Price house cleaning jobs from a rate sheet: one hourly floor you calculate a single time, converted into flat prices by home size and clean type. In most US markets in 2026 that lands a standard clean of a 3 bed 2 bath home between $160 and $200, with deep cleans near double.
Cleaners who price every job from scratch do the same math a hundred times a year and still get talked down, because a number invented on a doorstep sounds negotiable. A rate sheet fixes that. You do the arithmetic once, on paper, when nobody is watching you, and from then on every inquiry gets a confident answer in minutes. This guide builds the sheet step by step, with a worked grid you can copy today and adjust to your zip code by tonight.
Why a Rate Sheet Beats Pricing Every Job From Scratch
A rate sheet is a small table that maps what you see, home size and clean type, to what you charge. Its value is speed and consistency. The first written price a homeowner receives usually wins the job, and a sheet lets you answer while the competition is still promising to call back. It also protects you from yourself. Every cleaner has underpriced a job because the caller sounded nice or the month looked slow, and a sheet makes that mistake harder, because the number already exists before the phone rings.
The sheet has three ingredients: your hourly floor, your time estimates per home size, and your surcharge list. Build them in that order.
Step One: Find Your Hourly Floor
Your hourly floor is the lowest rate at which a job is worth taking, and it comes from two numbers: what you need to earn and what each billable hour costs you in overhead.
Work a real example. Suppose you want $4,000 a month for yourself and you can realistically bill 100 hours a month once drive time, estimates, and admin are subtracted. That is $40 an hour before overhead. Now add up the monthly costs of running the business: roughly $150 in supplies, $250 in fuel and vehicle wear, $60 for insurance, $20 for software, and $120 for marketing basics comes to $600 a month. Spread over those same 100 billable hours, overhead adds $6 an hour. Your floor is $46, which you round up to $50 because round numbers survive negotiation better than precise ones.
Two rules follow from this math. First, never charge below the floor, because a below floor job pays you less than doing nothing once supplies and driving are counted. Second, the floor is not the price. It is the minimum, and most of your sheet should sit comfortably above it.
Hourly, Flat Rate, or Square Foot: Which to Use When
All three pricing models exist because each fits a different situation. Most successful residential cleaners use all three, in specific places.
Hourly pricing
Charge by the hour when the scope is unknowable: hoarding situations, first visits to badly neglected homes, organizing work. Typical solo rates run $50 to $70 an hour in 2026, with teams charging that per cleaner on site. The weakness is that hourly punishes you for being fast, which is exactly the skill you are building.
Flat rate pricing
Charge flat prices for repeat residential work, which should become most of your calendar. Homeowners strongly prefer a known number, and flat pricing means your growing speed raises your effective hourly rate instead of cutting your invoice. Your rate sheet is, at heart, a flat rate table built on hourly math.
Square foot pricing
Charge by the square foot, usually $0.10 to $0.20 for standard residential work, when bidding large homes, offices, or new construction cleanup where counting rooms stops making sense. For ordinary houses, bedrooms and bathrooms predict time better than raw area, so the grid below is organized by home size in rooms.
The 2026 Rate Sheet: Home Size Against Clean Type
Here is the working grid. It assumes a $50 hourly floor, a solo cleaner, and average condition homes. A standard clean is the recurring service, a deep clean adds baseboards, inside appliances, and detail scrubbing, and a move out clean is a deep clean of an empty home to a landlord standard.
| Home size | Standard clean | Deep clean | Move out clean |
| 1 bed 1 bath | $110 to $130 | $190 to $230 | $230 to $290 |
| 2 bed 1 bath | $130 to $160 | $230 to $280 | $280 to $350 |
| 3 bed 2 bath | $160 to $200 | $280 to $360 | $360 to $450 |
| 4 bed 3 bath | $210 to $260 | $380 to $470 | $470 to $580 |
Check the arithmetic against your own floor. A 3 bed 2 bath standard clean takes a practiced solo cleaner about 3 hours, and 3 hours at $50 is $150, so the $160 to $200 cell keeps you above the floor with margin for the occasional messy week. The same home as a deep clean runs 5 to 6 hours, and 6 hours at $50 is $300, which is why the deep clean column sits near double the standard column rather than at some marketing number.
Adjust the whole grid to your market, not cell by cell. Call three established cleaners in your area for prices on a 3 bed 2 bath standard clean, and shift your entire sheet up or down to sit in the middle of what you hear. The SBA guide to market research and competitive analysis covers this kind of local price checking in more depth. In high cost metros the grid can run 30 to 50 percent above these figures.
When to Charge More Than the Sheet
The grid prices an average home in average condition. These are the conditions that justify moving above it, and putting them on the sheet keeps the conversation short.
| Situation | Adjustment |
| First visit to a new client | Charge the deep clean price, then offer the standard rate for repeats |
| Shedding pets | Add $10 to $25 per visit |
| Inside oven or fridge | Add $25 to $40 each |
| Heavy buildup or long neglect | Add 25 to 50 percent to the deep clean price |
| Same week rush request | Add $25 to $50 flat |
| Monthly instead of weekly service | Charge 20 to 30 percent above the weekly rate |
The last row surprises new cleaners. A weekly client’s home never gets far from clean, while a monthly home rebuilds a month of grime before every visit, so less frequent service costs more per visit, not less. Discount frequency, never the base clean.
From Rate Sheet to Written Estimate the Same Day
A rate sheet only earns money when it reaches the client in writing, fast. The winning sequence looks like this: the inquiry arrives, you ask four questions by text, beds, baths, clean type, and pets, you read the price off your sheet, and a written estimate lands in their messages within the hour. Cleaners who run this loop consistently win jobs on speed against competitors charging less, and we walk through the messaging side in our guide to sending cleaning estimates by text and email.
This is where House Fly Pro fits the pricing job. The dashboard at housefly.com turns your sheet into written estimates delivered by text or email in minutes, then handles the yes: card, PayPal, or Apple Pay payment collection with ACH payouts, scheduling, and client messaging that keeps your personal number out of it, all for $19.99 a month for one person. If you are still comparing platforms, our full cleaning business software guide for 2026 covers the field. The tool matters less than the habit: every price in writing, every time, the same day.
Your rate sheet sets the price. For $19.99 a month, House Fly Pro puts it in writing before your competitor calls back. House Fly Pro handles the estimates, the payments, the calendar, and the client messages so the office stops following you home. No contract, and the first 14 days are a trial. Create your House Fly Pro account and send your first written estimate today.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I price house cleaning jobs as a new cleaner?
Calculate your hourly floor first: the income you need plus overhead, divided by your monthly billable hours. Then convert it into flat prices by home size and clean type, the way the grid above does, and check the result against what established cleaners in your area charge for a 3 bed 2 bath standard clean.
Should house cleaning be priced hourly or flat rate?
Flat rate for recurring residential work, hourly only when the scope is unknowable, such as a badly neglected home or a first visit you cannot inspect. Flat pricing rewards your speed, gives the homeowner a certain number, and lets a rate sheet answer inquiries in minutes instead of after a walk through.
How much should a deep clean cost compared to a standard clean?
Roughly double. A 3 bed 2 bath standard clean takes about 3 hours while the same home as a deep clean runs 5 to 6, so at a $50 hourly floor the prices land near $160 to $200 and $280 to $360. Charging the deep rate for every first visit protects that math.
When should I raise the prices on my rate sheet?
Review the sheet once a year, and raise it immediately if you are booked more than three weeks out or winning nearly every estimate you send. Closing almost everything means the market values your work above your current sheet, and a 10 to 15 percent lift usually costs few clients.
