A customer texts you a photo of her living room and asks, "How much for every other week?" You guess $150 because that's what you charged the last family. Then the job takes your two-person crew two and a half hours plus a 20-minute drive each way, and you've earned less than you pay your cleaners.
That guess is the problem this post fixes. If you want a quick bed/bath estimate first, try our interactive cleaning price calculator. Below is a house cleaning price calculator you can run on paper or in your phone's calculator app in about two minutes. It uses six inputs, one formula and one floor (your minimum charge). Then we run three real jobs through it, with every number shown, so you can copy the method with your own costs.
The house cleaning price calculator in one line
Here is the whole thing before we break it down:
Price = (paid cleaner-hours × cost per cleaner-hour + supplies + vehicle cost) ÷ (1 − target margin), and never less than your minimum charge.
Paid cleaner-hours are the hours on site for every cleaner, plus the drive time you pay for. Cost per cleaner-hour is what one hour of a cleaner costs you, including payroll taxes and a share of overhead. Target margin is the slice of the price you want left as profit.
That's the whole house cleaning price calculator. Everything else in this post is about getting honest numbers into those slots, because the formula is only as good as the time estimate you feed it.
The six inputs you collect before you quote
You need these from the customer and from your own books. Ask the customer questions on the phone or in your booking form; take your cost numbers from last month's payroll and bank statements.
| Input | Where it comes from | What to write down |
|---|---|---|
| Square footage | Customer, or the home's listing | Finished living area, e.g. 1,800 sq ft |
| Bedrooms and bathrooms | Customer | Count half baths as 0.5 |
| Condition and type of clean | Customer photos, or a walk-through | Recurring, first-time/deep, or move-out; pets yes/no |
| Frequency | Customer | Weekly, every other week, monthly, one-time |
| Travel | Map app | Drive minutes each way and round-trip miles |
| Your costs | Your payroll and expenses | Loaded wage, overhead per hour, supplies per job |
The first five change with every job. The last one changes maybe twice a year. Work it out once, write it on a note in your phone, and reuse it.
Tip: Ask for photos of the kitchen and the worst bathroom before you quote a first clean. Those two rooms tell you more about the time than the square footage does.
Working the calculator step by step
Five steps, in order. Do them once slowly with a real job in front of you, and the second time takes two minutes.
Step 1: Estimate the cleaning time (the input that makes or breaks the price)
Most underpriced jobs are a time problem, not a rate problem. Start with a production rate: how many square feet one cleaner covers in an hour on a standard recurring clean.
The best number is your own. Time three ordinary recurring cleans from walk-in to walk-out, subtract the bathroom time, and divide square feet by total cleaner-hours. Until you have that, use a starting rate and adjust after every job.
These starting points are our estimates for illustration, not industry standards. No public survey we could find publishes residential production rates, so treat them as a first guess:
| Part of the job | Starting estimate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Living areas and bedrooms, recurring clean | 600 sq ft per cleaner-hour | Tidy home, cleaned regularly |
| Each full bathroom | 20 cleaner-minutes | Add 10 for a large primary bath |
| First-time or deep clean | × 2.0 on cleaning time | Baseboards, doors, fixtures, buildup |
| Move-out clean (empty home) | × 1.75 on cleaning time | Inside cabinets and appliances often included |
| Pets in the home | × 1.10 | Hair on floors, furniture and vents |
| Inside oven or inside fridge | 30 cleaner-minutes each | Priced as add-ons |
For a reality check, Angi's 2026 house cleaning cost guide says a standard clean typically takes one to three hours and a deeper clean two to five, depending on home size. If your estimate lands far outside that, look again at the condition or the crew size.
The multiplier list above lines up with the scope you promise. If "deep clean" means something different at your company, the time changes too. A written scope like our deep clean and move-out checklists keeps the quote and the work matched.
Step 2: Work out what one cleaner-hour really costs you
Your cleaner's hourly pay is not your cost. On top of wages you owe the employer share of Social Security and Medicare. The IRS lists those as 6.2% and 1.45% of wages, so 7.65% before you count federal and state unemployment tax or workers' comp, which vary by state and insurer.
For context on wages, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median of $17.07 an hour for maids and housekeeping cleaners in its May 2025 national wage data. Pay in your metro may be well above that, and good cleaners are hard to keep at the median.
