Underprice a cleaning job and you're scrubbing someone's oven for free; overprice it and they call the person who quoted faster. The trick is a number that covers your real costs, reads as professional, and lands while you're still standing on the porch. Here's how to price a house cleaning job in 2026.
Decide how you charge: hourly, per square foot, or flat rate
Hourly runs about $25–$75 per cleaner in 2026 (independents often $20–$50). It's honest for messy or unknown homes, but it caps what you can earn on a job you've gotten fast at. Per square foot runs roughly $0.10–$0.17 for a standard clean and up to $0.30 for a deep clean. Flat rate is what you should actually hand the customer — you calculate it with hourly and per-square-foot math behind the scenes, then quote one clean number.
What a cleaning price has to cover
- Labor — your time (or your cleaners') at a loaded rate, not just take-home pay.
- Supplies & equipment — products, cloths, vacuum wear, refills.
- Overhead — travel between jobs, insurance, phone, scheduling software.
- Profit — your margin on top, so the business grows instead of just breaking even.
Walk the home and count the real work
Bedrooms and bathrooms drive most of the time, but the money hides in the extras: pets, clutter level, inside the oven or fridge, interior windows, baseboards, and how long since the last clean. A “2,000 square foot house” that hasn't been cleaned in a year is a deep clean, not a standard one — price it that way.
Ballpark to sanity-check your number
- Standard clean, ~2,000 sq ft (3 bed / 2 bath): about $110–$320, with the typical range landing $120–$280.
- Deep clean: higher per square foot (up to ~$0.30) for the first-time or neglected home.
- Set a minimum so small jobs still cover your drive time and setup.
Offer Standard / Deep / Move-out tiers
Give three options — a recurring standard clean (Good), a deep clean that hits baseboards, inside appliances, and detail work (Better), and a move-in/move-out or top-to-bottom (Best). Tiers move the conversation from “how much?” to “which one,” and they lift your average ticket.
Quote it before you leave the porch
In home services the first professional-looking quote usually wins — and homeowners are calling three cleaners. That's what QuoteCrew is for. You walk the home, say the job out loud (“3-bed 2-bath, standard clean, add inside the oven and the fridge”), and it builds an itemized, tiered quote from your saved rates and texts the customer a link they can accept on the spot — before you're back in the car. It runs on your phone, in English or Spanish.
You can price a cleaning perfectly in your head. You just can't do it fast enough, at the door, while the customer is deciding — and that speed is what books the recurring client.
Rates above are 2026 U.S. national averages and vary by region, home condition, and service type; always price from your own local costs.