Question 1

How much does house cleaning cost?

Accepted Answer

The cost guides we could open put a standard house clean at $120 to $280 a visit (HomeGuide, bylined April 2024; Housecall Pro publishes the same range), while Thumbtack's booking data, last updated January 2026, has customers paying $174 to $256. For an average 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home HomeGuide gives $135 to $180. By the hour it is usually $25 to $75 per cleaner, or about $0.10 to $0.20 per square foot. Estimaid's own working model puts a small apartment near $60 to $110 and a large home at $200 to $400 - those two are our estimates rather than published figures, and our pricing methodology page lists every source with the date its data carries. Deep cleans and move-out cleans run higher because they cover far more labor.

Question 2

Is house cleaning priced per hour, per room, or flat?

Accepted Answer

All three are common. Hourly ($25 to $75 per cleaner, per HomeGuide's April 2024 guide) is simple and protects you on unpredictable jobs, but it is harder for a client to compare. Per-room or per-square-foot pricing scales cleanly with home size, while a flat rate is the easiest to sell because the client knows the number up front. Most cleaners estimate the hours behind the scenes, then quote a flat price for the visit.

Question 3

How much should I charge for a recurring clean vs a one-time?

Accepted Answer

A recurring client is worth a lower rate because a maintained home takes less time each visit. Housecall Pro recommends discounting recurring work by 10 to 15 percent per visit, and that is the published guidance we could open. The calculator above applies Estimaid's own slightly wider ladder - roughly 5% off for monthly, 15% for every two weeks, and 20% for weekly service - so you can see the trade between a higher one-off and a steady repeat client. The one-time or first visit is priced at full rate, since it does the most work.

Question 4

What is included in a standard house cleaning?

Accepted Answer

A standard clean maintains a home that is already in good shape - dusting and wiping surfaces, vacuuming and mopping floors, and cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms (counters, sinks, toilets, showers, and mirrors). It does not include the inside of the oven or fridge, baseboards, blinds, interior windows, or built-up grime - those are deep-clean or add-on work. Pricing a standard visit as standard, and quoting extras separately, keeps your estimate honest.

Question 5

How much should you charge to clean a 2000 sq ft house?

Accepted Answer

A 2,000 sq ft house works out to about $200 to $400 for a standard clean, at the $0.10 to $0.20 per square foot the cost guides publish (HomeGuide, bylined April 2024, gives $0.10 to $0.17; Housecall Pro gives $0.10 to $0.20). That total is arithmetic from the cited rate, not a published price for that exact size. The same guides put a typical standard visit at $120 to $280 whatever the size, and a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home at $135 to $180, so a well-maintained 2,000 sq ft home usually lands in the lower half of the per-foot calculation while a neglected or heavily furnished one sits near the top. Price from rooms, condition, and your own hours rather than area alone, and use the per-square-foot figure as a sanity check.

Question 6

What will a cleaner do in 2 hours?

Accepted Answer

In two hours one cleaner can complete a standard clean of a small, already-maintained home: kitchen counters, sink and appliance fronts, one or two bathrooms, dusting and wiping the main surfaces, and vacuuming and mopping the floors. That is the low end of the 1.5 to 3 hours this page's price table assumes for a standard visit, which is our own working assumption rather than published data - no source we could open publishes cleaning times. Two hours does not cover deep-clean work such as inside the oven or fridge, baseboards, blinds, interior windows, or built-up grime, which is why those are quoted as add-ons. In a larger or neglected home, two hours buys the priority rooms only, so agree which rooms come first before the visit starts.

Question 7

Is $50 an hour for cleaning good?

Accepted Answer

$50 an hour per cleaner sits in the upper half of what US house cleaning charges, so it is a normal to strong rate rather than an outlier: HomeGuide's April 2024 guide gives $25 to $75 per cleaner-hour, Housecall Pro gives $30 to $75, and Thumbtack's booking data, last updated January 2026, has customers paying $40 to $55 an hour. Whether it is good for you depends on what the rate has to cover. The median wage for a maid or housekeeping cleaner is $17.07 an hour (O*NET OnLine, US Department of Labor, 2025 wages), so at $50 the remaining $33 pays payroll tax, supplies, travel, insurance, unpaid admin and drive time, and your profit. For a customer it is a normal agency price; for a solo cleaner it is healthy in most markets and low in the highest-cost metros.

Question 8

How long should it take to clean a 1500 square foot house?

Accepted Answer

A standard clean of a 1,500 sq ft home is roughly 3 to 4 cleaner-hours, which is about 3 to 4 hours for one cleaner or half that for a two-person team. That figure is derived, not published: HomeGuide gives $135 to $180 for a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home of about this size and $25 to $75 per cleaner-hour, and at the middle of that hourly band the visit prices out at three to four hours of labor. No source we could open publishes cleaning durations directly, so treat it as a working number rather than a standard. A deep clean of the same home takes substantially longer because the scope is different, and condition moves the hours more than square footage does - a neglected home can take twice as long as a maintained one of identical size.

Question 9

How do I set my own house cleaning rates?

Accepted Answer

Start from a base price for the visit, add per-bedroom and per-bathroom amounts, factor home size, then layer add-ons and a recurring discount on top. The fastest way is to set those rates once in Estimaid and let it build the itemized, branded quote for you - so every house cleaning estimate is consistent, on-brand, and ready to text the moment you walk the home.

Home size	Typical range
Studio / 1 bedroomUnder ~800 sq ft · Estimaid model, not a published figure	$60 – $110
2 bed · 1-2 bath~1,000 sq ft · Estimaid model, not a published figure	$90 – $130
3 bed · 2 bath~1,500 sq ft	$135 – $180
4 bed · 3 bath~2,500 sq ft · Estimaid model, not a published figure	$140 – $250
5+ bed / large home3,500 sq ft+ · Estimaid model, not a published figure	$200 – $400
Typical visit, published rangeStandard clean, any size; Thumbtack's booking data sits at $174-$256	$120 – $280
By the hour (per cleaner)Most standard cleans run 1.5-3 hours	$25 – $75 / hr
By square footStandard clean on whole-home jobs	$0.10 – $0.20 / sq ft

House cleaning cost calculator - what your clean should cost.

What goes into a house cleaning price

Typical house cleaning prices by size

Price the clean, then send it as a branded quote.

Common questions