What Should You Charge for Commercial Cleaning? 2026 Pricing Guide

Pricing a commercial cleaning bid starts with the walkthrough, not the spreadsheet. You need to see the building, count the fixtures, and look at the floor types before you can quote anything that won't lose you money. Phone-call quotes are how new janitorial companies go out of business in their first year.

Once you've walked the facility, the math is straightforward. Standard office space prices at $0.08–$0.12 per square foot per month for nightly janitorial. Medical or clinical space runs $0.14–$0.20 because of disinfection protocols and PPE requirements. Retail and showroom space runs $0.06–$0.10 — there's less furniture to clean around, but glass and floors take more time. Industrial and warehouse space runs $0.04–$0.08, but those rates assume floor-cleaning equipment (ride-on scrubbers) and a different scope of work.

Multiply your base rate by square footage to get the monthly floor. A 15,000 sq ft office at $0.10/sq ft is $1,500/month for nightly cleaning, before any add-ons. Then add separate line items for day porter ($2,400–$3,200/month for full-time coverage), quarterly deep cleaning ($0.08–$0.15/sq ft per event), supply procurement (15–20% markup over distributor cost), and any specialty services (floor stripping, carpet extraction, vent cleaning).

The most common pricing mistake on commercial bids is bundling everything into one number. Facility managers compare bids line by line. A $5,500/month all-in number looks expensive next to a $4,200 base rate from a competitor — even if the competitor's $4,200 doesn't include porter, supplies, or deep cleaning. Break out every service. Let the buyer see what they're paying for. The proposal that shows the math wins.

Three pricing models dominate commercial cleaning, and each one is right for a different kind of facility. Get this wrong and you either underbid (per-visit on a 25,000 sq ft contract is a route to bankruptcy) or overbid (per-square-foot on a 1,500 sq ft retail spot prices you out of the job).

Per-square-foot pricing is the standard for recurring janitorial in facilities over 3,000 sq ft. It scales cleanly, makes bid comparison easy for facility managers, and lets you forecast revenue and staffing months in advance. The downside is that uniform per-foot rates ignore variable-effort zones — restrooms, break rooms, and labs all need different attention than open office floor. Build modifiers into your bid (restroom-fixture surcharge, kitchen surcharge, server-room exclusion) so the price reflects the actual work.

Per-visit flat-rate pricing is the right model for smaller offices, retail spaces under 3,000 sq ft, and accounts on weekly or biweekly schedules. It's how solo operators and small crews build their first 5–10 B2B accounts. The risk is scope creep — when "visit" isn't defined ("clean the office") instead of ("vacuum, empty trash, wipe surfaces, clean restrooms, mop kitchen") clients will keep adding tasks until the visit takes twice as long as you priced for. Spell out the scope in the proposal.

Per-service pricing (hourly or per-job) is for one-time deep cleans, post-construction work, and specialty services. It carries the highest per-hour margin because there's no recurring discount, but it requires constant lead generation. Most successful commercial cleaning companies do all three: per-square-foot for the recurring contract that pays the bills, per-service for high-margin add-ons, per-visit for the smaller accounts they pick up between bigger contracts.

Labor cost is the single biggest variable in commercial cleaning pricing, and labor cost varies dramatically by state. The BLS reports average hourly wages for janitorial and cleaning workers ranging from under $14/hour in low-cost states to over $22/hour in high-cost states. That spread translates directly into the per-square-foot rate you can sustain.

The table below shows the top 10 U.S. states by economy, with the BLS hourly wage for cleaning workers and the adjusted commercial cleaning rate range for each market. Use these as a starting point — your local market may run 10–20% above or below the state average depending on metro vs. rural location.

Two important notes. First, even in low-wage states, premium facilities (medical, lab, food service) command 30–50% higher rates than the state baseline. Second, in high-wage states, you can't just charge more — you have to be more efficient. High-wage markets reward operators who use ride-on equipment, batch their accounts geographically, and run experienced crews that move faster than entry-level competitors.