Cleaning Quote Calculator
Enter the property details and this calculator gives you a defensible quote in seconds: labour hours, a suggested price, the VAT position and the margin you keep. Built on UK cleaning industry rates for 2026.
Cleaning Quote Calculator
Price a domestic or commercial clean in under a minute.
No VAT, not registered
- Cleaning time on site
- 2.8 hrs
- Paid hours inc. travel
- 3.2 hrs
- True cost per cleaner-hour
- £16.00
- Labour cost
- £51.47
- Materials
- £2.32
- Your profit
- £20.74 (28%)
Sanity-check the 2.8 hour estimate against a comparable job you have actually completed before sending this.
How cleaning quotes are actually calculated
Almost every profitable cleaning quote in the UK is built the same way: estimate the hours, cost the hours, then add margin. Everything else: square metre rates, per-room prices, "£18 an hour" rules of thumb: is a shortcut back to that same sum.
The reason quoting feels hard is that the hours estimate is the part people guess at. A 90m² office with hard floors and six desks is a very different job to a 90m² office with carpet, a kitchen and twenty desks, even though the square metre figure is identical. This calculator makes the hours visible so you can adjust them rather than adjusting a mystery price.
Typical UK cleaning rates in 2026
These are the ranges most UK cleaning businesses are quoting. Rates are higher in London and the South East, and lower in parts of the North East, Wales and Northern Ireland: treat them as a starting point, not gospel.
| Job type | Typical charge-out | Common unit |
|---|---|---|
| Regular domestic cleaning | £18–£28 per hour | Per hour |
| One-off deep clean | £25–£40 per hour | Per hour |
| End of tenancy | £180–£450 per property | Fixed price |
| Office / contract cleaning | £16–£26 per hour | Per hour or per m² |
| Commercial by area | £1.20–£3.20 per m² | Per m² per month |
| Carpet cleaning | £30–£60 per room | Per room |
The three mistakes that kill margin on a quote
- Quoting the visit, not the round trip. Travel between sites, key collection, unloading and restocking are all paid time. A 2-hour clean 25 minutes away is a 3-hour job.
- Costing the cleaner at their hourly wage. Employer National Insurance, pension, holiday pay and sick cover add roughly 25–30% on top of gross pay. Quote off the true cost, not the payslip figure.
- Forgetting that VAT is not your money. If you cross the VAT threshold mid-contract, a price that felt comfortable at £20/hour becomes £16.67/hour to you overnight unless the contract lets you add VAT.
Should you quote hourly or fixed price?
Fixed price wins on domestic and end of tenancy work. Clients want certainty, and it rewards you for getting faster: if you cut a 4-hour job to 3 hours through better kit and routine, the extra hour is yours.
Hourly wins on neglected properties, builders cleans and anything where the scope genuinely cannot be seen in advance. If you must quote fixed on an unknown property, quote a band ("£280–£340 depending on condition on the day") and confirm on arrival.
For commercial contracts, price per visit but show the client the specification. What protects your margin over a three-year contract is a written scope, not the rate.