How to Price Commercial Cleaning Jobs [+ Price Chart]
Pricing commercial cleaning jobs can be tricky. Commercial cleaning prices vary between jobs due to building size, special requests, demand, and service types.
Depending on your pricing structure, you can charge anywhere from $0.04–0.50/sq ft to $25–90/hour. You just have to find the right price that keeps you competitive yet profitable.
In this commercial cleaning pricing guide, you’ll learn how to price a commercial cleaning job and how much to charge to ensure you’re getting the most profit from every visit.
How much to charge for commercial cleaning services
Here’s how much you can typically charge your commercial clients for various types of cleaning services (with US pricing according to Thumbtack and HomeAdvisor).
We’ve provided calculations for popular commercial cleaning services below, based on four different pricing structures.
How much to charge for office cleaning
This type of cleaning service involves cleaning an office’s common areas, cubicles, restrooms, kitchens, and reception areas. Tasks include mopping, dusting, polishing, and waste removal.
For professional cleaning at an office building, you can charge:
- Hourly Rate: $20–80 per hour per cleaner
- Flat Rate: Anywhere from $150–1,500 as a flat rate, depending on the size of the job
- Room Rate: $50–150, depending on the office’s size and number of rooms
Sq Ft Rate: $0.10–0.40 per sq ft
How much to charge for janitorial service
When you provide cleaning and maintenance for large public facilities, you’ll complete tasks like mopping, sweeping, and taking out the trash, as well as general building maintenance.
For janitorial cleaning, you can charge:
Sq Ft Rate: $0.10–0.40 per sq ft (with higher rates for high-effort areas like bathrooms)
Hourly Rate: $20–80 per hour per cleaner
Flat Rate: $150–1,500+, depending on the size of the space you’re cleaning
Room Rate: $50–150, depending on your per-room rate breakdown (e.g., $50 for individual offices, $150 for kitchens)
How much to charge for medical office cleaning
If you have the experience and skill set to offer medical office cleaning, it can be very profitable. These tasks focus on sanitization and disinfection in addition to regular cleaning tasks.
For a commercial cleaning job at a medical office, you can charge:
Sq Ft Rate: $0.25–0.35 per sq ft (with higher rates for higher sanitization needs)
Hourly Rate: $50–150 per hour, depending on the job’s size and your experience level
Flat Rate: $200–1,500+, depending on the size of the office
Room Rate: $75–150, although this can vary depending on room sizes (e.g., exam rooms vs waiting rooms)
How much to charge for commercial kitchen cleaning
Hotels, restaurants, convention centers, and other facilities will pay a premium for a clean commercial kitchen. You’ll sanitize surfaces, wash floors, and remove buildup from equipment.
Here’s the average commercial cleaning rate for kitchens:
Sq Ft Rate: $0.15–0.30 per sq ft
Hourly Rate: $50–80 per hour per cleaner
Flat Rate: $200–500+, depending on the kitchen size and cleanliness
Room Rate: This rate doesn’t apply to commercial kitchens because they’re normally single rooms.
How much to charge for specialty commercial cleaning services
Specialty services are add-ons that help solve problems for your clients—for example, bundling carpet cleaning into their regular cleaning service.
Here’s how much you can charge for specialized commercial cleaning services:
| Service | Price |
|---|---|
| Sanitization and odor removal | $75–100/hour |
| Furniture, upholstery, and curtain cleaning | $100/hour |
| Ceiling/wall cleaning | $0.50–0.60/sq ft |
| Floor stripping and waxing | $0.30–0.50/sq ft |
| Floor buffing and burnishing | $0.04–0.12/sq ft |
| Tile cleaning | $0.12–0.21/sq ft |
| Carpet cleaning | $0.08–0.40/sq ft |
| Green cleaning supplies | $5–10 per cleaning job |
| Blinds and window cleaning | $2–5 per window |
| Appliance cleaning | $10–40 per appliance |
| Disaster restoration cleaning | $1,000–4,000 |
Some of these services might already fit into your service bundles, like wiping down the blinds, cleaning appliances, or using green cleaning supplies. But if not, this is a great opportunity to upsell your clients.
