How much to charge for house cleaning, and how to work it out
There’s no single right price. A good one comes from three numbers: how long the house really takes you, the hourly rate you need after driving, supplies and tax, and your supplies and trip cost. Multiply, add, then quote one flat price. With the example numbers below, a 3-bedroom, 2½-bath house at $45 an hour comes to $210 for a one-time standard clean, $190 for every-two-weeks service, and $320 for the first deep clean.
IRS figures last checked Oct 3, 2026. Sources are at the bottom of this page.
Step 1: How long the house takes
Start from time, not square footage. The quote calculator uses these starting minutes for one cleaner on a standard clean:
| Room or task | Minutes |
|---|---|
| Setup and pack-away, per visit | 15 |
| Bedroom | 20 |
| Full bathroom | 30 |
| Half bathroom | 15 |
| Kitchen | 40 |
| Living room | 20 |
| Dining room | 12 |
| Halls and stairs, per floor | 10 |
| Inside the fridge (extra) | 30 |
Example house: 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 1 half bath, kitchen, living room, dining room and one floor of halls, plus the inside of the fridge. Rooms come to 217 minutes. Add 15 for setup and 30 for the fridge and you get 262 minutes, or about 4.4 hours of cleaning.
These are starting points, so replace them with your own. As one cleaner put it, “Make sure you use your real average job time, not how fast you wish you were” (r/sweatystartup). Time your next few cleans room by room.
Step 2: The hourly rate you actually need
The rate on the quote isn’t what you take home. A $150 clean that takes 3 hours looks like $50 an hour. Here’s a typical week worked through with the real hourly rate calculator:
- 12 jobs a week at $150, 3 hours of cleaning each
- 40 minutes of driving per job, 16 miles at $0.50 a mile
- $30 of supplies and $40 of other costs a week, 3% card or app fees
- 4 hours a week of admin (quotes, texts, scheduling)
- Self-employment tax of 14.13% of profit, plus 10% put aside for income tax
Revenue is $1,800 and costs are $220, leaving $1,580 of profit. Self-employment tax takes $223.25 and the income-tax set-aside $158, so you take home $1,198.75. Spread over 48 hours (36 cleaning, 8 driving and 4 admin), that’s $24.97 an hour, not $50.
Cleaners say the same thing: “you’re making maybe $30 for three hours” once taxes, gas and supplies come out of a $50 job (r/housekeeping), and take-home is “probably closer to $20/22/hr after taxes and business expenses” (r/housekeeping).
Working backwards with the same costs: taking home $30 an hour needs $177.32 per job, which is $59.11 per cleaning hour. That’s why the rate you put into a quote should be the rate you need, not the take-home figure you’re aiming for.
Step 3: Turn time into a flat price
For the example house at $45 an hour, $1.50 an hour of supplies and a 12-mile trip at $0.50 a mile:
| Line | Working | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Labor | 4.37 h × $45 | $196.50 |
| Supplies | 4.37 h × $1.50 | $6.55 |
| Trip | 12 mi × $0.50 | $6.00 |
| Total, rounded up to $5 | $209.05 | $210 |
At $55 an hour the same house is $255. Quote the client one flat price, not the hours. Fast cleaners in particular say hourly billing works against them: “Because I work quickly and efficiently hourly is not to my benefit” (r/housekeeping). The trade-off is that a flat price needs a clear list of what’s included, so write it down.
Price per square foot works as a sanity check, not as the method. $210 for an 1,800 sq ft house is about $0.12 a square foot. Two houses the same size can take very different times.
Deep cleans, move-outs and the first visit
The calculator multiplies the room time (not the extras) by 1.6 for a deep clean and 1.8 for a move-in or move-out:
- Deep clean: 232 × 1.6 = 371.2 minutes, plus the fridge’s 30, is 401 minutes (6.7 hours), so $320
- Move-out: 232 × 1.8 = 417.6, plus 30, is 448 minutes (7.5 hours), so $355
- A house in rougher shape (+15% on a standard clean) comes to 297 minutes, so $240
Price the first visit of a new recurring client as a deep clean. “They always take longer than I anticipate and then I realize I’ve underquoted myself,” one cleaner wrote (r/housekeeping). Another wrote, “I’d treat the first visit as a deep clean and price it higher or charge by the hour.”
Weekly, every two weeks or monthly
With the quote calculator’s default discounts (15% weekly, 10% every two weeks, 5% monthly), the example house is $180 weekly, $190 every two weeks and $200 monthly.
Be careful with monthly. “I find a 3 hour biweekly clean is a 4-5 hour monthly clean,” one cleaner wrote. “People often think they can half the frequency to half their bill, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way” (r/housekeeping). The recurring calculator shows why. Take a one-time clean at $180 that takes 4 hours, with a 30-minute drive and a $6 trip cost. That earns $38.67 an hour. A monthly visit at 5% off is $171, but if it takes 4.5 hours you earn $33 an hour. Keeping your $38.67 rate means charging $199.33 for that monthly clean, more than the one-time price, not less.
Set a minimum
A 1-bedroom, 1-bath apartment works out to 65 minutes, or $56.38 at the example rates. That’s hardly worth the drive. A minimum charge, $120 in the calculator’s default, covers your travel and setup on small jobs. One cleaner’s version: “Min of $75/2hrs, $35/hr for any time over 2hrs” (r/sweatystartup).
Questions people ask
How much should I charge per hour for house cleaning?
Enough to take home what you want after driving, supplies, admin time and tax. In the example week, taking home $30 an hour needed about $59 per cleaning hour. Put your own costs into the real hourly rate calculator to get your number.
Should I charge by the hour or a flat rate?
Most solo cleaners quote a flat price built from their time. Clients like knowing the price up front, and you aren’t paid less for working faster. Write down what the price includes.
How much more should a deep clean cost?
The calculator’s starting point is 1.6 times the standard room time, or 1.8 for a move-in or move-out. For the example house that’s $320 for a deep clean and $355 for a move-out, against $210 for a standard clean.
Should a monthly clean cost less than biweekly?
Usually not. A month of dirt takes longer to clean. If a monthly visit takes 4.5 hours instead of 4, keeping the same hourly rate means charging more per visit, $199.33 instead of $180 in the example.
Can I price house cleaning by square foot?
Use it as a check, not the method. Time depends on rooms, bathrooms, condition and extras more than on size. The example house works out to about $0.12 a square foot for a standard clean.
Sources
- IRS Topic 554, Self-employment tax: 15.3% on 92.35% of net earnings, which is 14.13% of profit. Checked Oct 3, 2026.
- IRS standard mileage rates: 76¢ a mile for business driving from July 1 to December 31, 2026. The examples use your own cost estimate of $0.50 a mile. Checked Oct 3, 2026.
- Room minutes, multipliers and discounts: starting points from the Cleaning Quote Calculator workbook, to replace with your own times.
- Cleaner quotes: public Reddit threads in r/housekeeping (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and r/sweatystartup (6).
Estimates for planning, not tax, legal or financial advice. This page and the calculators were made with AI assistance, and the tax figures were checked against the IRS pages above. If you’d like to keep every quote and job in one file, the Cleaning Quote Calculator ($5 spreadsheet, sold on Payhip) is from the same maker.