see. Use the multiple as a check on your arithmetic, never as the pricing method — build the number from the task list, then see where the multiple lands. If it comes out below about 1.5, you probably left items off the deep-clean list.

How do move-out and post-construction jobs price differently?

They are separate products that happen to share a truck.

Move-out and move-in. The furniture is gone, which sounds faster and is not. Everything becomes “inside of”: inside every cabinet and drawer, inside the oven, inside and behind the refrigerator, closet shelves and rods, blinds, baseboards now fully exposed, the garage, and the marks the furniture was hiding. Two questions decide the price and both get asked before you quote: are the power and water on, and is hot water available. A move-out with cold water and no lights is a different job. Price by hours from a written checklist, and say in writing that carpet cleaning, wall washing, and appliance repair are excluded.

Post-construction. Fine drywall and sanding dust settles, gets disturbed, and settles again, so surfaces need multiple passes over days rather than one thorough pass. Add sticker and adhesive removal from windows, appliances, and fixtures, paint and caulk specks on glass and floors, and grit that destroys mop pads and vacuum filters. Price it in phases — rough, final, and post-punch touch-up — and bill each separately. A single number for “post-construction cleaning” is a promise to come back for free until the other trades stop making mess.

What should I record after every visit?

Three records make next year’s prices better than this year’s: actual on-site minutes per house, actual drive minutes between stops, and the supply and equipment receipts. None of that survives in memory across 26 visits and a dozen clients.

Keel handles that from the car between stops. The invoice goes out with your own numbering, your logo, and your payment link rendered as a QR code the client scans — Keel carries the link rather than processing the card. Supply-house and vacuum-repair receipts get photographed at the counter and read on the device by Apple Intelligence, with no account, no bank connection, no cloud, and an App Store privacy label that reads Data Not Collected. Every leg of the route logs as mileage, which on a house-to-house schedule is usually the largest deduction on the return and is valued off the IRS standard mileage rates; what a log has to contain is in how to track mileage for taxes. The Freeboard view shows cash minus tax reserve, minus committed work, minus a buffer, which matters when prepaid recurring clients have already paid for visits you have not made yet. Sending the invoice the day of the visit is also the cheapest collection tool there is, which is the theme of how to get clients to pay. Keel is free with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How do I price a house cleaning job per visit?

Count full baths, half baths, bedrooms, and the kitchen, assign minutes you have timed on your own team to each, total the cleaner-hours, and add the drive from the previous stop. Multiply the total by your loaded cleaner-hour cost, add the supply cost for one visit, then divide by one minus your target margin. Square footage is a cross-check, not the driver.

Should house cleaning be charged hourly or by the job?

By the job for recurring work, hourly with a written cap for open-ended jobs like move-outs and organizing. Fixed per-visit pricing pays your team for getting faster and gives the client a number they can budget. Hourly recurring pricing quietly cuts your revenue on every house the moment your crew improves.

Why do bathrooms matter more than square footage in cleaning prices?

Because a bathroom packs a shower surround, glass, a toilet inside and out, a vanity, a mirror, fixtures, and an obstructed floor into a very small area, and it takes roughly twice the minutes of a bedroom. A large open-plan house with two bathrooms can be faster than a smaller house with four. Count the fixtures before you measure the floor.

How much more should a first deep clean cost than a recurring clean?

Build it from its own task list — baseboards, door frames, fixtures, blinds, cabinet fronts, shower glass, grout, behind furniture — rather than applying a multiplier. When the arithmetic is done, it typically lands somewhere between one and a half and two and a half times the recurring rate. Use that band only to check whether you left items off the list.

Do I charge more for cleaning less often?

Yes, per visit. A house cleaned every four weeks carries a month of cooking film, soap scum, dust, and floor traffic, and it takes measurably longer than the same house cleaned weekly. Explain it as a labor difference rather than a penalty, and put the rule for skipped or rescheduled visits into the agreement before the first clean.

Should I charge extra for pets?

Yes, as a stated line. Hair means extra vacuum passes, more surface work, and filter and belt wear, and shedding seasons make it worse. Ask the number and coat type on the walkthrough, time one visit with the pets present, and set the add-on from what you measured rather than from a flat percentage.

---

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