How Much to Charge for House Cleaning (and Recurring Cleans)

Quick answer

Pricing house cleaning is a method, not a number. You need three inputs (your cost per clean hour, the time a job actually takes, and the margin you need) and one of three models: hourly, flat per job, or per-room and per-square-foot. There is no universal rate worth copying, because two businesses with the same service carry different labor, travel, and overhead costs.

This guide walks through the method. Any figures below are worked examples with fictional inputs, labeled as such, not market rates.

Step 1: Know your true cost per hour

Most underpricing comes from costing only the clean itself. Build your hourly cost from everything a clean hour consumes:

• Direct labor. The cleaner's hourly pay, plus employer taxes and any benefits or mileage you cover.
• Consumables. Supplies and equipment, divided across the hours you work.
• Travel. The unpaid drive between jobs, averaged into the paid hours.
• Overhead. Software, insurance, phone, marketing, and admin time, divided across billable hours.
• A margin for the business. The amount that pays you as an owner and funds slow weeks, repairs, and growth.

Add those lines and divide by your realistic billable hours per month (not your working hours; travel and admin are not billable). The result is the floor you cannot price below without losing money on every job.

Step 2: Choose a pricing model

Model	Works well when	Watch for
Hourly	Job scope varies a lot; you bill for the time used	Customers dislike open-ended totals; protect against underestimating scope
Flat per job	The service is standard and repeatable	You absorb scope creep; build the estimate from real job times, not guesses
Per room or per square foot	Home size drives the work and the customer expects to self-select	Two homes of the same size can take very different time depending on condition

A hybrid is common: a flat per-visit price for recurring work, with a higher first-clean price for the initial deep clean that takes longer.

Step 3: Price recurring cleans properly

Recurring work is your most valuable revenue, and it is where pricing mistakes compound. Three rules:

Price the first clean separately. The initial visit almost always takes longer than the steady-state clean. Charge for it as a one-time deep clean rather than folding it into the recurring rate.

Discount recurring frequency with intention. A weekly clean should not simply be a monthly price divided by four. More frequent visits reduce travel and setup per visit and improve customer retention, so a modest recurring discount is defensible, but only after you have checked that the discounted rate still clears your cost floor from Step 1.

Think in annualized value, not visit price. A biweekly customer at a lower per-visit rate is worth more per year and is likely to stay longer than a one-off customer at a higher rate. Compare candidates on revenue per year and cost to re-acquire, not per visit.

A worked example (illustrative numbers only)

These numbers are fictional and shown to demonstrate the arithmetic, not a rate to copy.

Suppose your costed floor is $40 per clean hour. A standard 2-bedroom clean takes 2.5 hours on a recurring basis.

• Cost floor for the visit: 2.5 × $40 = $100.
• Add a 30% margin: $100 ÷ 0.70 ≈ $143 per recurring visit.

For a biweekly customer, that is roughly $143 × 26 visits ≈ $3,718 per year from one client. Now run the same arithmetic for a weekly client at a discounted $130 per visit: $130 × 52 ≈ $6,760 per year. The discounted weekly rate is still the larger account, and it is easier to schedule into a predictable route. That comparison, not the headline visit price, is the pricing decision.

Build a price list, then hold it

A published internal price list stops you from re-quoting every job from scratch and keeps your answers consistent when customers compare.

1. Define your service levels (standard, deep, move-out) and what each includes.
2. Set the recurring rate for each frequency: weekly, biweekly, and every four weeks.
3. Set a separate higher price for the first clean.
4. Add explicit extras with their own prices: inside oven, inside fridge, laundry, pets.
5. Write down what is not included, so scope creep has a documented answer.

Common pricing mistakes

• Pricing off a competitor's ad. Their cost structure is not yours; their rate may be losing money.
• Ignoring travel and admin. Both consume real hours and are easy to leave out of an hourly figure.
• Discounting to win a bad-fit customer. A large home on a tight schedule at a low rate is a recurring loss, not a win.
• Never revisiting prices. Costs drift; set a review date at least once a year.
• Quoting from memory. Then the same service costs a different amount to two customers, and margins become invisible.

Where pricing meets the schedule

Pricing and scheduling are the same problem in two directions. A recurring rate only works if the visit actually fits the route and the cleaner's day; an aggressive discount that creates travel-heavy scheduling destroys the margin it was meant to protect.

That is why cleaning businesses move from a spreadsheet to a scheduler once recurring work grows. MaidLoop keeps the recurring series, the assigned cleaner, and the visit price together in one place, so a price change and a schedule change stay in step. See the MaidLoop scheduling scope or the $15 monthly plan if that is the workflow you are pricing around.

House cleaning pricing questions

Should I charge hourly or a flat rate?

Charge hourly when scope genuinely varies and you can defend the total; charge flat when the service is repeatable and you have real job times to build from. Recurring work is usually easier to sell flat because the customer knows the number in advance.

How much more should a first clean cost?

Enough to cover the extra time the initial visit takes versus the steady-state clean. Estimate the real difference in hours and price it as its own one-time job rather than building it into the recurring rate.

Is a weekly clean cheaper per visit than a monthly clean?

It usually should be, because more frequent visits spread travel and setup across more revenue. Check that the discounted rate still clears your cost floor, and compare the two on annual revenue rather than visit price.

How often should I raise prices?

At least review annually. If your costs, travel, or overhead have moved, adjust. Give recurring customers advance notice and apply the change at a natural boundary in the schedule.