How to Price Your Cleaning Services Without Underselling Yourself

The Problem With Hourly Pricing

Hourly pricing is the default for most cleaners, and it's the default that keeps most cleaners poor. Here's why: the better you get at your job, the less you earn.

When you start, a two-bedroom flat takes you three hours. At £15 per hour, that's £45. You get faster. Same flat now takes two hours. Same rate — £30. You literally earned less by getting better. Hourly pricing punishes efficiency and rewards slow work.

It also creates an awkward dynamic with clients. They're watching the clock. You're watching the clock. Nobody's thinking about the quality of the clean — they're thinking about the bill.

Per-Job Pricing: How to Calculate It

Per-job pricing means quoting a fixed price for a specific scope of work. The client knows exactly what they'll pay. You know exactly what you'll earn. No clock-watching.

Step 1: Know Your Costs

Before you price a single job, you need to know your actual costs. Most cleaners skip this step and guess — and they always guess low.

• Travel time and fuel: If it takes 20 minutes to drive there, that's 40 minutes of unpaid time per visit. At 50 visits a month, that's 33 hours of free labour.
• Products and equipment: Cleaning products, bin bags, replacement cloths, hoover maintenance — typically £80–150 per month for a solo cleaner.
• Insurance: Public liability and employer's liability (if you have staff) — roughly £30–60 per month.
• Tax: Self-employed cleaners often forget to account for National Insurance and income tax. Set aside 25–30% of everything you earn.
• Software and admin: Invoicing, scheduling, CRM — this is where tools like the Northern Star CRM pay for themselves by saving you admin hours.

Step 2: Calculate Your Target Hourly Equivalent

Work backwards from what you actually need to earn. If you want to take home £2,500 per month after tax, you need to invoice roughly £3,500 (after NI, tax, costs). At 22 working days per month and 6 billable hours per day, that's £26.50 per billable hour. Not £15.

Step 3: Price the Job, Not the Hours

Walk the property. Estimate how long it will take at your current speed. Multiply by your target hourly equivalent. Add a 15% buffer for the unexpected. That's your quote.

UK Cleaning Rate Guide (2026)

These are typical ranges — your area, experience, and specialisation will shift them. Use these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Service	Per Hour	Per Job (typical)
Regular domestic clean	£14–20	£50–90
Deep clean (domestic)	£18–25	£150–300
End-of-tenancy	£20–30	£200–450
Office cleaning (daily)	£15–22	£80–200
Airbnb turnover	£18–25	£60–120
HMO communal areas	£15–20	£40–80
Retail/shopfront	£16–22	£70–150
Post-construction	£22–35	£300–800+

Notice how the per-job column is always more profitable than multiplying the hourly rate by estimated hours. That's the point.

When to Raise Your Prices

If you've been charging the same rate for more than 12 months, you're effectively giving yourself a pay cut — because your costs have gone up even if your prices haven't.

Raise your prices when:

• You're fully booked for 4+ weeks: If you can't take on new clients, your price is too low. You're leaving money on the table.
• Your costs have increased: Fuel, products, insurance, software — if any of these went up, your prices should follow.
• You've improved your service: Better products, faster turnarounds, more reliable scheduling — improvements justify higher rates.
• It's been a year: Annual price increases of 5–10% are normal and expected in any service business. Most clients won't blink.
• You're exhausted: Working six days a week to make ends meet is a pricing problem, not a work ethic problem.

How to tell existing clients:

Give 4–6 weeks' notice. Be direct: "From [date], my rate for your regular clean will increase from £X to £Y. This reflects increased costs and the quality of service I provide." No apologising. No over-explaining. Most clients will stay — and the ones who leave over a £5 increase were probably your least profitable anyway.

The Psychology of Quoting

How you present a price matters as much as the number itself. Three principles that change how clients perceive your quotes:

1. Quote the job, not the hours

"Your fortnightly clean will be £65" is stronger than "It'll take about three hours at £22 an hour." The first sounds professional. The second invites negotiation and clock-watching.

2. Anchor high, then present the real price

"A deep clean for a property this size would normally be around £280–350. Because this is a regular booking, your price is £240." The client feels they're getting a deal. You're getting your target price.

3. Present three options

Standard clean (£65), standard plus oven (£85), full deep clean (£120). Most people pick the middle option. You've just upsold without pushing.

Automate the Admin, Keep the Profit

Pricing correctly is half the battle. Getting paid correctly is the other half. If you're still sending invoices manually — or worse, waiting for bank transfers and forgetting who's paid — you're leaking revenue.

The Northern Star Cleaning CRM automates invoicing the moment a job completes. No chasing. No forgotten invoices. No spreadsheets. One cleaning company recovered £4,200 in unpaid invoices within six weeks of switching — money that had simply fallen through the cracks of a manual system.

From £29/month, it's less than the cost of one forgotten invoice.

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