Home services · Residential cleaning
House cleaning pricing calculator.
Enter the home size, how fast a cleaner works and your costs. Get a visit price, the margin after a recurring discount and the season’s revenue.
A 2,000 sq ft home with two cleaners that costs $162.79 with overhead needs a price of $232.56 to keep a 30% margin of the price. Those are example inputs; replace each with your own.
Your visit and costs
Your result
Pricing a clean by your time, not by the square foot alone
A house cleaning price is mostly labour, so the figure that decides it is how many paid person-hours a visit takes. Square footage is only a proxy for that, which is why this calculator asks for your own sq ft per person-hour for the kind of clean you are quoting. Change that one input between a maintenance clean and a first-time deep clean and the price moves the way your day does.
Cleaning is usually sold on repeat, so the page also models the discount you give to regulars. The discount comes straight out of margin, and across a season the gap is real money: the result shows the margin at the discounted price and the revenue over the number of visits you enter.
Worked example
A 2,000 sq ft home, two cleaners at 400 sq ft per person-hour: 2,000 ÷ 400 = 5 production hours, plus 0.25 hours setup and 0.5 hours driving for each of two people, so 6.5 paid hours. At $18 an hour with 7.65% burden labour is $125.95. Add $11.40 for 15 miles at $0.76 and $8.00 of supplies: direct cost $145.35; with 12% overhead the cost is $162.79. At a 30% margin the price is $162.79 ÷ 0.70 = $232.56. A 10% regular-customer discount makes it $209.30 and cuts the margin to 22.2%; over 26 visits that is $5,441.80. All inputs are examples, not market rates.
How it is calculated
- Paid labour hours = units ÷ production rate + (setup + drive) × crew size. Production time is the part that scales with job size; setup and driving are paid for every person every job.
- Labour cost = paid hours × hourly wage × (1 + payroll burden). The 7.65% starting figure is the employer share of Social Security (6.2%) plus Medicare (1.45%) in IRS Publication 15 (2026), which also lists a $184,500 Social Security wage base that an hourly crew will not reach.
- Direct cost = labour + vehicle (miles × cost per mile) + equipment (on-site hours × running cost) + materials. Overhead is added as a percentage of direct cost.
- Price = (direct cost + overhead) ÷ (1 − target margin). Dividing by one minus the margin is what makes the margin a share of the price; multiplying cost by 1.35 would give a 25.9% margin, not 35%. The quote is never below the minimum charge.
The 7.65% payroll starting point is from IRS Publication 15 (2026) and the $0.76 per mile from the IRS business standard mileage rate for July 1 to December 31, 2026. No wage statistic is built in: you enter the wage you actually pay. Calculation as of October 26, 2026. Payroll rates, mileage rates and wage statistics change, so check the pages in Sources before you rely on the reference figures.
What this does not cover
- Any market price. The production rate, wage, overhead and margin are yours; this page ships no local rate card and makes no claim about what customers in your area pay.
- Sales tax on services, which depends on your state or province, and the business income tax on your profit.
- Whether your cleaners are employees or independent contractors, which changes payroll tax obligations. This page assumes employees at the burden you enter.
Sources
- IRS Publication 15 (2026), Employer’s Tax Guide: employer Social Security and Medicare rates (opened 2026-10-26)
- IRS standard mileage rates: 2026 business rates (cents per mile) (opened 2026-10-26)
Common mix-ups
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Often assumedEmployer Medicare tax stops at a wage cap, the way Social Security does.
What the source saysIRS Publication 15 (2026) gives a Social Security wage base limit of $184,500 for 2026 but says there is no wage base limit for Medicare tax. The Medicare employer rate of 1.45% applies to all of an employee's wages. [1]
Checked against these sources on .
Frequently asked questions
How do I price a house cleaning visit?
Work out paid person-hours from home size and your cleaning speed, add setup and driving, add supplies, vehicle cost and overhead, then divide by one minus your target margin.
Should I charge by the hour or by the home?
Either works if the numbers behind it are right. A flat visit price is easier to sell; this page builds one from the hours it takes, so you can see the hourly figure it implies.
How much margin does a regular-customer discount cost?
In the example a 10% discount takes a 30% margin to 22.2%. Enter your discount to see the margin you keep.
What payroll burden applies to cleaners?
For employees, 7.65% of wages is the employer share of Social Security and Medicare under IRS Publication 15 (2026). Add other employer costs you pay.
Does this tell me what other cleaners charge?
No. It works only from your own costs. No market price source was opened for this page.
Estimate only
This page is a pricing aid, not tax, employment or legal advice. Results use the numbers you enter and the formulas and sources named above, as read on October 26, 2026. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.