Free calculator
Cleaning Price Per Square Foot Calculator
Turn a home's square feet into a cleaning price that pays your goal, your costs and self-employment tax, then read it per square foot. Pick standard, deep or move-out and how often. Free, no sign-up.
- Cleaning hours (0) and drive time at break-even$0
- Vehicle$0
- Supplies for this service$0
- Price floor, zero profit$0
- Floor per sq ft$0
How it works
A per-square-foot price only pays you if the visit price behind it does, so this calculator prices the visit first and divides by the home's size second.
It grosses your take-home up for self-employment tax (15.3% on 92.35% of profit) and your income tax estimate, adds a year of business costs and spreads the total over the hours you spend cleaning: your break-even rate per clean hour. A home's cleaning time is its square feet times your person-minutes per 1,000 sq ft, times 1.75 for a deep clean or 2 for a move-out. That time plus drive time at your break-even rate, plus vehicle cost per mile and supplies, is the floor. The price adds your margin, rounds up to the next $5 and never goes below your minimum charge.
A regular schedule takes its discount off the one-time price and rounds up to $5 again. This is one row of the Cleaning Business Starter Kit's price sheet, priced for one cleaner and an average home; the kit's Quote Builder also adds rooms, pets, condition, add-ons and a helper.
A worked example
The Cleaning Business Starter Kit's example business wants $48,000 take-home with a 12% income tax estimate and $505 a month of costs, works 48 weeks of 45 hours and cleans for 70% of them: a break-even rate of $46.98 per clean hour. A 2,000 sq ft home at 90 person-minutes per 1,000 sq ft is 3 hours of cleaning. With a 16-mile round trip and $8 of supplies the floor is $191.18, and a one-time standard clean prices at $225, or $112.50 per 1,000 sq ft. Every 2 weeks (10% off) it is $205. A deep clean of the same home is $360, about 18 cents a square foot. A 1,000 sq ft home prices at $145, about 15 cents a square foot, because the drive and supplies cost the same on a small home.
Price every home, not just one
The Cleaning Business Starter Kit for Excel and Google Sheets prints this price menu for six home sizes, prices a home by square feet or rooms with a helper and pets, and logs every job with money by month. It also has fillable PDF forms in Letter and A4: client intake, walkthrough, three cleaning checklists, a quote and a visit log. $2.99, instant download.
Questions
How much should I charge per square foot for house cleaning?
It depends on how fast you clean, your pay goal, costs and travel. With the example numbers a 2,000 sq ft standard clean prices at $225, or $112.50 per 1,000 sq ft. Enter your own numbers to see yours.
Why is the per-square-foot price higher on small homes?
The drive, the vehicle and the supplies cost about the same on a small home as on a big one, and the minimum charge sets a floor, so they add more per square foot to a small home.
How do I find my minutes per 1,000 square feet?
Time a few standard cleans of homes you know the size of: person-minutes on site, divided by square feet, times 1,000. The example's 90 minutes is a starting point to replace with your own times, not a market figure.
How much more should a deep clean or move-out cost?
In this calculator a deep clean takes 1.75 times as long as a standard clean with $15 of supplies, and a move-out 2 times with $20. Those are the kit's example settings; change them in the workbook to match your own times.
Is this tax advice?
No. It is a planning estimate. Ask your tax preparer for your real income tax rate.