Everhour separates cost and billable rates, but house cleaners still need a rate built from real billable hours.
Find the right rate based on your annual expenses, desired profit margin, and available billable hours. Stop guessing.
Rent, software, gear, salary
Time lost to admin, marketing, etc.
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
One click and you're timing. Start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Everhour.
Set a budget, assign rates, and get alerted before you're over.
Measurement
Track your budget through time or costs
Every report you need — configured your way, always up to date.
Tracked hours flow straight into a polished invoice — no copy-paste, no manual math.
A house cleaner hourly rate answers one practical question: the client-facing price per cleaning hour that covers your income goal, supplies, insurance, travel, taxes, and unpaid gaps between homes. The employee wage benchmark is lower because it measures payroll wages, not a solo cleaner's full business rate.
The closest U.S. occupation is Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners, SOC 37-2012. BLS 2024 wage data reported through O*NET lists a median employee wage of $16.66 per hour and a 10th to 90th percentile range of $12.88 to $22.88. OEWS estimates exclude self-employed workers, so use that benchmark as a labor-market floor, not as your cleaning business price.
Use this formula for a solo cleaner or small cleaning business: target income + overhead + benefits substitute + tax reserve, divided by realistic billable cleaning hours. Overhead includes supplies, liability insurance, equipment, scheduling software, licensing where required, and business driving. For 2026, the IRS optional business mileage rate is 72.5 cents per mile.
For example, a cleaner wants $52,000 of personal income, expects $7,800 of business overhead, sets aside $6,200 for self-funded benefits, and reserves $11,500 for taxes. That equals $77,500 before dividing by time. If the cleaner can sell 1,250 billable cleaning hours after travel, cancellations, quoting, laundry, restocking, and admin, the required rate is $62.00 per billable hour.
House cleaning is commonly quoted by the hour, by visit, by square foot, or by job type. HomeAdvisor's 2025 data reports $25 to $80 per hour, with an average customer-facing cost of $50 per hour. It also reports a normal per-visit range of $118 to $238, with a $176 average.
The quote format changes the math. A 2-hour routine cleaning at $62 per hour is $124, while a 5-hour deep clean at the same rate is $310 before add-ons. Square-foot pricing also shifts by scope: standard cleaning often falls around $0.10 to $0.20 per square foot, while deep cleaning and move-out cleaning can price higher because they take more labor hours.
A one-off calculator is enough when you need to test a new solo rate, compare an hourly quote against a flat visit price, or check whether a move-out job covers travel and supplies. It works best when you already know your annual target, overhead, tax reserve, and realistic billable hours.
A managed workflow matters once multiple cleaners, recurring clients, and different job types enter the schedule. Everhour can separate cost and billable rates, apply per-person defaults or per-project overrides, preserve dated rate history, and price billable work by project, member, or task so cleaning jobs stay tied to the rates used at the time.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
High Performer
G2
Summer 2026
Best Ease Of Use
Capterra
Summer 2026
Rated in the top time trackers across G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius — with consistent praise for ease of use, integrations, and support.
Use billable cleaning hours, not 2,080 paid hours. BLS annual wage math uses a year-round full-time 2,080-hour baseline, but a self-employed cleaner loses time to driving, quoting, supplies, cancellations, invoicing, and admin. A lower billable-hour count produces a higher rate because fewer paid cleaning hours must cover the same annual costs.
Include supplies, insurance, equipment, and business driving in overhead unless you bill them separately. The 2026 IRS optional standard mileage rate is 72.5 cents per business mile, which gives cleaners a concrete way to load vehicle costs into pricing or track deductible mileage on Schedule C.
BLS wage data measures employee pay for Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners, not a self-employed cleaner's customer price. A solo cleaner's rate must cover business expenses, self-funded benefits, unpaid time, and tax reserves. The BLS median of $16.66 per hour is a wage benchmark, while customer-facing cleaning rates often sit much higher.
Yes. A flat visit price should still be checked against expected labor time. A $180 routine cleaning that takes 3 hours equals $60 per hour before subtracting overhead. The same $180 price on a 5-hour deep clean equals $36 per hour, which can underprice the job after supplies and travel.
A U.S. self-employed cleaner generally reports business profit or loss on Schedule C and uses Schedule SE for Social Security and Medicare taxes on self-employment income. For 2026 estimated tax, self-employment tax is 15.3% on 92.35% of net self-employment earnings, with Social Security capped at the $184,500 wage base.
Everhour separates internal cost rates from client-facing billable rates, with per-person defaults and per-project overrides. A cleaning business can keep routine, deep-clean, and move-out work priced differently while dated rate history preserves older calculations after a rate change.
Set cost and billable rates by cleaner, client, or project, then keep dated rate changes tied to the work performed. Everhour turns rate decisions into cleaner billing records.
14-day free trial · No credit card · Cancel anytime