READ MORE: How much to charge for house cleaning
You always want to be all-inclusive.
You wanna offer up front all of the services that you offer and that you’re capable of cleaning.
Different pricing strategies for commercial cleaning jobs
Price your services for profit by using one of these methods: hourly, fixed, per room, or per square foot. You can even combine methods, depending on what works best for your business.
Commercial cleaning rates per hour
Charging an hourly price is a good idea when you’re unsure about the scope of work. This makes it ideal if you’re new to commercial cleaning and you’ll take longer to complete a visit.
There are a few drawbacks, though. First, you’re not rewarded for getting faster at your job. Second, the client may question your rate if they think you’re working slowly on purpose.
Latoya Barrington of Go2Girl Services prefers charging per hour to protect her business from surprises. She provides the example, “A client booking you for four hours. You go to the home and find ou that the shower is going to take you four hours to clean. It’s a lesson learned.”
Commercial cleaning flat fees
By charging a single price, clients feel in control of their budget, you avoid price haggling, and you don’t get penalized for doing your job efficiently. In fact, the less time you take, the more money you make.
A fixed fee or flat rate works well when you understand the scope of work, making it ideal for established cleaners. That said, the biggest downside of this pricing method is that you can’t under-estimate a job, or you’ll lose revenue.
Commercial cleaning room rates
With this commercial cleaning rate, you count the number of rooms you’ll be cleaning, calculate a per-room rate, and average it all out.
Say you’re cleaning an office building with a bathroom ($100), kitchen ($150), two separate offices ($75 each), and a reception area ($50). Your average room rate would be $90 ($450/5).
This is a helpful way to estimate cleaning jobs, fast. A client doesn’t need to know their building’s square footage, and you don’t have to worry about the possible downsides of hourly or flat rates.
Commercial cleaning rates per square foot
Your square foot rate will vary based on the size and type of surface. The bigger the building, the lower the square foot rate. Similarly, the harder it is to clean the surface, the longer it’ll take and the higher your rate.
This is another helpful way to estimate larger cleaning jobs quickly. The main downside is that not every client knows the square footage of their building off the top of their head.
We price our jobs based on the amount of work.
We price it by square footage, whether it’s a standard or a basic clean versus a deep cleaning or a move-out cleaning.
How to price commercial cleaning jobs
Many commercial cleaners mistakenly set prices based on prevailing rates in the area. Some even choose to undercut the competition to win more commercial cleaning contracts.
Learn how to quote commercial cleaning jobs by following the steps below:
1. Define your scope of work
Consider factors that affect commercial cleaning service prices, like the job location, building size, types of cleaning services needed, and types of rooms you’ll be cleaning.
The best way to get all this information is to visit the job site, speak to the client on the phone, or use your cleaning CRM to track every job detail.
We do a walkthrough to determine the amount of cleaning needed and to figure out how many hours we’re going to need, level of build-up, and so forth.
2. Calculate your labor costs
Follow these three steps to calculate your labor cost:
- Calculate labor hours. Determine how many hours a job will take, and multiply hours by the number of employees needed. This gives you your labor hours. For example, say you’re cleaning a small office space and you know the job will take four hours and three employees. This means your labor hours are 12 (4 x 3 = 12).
- Calculate hourly labor cost. This includes hourly wages and extras like worker’s compensation, taxes, and other employee-related expenses. Twenty percent is usually a reliable amount to add for these extras. For example, if you pay employees a $15 hourly wage, your hourly labor cost is actually $18 ($15 x 1.2).
- Multiply labor hours by labor cost. Using our example, you’ll multiply 12 labor hours by your $18 hourly labor cost. Your total labor cost for the job is now $216 (12 x $18).
Pro Tip: It can be tricky to know how long a job will take when you’re first starting a commercial cleaning business. We recommend using time tracking software to track how long your crew spends on a job, and using that information to estimate time spent on future jobs.
3. Factor in materials and overhead costs
Don’t stop at labor costs—it’s time to add your other expenses, too. This includes marketing, cleaning insurance, vehicle mileage, office rent, and commercial cleaning software.
