What a room actually takes, why hourly pricing punishes speed, and the formula that turns your costs into a price you can defend.
Cleaning is priced three ways and only one of them survives a bad month. Hourly pays the slowest cleaner the most. Flat rate per square metre ignores condition and clutter. Room-by-room, priced from minutes, is the one that holds up.
Why hourly is the wrong starting point
If you charge an hourly rate, getting faster cuts your income. That is the opposite of what experience should do. It also rewards you for being in a house longer, which the client can feel, and it makes the quote a moving number, which is why hourly jobs always end in a conversation nobody enjoys.
Use the hourly rate as a cost input, not as the price. You need to know what an hour of your time must earn. Then price the job.
Building the price from minutes
Time each room honestly once, on a real job, with a stopwatch. Then build a table of minutes per room type at three conditions. A standard clean is upkeep; a deep clean is first visit or after neglect; a move-out clean is empty, and empty is a different job entirely.
- Regular upkeep, per bedroom, per week: the number you will use most often, and the lowest. Repetition compounds.
- First clean of a new client: usually 1.5 to 2 times the upkeep minutes, because you are learning the house and fixing backlog.
- Deep clean: priced per room plus named extras, because “deep” means different things to you and to them.
- Extras with their own line: oven, fridge, carpets, internal windows, blinds, post-construction dust. Never absorb these silently.
Then the formula: total minutes times your minute rate, with a minimum visit charge that reflects your setup and travel. That minimum is not greed, it is the reason a one-room clean does not lose you money.
What a minute is worth
Start from the money you need: target annual earnings, plus vehicle, insurance, materials and non-billable admin time. Divide by billable minutes you will realistically work in a year, not the theoretical maximum. Most solo cleaners overestimate billable time by about a third, then price as though every hour is sold.
The hourly rate calculator does the first half of that arithmetic, and the job profit calculator checks whether a specific job at a specific price actually made money once travel and materials are counted.
The reusable prompt
Use this once to build your own price sheet, then reuse it whenever you add a service.
Act as a pricing assistant for a small cleaning business. Build me a room-by-room price sheet. MY INPUTS - Target annual earnings: [amount] - Business costs per year (insurance, vehicle, materials, software): [amount] - Working weeks per year: [number] - Billable hours per week: [number] - Travel zone and typical drive time between clients: [minutes] - Minimum visit time I am willing to do: [minutes] Produce: 1. A required hourly rate, showing the arithmetic. 2. A minute rate I can use for pricing, with the rounding rule. 3. A table: room type, upkeep minutes, first-clean minutes, deep-clean minutes. 4. A named extras list with suggested price lines. 5. A minimum visit charge and the sentence explaining it to a client. Rules: show your working for every number. If my billable hours look unrealistic against the working weeks I gave, say so directly before giving prices.
What clients compare, and what they do not
They compare the total, not the rate. A cleaner quoting 35 for three hours looks cheaper than one quoting 40 for two and a half until you work out the hourly, and most clients never do. What they remember is whether the quote felt explainable. A price built from rooms and minutes can be explained in one sentence; a round number cannot.
Quotes should also state what is not included. Heights above reach, biohazards, moving furniture, anything needing equipment you do not carry. Written exclusions prevent the “while you’re here” conversation that quietly eats an afternoon.
When to raise the price
When your minute rate has moved and your sheet has not. That happens most years, in small steps, and the way to handle it is a written notice to regular clients before the change, not an awkward mention at the door. The price increase letter guide has the wording.
If your client base is mostly recurring domestic work, the cleaning business guide covers the admin around it: reminders, reschedules and review requests.
Explaining the price to a client
The number is easier to defend when the sentence explaining it is written before the client asks.
Write the short explanation I send with a cleaning quote. DETAILS - Property: [bedrooms, bathrooms, approximate size] - Frequency: [weekly / fortnightly / one-off] - Price: [amount] - What is included: [rooms and tasks] - What costs extra: [oven, fridge, carpets, windows, waste] - Minimum visit charge: [amount] Produce four sentences: 1. The price and what it covers. 2. Why frequency changes the price. 3. What is not included, said plainly. 4. What happens next to book. Rules: no apologising for the price, no "competitive rates", no exclamation marks. Under 90 words.
Stress-testing the price sheet
Run your numbers through this before you publish a price list. It finds the room that is quietly losing you money.
Review my cleaning price sheet for problems. MY SHEET [paste the room types, minutes and prices] MY COSTS - Target hourly earnings: [amount] - Travel band and typical drive: [minutes] - Materials per job: [amount] Find: 1. Any room priced below my required hourly after minutes and travel. 2. Rooms where the first-clean estimate looks too low. 3. Extras that are underpriced relative to the time they take. 4. The single change that would most improve my margin. Show the arithmetic for each finding. Be blunt.
Frequently asked questions
Should I charge by the hour or by the job?
Quote the job, using hourly costs to build the number. Clients buy a clean house, not your time, and a fixed price removes the incentive to slow down.
How much should a first clean cost compared with a regular one?
More, usually by half as much again, because the first visit includes backlog and learning the property. Pricing the first clean at the regular rate is the most common way new cleaners lose a day’s profit.
What is a fair minimum visit charge?
Your minimum should cover travel both ways, setup and pack-down, plus at least an hour of work. In practice that means the smallest job you accept is rarely below your one-hour price plus your travel band.
Do I need a written quote for a small clean?
For a one-off, a text message stating the price and the scope is enough. For a recurring client, a one-page quote with frequency, price and exclusions prevents the disputes that end contracts.
Last reviewed and updated on November 11, 2026.