Here's the cost we'll plug into the calculator for the worked examples. It's an example, so swap in your own:
- Wage: $20.00 per hour
- Payroll taxes, workers' comp and unemployment, estimated at 15%: $3.00
- Loaded labor: $23.00 per cleaner-hour
- Overhead per cleaner-hour (insurance, software, phone, marketing, owner admin time): $7.00, an estimate you get by dividing a month of overhead by a month of paid cleaner-hours
- Cost per cleaner-hour: $30.00
If you clean solo and pay yourself, use the hourly amount you want to take home plus self-employment tax, not zero. Pricing your own labor at nothing is the fastest way to stay busy and broke. Your liability policy belongs in that overhead line too; our cleaning business insurance guide covers what a typical policy includes.
Step 3: Add travel, supplies and the vehicle
Drive time is paid time if your cleaners are employees driving between jobs, and it's lost time if you're solo. Either way it goes into the hours. Multiply the one-way drive by the number of cleaners in the car (count one leg if they come from another job nearby).
For vehicle cost, the IRS standard mileage rate is a handy stand-in for what a mile costs you. For business miles driven from July 1 to December 31, 2026, it's 76 cents a mile (72.5 cents for the first half of the year). It's a tax figure, not a price rule, but it captures gas, wear and depreciation in one number.
Supplies are small but real. We'll use $8 for a recurring clean and $15 for a deep clean (our estimates for chemicals, pads, bags and laundering cloths). Check yours by dividing a month of supply spend by the number of jobs.
Step 4: Add margin, not markup
This is where it's easy to lose about 7 points of margin without noticing.
- Markup is added to cost: $100 cost × 1.30 = $130.
- Margin is the share of the price that's profit: $100 cost ÷ 0.70 = $142.86, and $42.86 is 30% of $142.86.
If you want 30% of every dollar left after job costs, divide by 0.70. Multiplying by 1.30 only leaves you about 23%. That gap pays for slow months, a broken vacuum and the time you spend quoting.
How much margin? It depends on how much overhead you already packed into the $7 line. In our examples, 30% is the target after labor, overhead, supplies and vehicle. Treat that as an example target, not a benchmark.
Step 5: Set a minimum charge and a frequency rule
A minimum charge protects you from small jobs with long drives. Pick a number that covers the time you lose to a job even when it's quick: the drive, the setup and the gap it leaves in your day. We'll use $140 in the examples. That's an assumption, not a market rate, so set yours from your own day.
Frequency changes the time, so let it change the price. A weekly home doesn't build up the way a monthly one does. Rather than a flat discount, re-run the time estimate: a weekly home might clean at 700 sq ft per cleaner-hour where a monthly one needs 550. Angi's guide notes that some services discount recurring bookings and gives 20% for weekly as an example. Only match that if your time really drops by that much.
Watch out: Never discount the first clean of a recurring customer. It's the slowest visit you'll ever do there. Quote it as a deep clean and then drop to the recurring price.
Three worked examples with real math
All three run through the same house cleaning price calculator with the same example costs: $30 per cleaner-hour, 76 cents per mile, 30% target margin, $140 minimum. Round final prices up to the nearest $5.
Job A: 1,800 sq ft, 3 bed / 2 bath, every other week, two cleaners
- Rooms: 1,800 ÷ 600 = 3.00 cleaner-hours
- Bathrooms: 2 × 20 min = 40 min = 0.67 cleaner-hours
- Cleaning time: 3.67 cleaner-hours (about 1 hour 50 minutes on site for two people)
- Drive: 15 minutes × 2 cleaners = 0.50 cleaner-hours
- Paid cleaner-hours: 4.17
- Labor and overhead: 4.17 × $30 = $125.10
- Supplies: $8.00
- Vehicle: 12 round-trip miles × $0.76 = $9.12
- Job cost: $142.22
- Price: $142.22 ÷ 0.70 = $203.17, rounded to $205
Check it against the market. $205 ÷ 1,800 sq ft is about 11 cents a square foot, inside Angi's 10-20 cent range for a standard clean. It's a bit above Angi's $130-$200 band for a three-bedroom regular clean, which is fine if your area runs high. If it doesn't, the fix is usually time (a faster route or tighter scope), not a lower margin.