Your overhead costs will differ from other commercial cleaning businesses. Adding 20–25% to the labor total is usually a safe bet, but it’s best to figure out your exact percentage.
Continuing with our previous example, multiply your total labor cost by your overhead cost percentage. The job’s total cost is now $259.20 ($216 x 1.20).
4. Add your markup for profit
Finally, add your markup percentage. This is the amount you add to your cost to make a profit, instead of just breaking even on a job.
Let’s say your markup is 30%. That means your final commercial cleaning cost is $336.96 ($259.20 x 1.30). That’s a profit margin of 23%, which is pretty healthy for a commercial cleaning company.
Your profit margin is the percentage of a job’s revenue that the business keeps after all other expenses are paid. You can reinvest this money into the business or save it for a rainy day.
I know I lost a lot of money before Jobber.
I just send the invoice, text it, or email it to any client and they pay it with the credit card and the money goes automatically to my account.
Factors that affect commercial cleaning service prices
There are several factors to consider before you set your commercial cleaning prices and start getting cleaning contracts:
Your overhead costs
Charge enough to cover your overhead costs during the time you’re working. For example, if your hourly overhead rate is $18, you need to earn enough to cover that cost—plus labor, supplies, and profit margin.
That said, keep your overhead rate as low as you can. Run your cleaning business as efficiently as possible so you don’t pass along high costs to clients and price yourself out of the market.
Christine Hodge of Clearview Washing recommends raising your rates to keep up with overhead costs. Her team raised prices by 15% in one year, “We wanted to encourage people to save their credit cards on file and auto charge, and we wanted to keep up with the credit card transaction fees.”
Building size
A large building will also have more rooms to clean, increasing the work required and the overall rate. As a result, your overall project value will increase with the size of the building.
Just note that as square footage goes up, your sq ft rate goes down. That’s because you’ll find efficiencies working in a big space—for example, you need more employees, but may still only need one vehicle.
This means you can give your clients more value with bigger jobs without cutting into your profit margin.
Building type
Certain buildings allow you to charge more per sq. ft due to more specialized cleaning needs.
For example, you can charge more per sq. ft for a medical building than a general office block because you’ll use different supplies and more detailed cleaning methods.
Room type
High-traffic rooms take longer to clean (e.g., bathrooms, breakrooms, and kitchens), increasing the overall cost.
Cleaning service type
Some commercial cleaning services have a higher price tag. This could be because the service takes a significant amount of time, effort, specialized equipment, or experience to complete.
For example, stripping and waxing generally cost more than buffing and burnishing. A deep clean will also have a higher price tag than a basic clean because it’s more thorough.
Building conditions
A dirtier office building requires more cleaning, so charge more to cover your time and effort to clean it. You may even want to do a deep cleaning before you provide ongoing service.
On the other hand, a building that’s been cleaned often will likely take less time to clean. You can likely charge a lower rate for regular cleaning.
Cleaning frequency
It’s common for commercial cleaning professionals to charge less as cleaning frequency increases because each subsequent visit requires less cleaning.
Job location
The further you have to travel to the job, the higher the rate you need to charge to cover costs.
To keep costs down, optimize your routes to reduce mileage and schedule all clients who are close to each other on the same day.
Service demand
You should charge a rate that’s unique to your business, based on costs and desired margins, and not fixed to industry averages.
However, it helps to understand the demand in your area and use it to guide your price. If demand is high, you can set a higher price than a business operating in a low-demand area.
Cleaning experience
The more time you spend in the commercial cleaning industry, the more experience you’ll have. This also translates to more clients and a better reputation, so you can charge a higher rate for your time.
We don’t recommend undercharging or offering discount pricing, as this won’t help you build a profitable cleaning business. Instead, build up your experience and reputation so you can charge premium prices.
Once you have that experience, take the advice of Kimberly Towers of The Red Rose, “Trust your gut and go with what you feel your service is worth.”
Run a more profitable commercial cleaning business
Once you’ve mastered pricing, you’re ready to send professional commercial cleaning estimates, track crucial job details, and collect invoice payments.
Try using commercial cleaning software to see how you can stay organized, impress your customers, and grow your business.
Originally published in November 2020. Last updated on August 23, 2024.