House Cleaning Quote Calculator

How to use this house cleaning quote calculator

1. Enter the home. Use the finished square footage and count half baths as 0.5. Ask on the phone, or look the address up on a listing site.
2. Pick the type of clean and the schedule. A deep clean or a move-out takes far longer than a recurring visit; the percentages are starting points you can change in the formula.
3. Set your team's real speed. Time three standard cleans from walk-in to walk-out, subtract bathroom time, and divide the square feet by the cleaner-hours. That number beats any rule of thumb.
4. Put in what an hour of labor really costs you. Wage plus payroll taxes and workers' comp, then overhead per hour for insurance, bonding, software and marketing.
5. Set your margin and minimum. The result updates as you type, and the table shows every step so you can explain the price to a customer.

The formula

Worked example

These are assumptions for illustration, not market figures. Swap in your own.

A 2,000 sq ft home with 2 bathrooms, standard clean every other week, team of 2 at 600 sq ft per cleaner-hour, 20 minutes per bathroom, $24 labor and $6 overhead per cleaner-hour, $8 supplies, 15-minute drive, 25% margin.

Rooms take 2,000 ÷ 600 × 60 = 200 cleaner-minutes, bathrooms 2 × 20 = 40, so 4.0 cleaner-hours of cleaning, about 2 hours on site for two people. The drive adds 15 minutes × 2 = 0.5 hours. Labor and overhead: 4.5 × $30 = $135, plus $8 supplies = $143 break-even. At 25% margin the price is $143 ÷ 0.75 = $190.67 a clean, or $413.11/month every other week, which is $42.37 per cleaner-hour with the drive counted.

Make the same home a move-out clean and the cleaning time doubles to 8 cleaner-hours: break-even $263, price $350.67. That is why a flat per-square-foot price loses money on move-outs.

How to price house cleaning

By the hour, by the square foot or flat rate?

Customers want one number per clean, so quote a flat rate. Build it from hours, though: square feet and bathrooms tell you the hours, and the hours tell you the cost. A per-square-foot price on its own breaks on homes with four bathrooms, heavy clutter or pets, which take much longer than the floor area suggests.

First clean, then recurring

The first visit in a recurring plan almost always takes longer, because the home hasn't been kept to your standard yet. Price it separately (the +30% first-clean option) and tell the customer both numbers up front: the first clean and the recurring price. It keeps the second invoice from being an argument.

Deep cleans and move-outs

Inside the oven, inside the fridge, baseboards, inside cabinets and interior windows are what make a deep or move-out clean slow. Tick the extras you will really do, and put your own minutes in. Empty homes are faster to move around in but have every surface showing.

Drive time is labor

Every cleaner in the car is on the clock. A 15-minute drive for a team of two is half an hour of paid labor on every clean, which is why tight routes in one area make more money than the same homes spread across town.

Margin is not markup

Margin is profit as a share of the price; markup is profit as a share of cost. A 25% margin is a 33% markup. Adding 25% to your cost only gives you a 20% margin.

Quote calls come in while you're on a job

Homeowners ring around for a cleaner and book whoever answers. Unmanually is an AI Office Manager that works 24/7 and that you run by voice: the AI Office Manager answers, asks the square footage, bathrooms and how often, gives your price from your rates, books the first clean and texts the confirmation, then sends the invoice and chases it. See what Unmanually does for cleaning companies, or get a free website that calls every new lead back in about a minute.