Job B: the same home, first-time deep clean with a dog, oven and fridge
- Base cleaning time: 3.67 cleaner-hours × 2.0 (deep) = 7.33
- Pets: 7.33 × 1.10 = 8.07
- Add-ons: oven 0.5 + fridge 0.5 = 1.00
- Cleaning time: 9.07 cleaner-hours (about 4.5 hours on site for two people)
- Drive: 0.50 cleaner-hours
- Paid cleaner-hours: 9.57 × $30 = $287.10
- Supplies $15.00, vehicle $9.12
- Job cost: $311.32
- Price: $311.32 ÷ 0.70 = $444.74, rounded to $445
That's above Angi's typical $200-$400 deep clean range and close to its per-square-foot ceiling (up to 25 cents, or $450 for 1,800 sq ft). It's also honest. If the customer balks, don't cut the base price. Offer the oven and fridge as separate lines they can drop, which takes about $43 off the price at the same margin (1.0 cleaner-hour × $30 ÷ 0.70). Our post on writing a cleaning bid shows how to lay out optional lines so customers can pick.
Job C: 750 sq ft condo, 1 bed / 1 bath, monthly, solo cleaner, 25-minute drive
- Rooms: 750 ÷ 600 = 1.25; bathroom 0.33; cleaning time 1.58 cleaner-hours
- Drive: 25 minutes × 1 cleaner = 0.42 cleaner-hours
- Paid cleaner-hours: 2.00 × $30 = $60.00
- Supplies $8.00; vehicle 18 miles × $0.76 = $13.68
- Job cost: $81.68
- Price: $81.68 ÷ 0.70 = $116.69, so the $140 minimum applies
Angi's range for a one-bedroom regular clean is $75-$110, so $140 will lose some of these leads. That's the tradeoff. Here's a way to decide: if the condo sits five minutes from a recurring customer you already clean that day, the drive drops to about 0.08 hours and 3 miles. The cost falls to about $60, and even a $115 price clears your 30% margin with room to spare. Offer that "route price" only on the day you're already nearby.
When the calculator says no
Sometimes the honest price is higher than the customer wants to pay. Here are three common cases and a way to handle each:
- The price is fine, the scope is too big. Split the first visit into kitchen and bathrooms now, the rest in two weeks.
- The drive kills the job. Ask whether they're flexible on day of the week, then slot them next to an existing route.
- The customer compares you to a solo cleaner charging less. Your price includes insurance, payroll taxes and a backup if a cleaner is sick. Say so once, plainly, and let it go.
If you're setting your first price list, the bigger picture of rates and pricing models is in our guide to how much to charge for house cleaning. New owners setting up from scratch can also start with how to start a cleaning business, which covers registering, insurance and the first customers.
Put the calculator to work this week
- Pull last month's payroll and expenses. Work out your loaded cost per cleaner-hour and overhead per hour, and save both in a phone note.
- Time your next three recurring cleans to the minute. Replace the 600 sq ft starting rate with your own.
- Decide your minimum charge and your route price, and write them down so you don't renegotiate them on every call.
- Re-price your five smallest recurring customers with the formula. Anyone under your minimum gets a polite rate notice with 30 days' warning.
- Keep each quote next to the job it became. In DusterBook you send the quote, book the visit and invoice it from your phone, so each quote sits with the job it became. Note the actual hours on your copy and compare them with the quote (free trial, plans from $14.99 a month).
After a month of real times, your house cleaning price calculator will be tuned to your crew, which beats any national average.
FAQ
How do I calculate a price for house cleaning?
Estimate the cleaner-hours the job takes, add paid drive time, and multiply by your full cost per cleaner-hour. Add supplies and vehicle cost, then divide by one minus your target margin (0.70 for 30%). If the result is below your minimum charge, charge the minimum.
Should I charge by the hour, by square foot or a flat rate?
Quote a flat price per visit if that is what your customers find easiest, but calculate it from hours. A flat rate built from time and costs protects you when a home is slower than its square footage suggests. Per-square-foot ranges, like Angi's 10-20 cents for a standard clean, work best as a check on your number, not as the number itself.
How long should it take to clean a 2,000 sq ft house?
It depends on condition, bathrooms and crew size. At our example starting rate of 600 sq ft per cleaner-hour plus 20 minutes per bathroom, a tidy 2,000 sq ft home with two baths is about 4 cleaner-hours, or 2 hours for a team of two. A first-time deep clean could take double that. Time your own crew to replace these estimates.
What profit margin should a house cleaning business aim for?
There's no official benchmark we can point to, and it depends on what you've already counted as overhead. In this post we use a 30% target after labor, overhead, supplies and vehicle as an example. Whatever target you choose, apply it as a margin (divide by 1 minus the margin), not as a markup.
What is a good minimum charge for a cleaning job?
Set it so a short job still covers the drive, setup and the gap it leaves in your schedule. Work it out from your own costs: a two-hour slot at your cost per cleaner-hour, plus vehicle cost, divided by one minus your margin. You can also keep a lower route price for small jobs next to existing customers.