How to Price a House Cleaning Job (the Real Formula)

Why gut-feel pricing quietly loses money

Most cleaners price a job the same way: glance around, guess how long it'll take, name a round number. It feels fast and free — until you realize the number never covered your real costs. The average solo cleaner underprices their true cost-per-hour by 30–40% and doesn't find out for months, usually after a full schedule still isn't paying the bills.

The fix isn't charging more at random. It's pricing from your actual cost, then adding the margin you want on top — so profit is built into the number before you ever say it out loud.

The house cleaning pricing formula

Here's the formula that protects your margin on every job:

Bid = (Labor × 1.30 + Supplies + Overhead) ÷ (1 − target margin)

Work through it in four steps:

1. Labor. Cleaners × hours on site × your hourly rate. Two cleaners for 2.5 hours at $25/hour = $125.

2. Labor burden (× 1.30). Your wage is not your cost. Payroll taxes, workers' comp and benefits add roughly 30% on top. $125 × 1.30 = $162.50.

3. Add overhead and supplies. Insurance, vehicle, phone, and cleaning products. If overhead is 15% of labor, that's about $24, plus a few dollars of supplies.

4. Divide by (1 − margin). For a 25% target margin, divide the cost by 0.75. A ~$190 cost becomes about $253 — with your 25% profit already inside.

A worked example: 3-bed, 2-bath standard clean

Say a two-person crew cleans a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home in about 2.6 hours each at $25/hour.

• Labor: 2 × 2.6 × $25 = $130
• With 1.30 burden: $169
• Overhead at 15%: +$25
• Cost basis: $194
• At a 25% margin (÷ 0.75): ≈ $262

That $262 is the number that pays you properly. Compare it to the ~$150 a gut-feel quote often names on the same house — that lower number loses about $46 once you count burden and overhead. You'd be cleaning at a loss and calling it a full schedule.

Adjust for deep cleans, move-outs and recurring work

The base formula prices a standard, one-time clean. Real jobs need a few adjustments:

• Deep clean: about 1.5× a standard clean — more time, more detail.
• Move-out / move-in: about 2× — empty homes hide more, and there's a turnover deadline.
• First-time clean: priced higher than the recurring rate; the home's condition is unknown and there's no repeat guarantee yet.
• Recurring discount: offer 10–20% off for weekly or biweekly service — it's worth it for guaranteed, predictable work.
• Condition surcharges: pets, smokers or heavy clutter add time; a 10–15% surcharge keeps the job profitable.

Price the next job in under a minute

You don't have to run this math by hand on every walkthrough. BidCalc does exactly this formula on your own rates: enter the beds and baths or square footage, the cleaning type and frequency, and it shows a margin-protected price plus a private breakdown of your cost, profit and margin that the client never sees. Then it turns the number into a branded quote you can send on the spot.

Start free — no credit card — and price your next job before you leave the driveway.