Pricing guide
How to price office and commercial cleaning
Commercial cleaning is won and lost on the bid. Underbid and you’re locked into a losing contract for a year; overbid blind and you never hear back. The fix is the same as residential: derive the number from hours and scope, then present it in the format the client expects — per visit and per month.
Hours first
Square-foot rates are how you present the bid — labor hours are how you build it.
Frequency tiers
Nightly, three-times-weekly, and weekly service are different jobs. Price them as tiers.
Scope in writing
The contract should say exactly what a visit includes — scope creep is the silent margin killer.
From walk-through to monthly price
- Walk the space — record square footage, floor types, restroom and kitchen counts, trash points, and access rules. Photos help you re-estimate later.
- Estimate hours per visit — for the agreed scope at the agreed frequency. Restrooms and kitchens dominate; open-plan desk areas clean fast.
- Apply your loaded rate — wages plus taxes, insurance, supplies, equipment amortization, and supervision. A commercial bid priced at bare wage is a slow-motion loss.
- Present per visit and per month — clients budget monthly. Show the per-visit price, visits per month, and the monthly total, with the scope list attached.
What separates winning bids from cheap bids
A scope list the client can check
Offices switch cleaners because “things stopped getting done,” not because of price. A written per-visit checklist — what’s done nightly, weekly, monthly — lets the client verify the work and lets you say no to tasks that aren’t in the contract.
An annual escalator
Multi-year commercial contracts at a frozen price get worse every year as wages rise. Build in a modest annual adjustment clause up front — it’s far easier to sign it now than to renegotiate a losing contract later.
FAQ
Should office cleaning be priced per square foot or per hour?
Per-square-foot rates are the industry convention for bids, but they should be derived from labor hours, not copied from a chart. Walk the space, estimate the hours per visit for the agreed scope, multiply by your loaded labor rate, then translate that into a per-visit and monthly number.
How does cleaning frequency change the price?
More visits per week means less buildup per visit, so the per-visit price drops even though the monthly total rises. A five-night-a-week office is mostly maintenance; a once-a-week office needs a deeper reset every time. Quote per-visit pricing tiered by frequency, not one flat rate.
What should a commercial cleaning walk-through cover?
Square footage and floor types, number of restrooms and kitchen areas, trash volume and dumpster location, access and alarm procedures, supply responsibilities, and any special areas like server rooms or labs. Every one of those changes the hours — never bid an office you haven’t walked or scoped in detail.
Which extras should be priced separately from the contract?
Carpet extraction, strip-and-wax floor work, interior window washing, high dusting, and post-event or construction cleanup are project work, not nightly janitorial. Keep them out of the base contract and quote them as separate line items when they come up.
Keep reading
Apartment cleaning pricing
Set studio-to-3-bedroom rates that respect minimums, building access time, and add-ons.
House cleaning price list
A worked example price list — hourly rate, minimums, multipliers, and add-ons — you can adapt to your market.
How to quote a cleaning job
The five-step quoting process: qualify, scope, price, present, and follow up without discounting.
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