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.

Practice hour-based pricing See worked estimate examples

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.

A worked office quote

Commercial pricing leans on square footage and frequency, with restrooms and break rooms as labor drivers.

A 4,000 sq ft office on biweekly service with three restrooms and a break room.

Baseline by square footage — 4,000 sq ft$220
Restrooms (3) — High-touch labor$45
Break room — Kitchen surfaces and trash$25

Estimated total: $290 per visit

Quoting recurring frequency separately from a one-time deep clean keeps contract math honest.

What drives office cleaning cost

Square footage and layout

Open floor plans clean faster per square foot than a warren of private offices and meeting rooms. Total area sets the baseline, but layout adjusts how long that area actually takes.

Restrooms and kitchens

Restrooms and break rooms are the highest-touch, highest-labor areas in any office. Count and price them separately rather than folding them into a flat per-square-foot rate.

Frequency and traffic

A busy client-facing office needs more frequent attention than a quiet back office. Foot traffic and visit frequency together decide how much soil returns between cleans.

After-hours access

Cleaning around a working office is slower than a clear after-hours window. Key access, alarm codes, and security requirements all factor into the real cost of the contract.

How CleanQuote models this

For commercial work, CleanQuote anchors on square footage and then treats restrooms, kitchens, and high-touch areas as separate labor drivers. Frequency is quoted on its own so a recurring contract and an initial deep clean never get blended into one confusing number.

Square footage sets the baseline.
Restrooms and break rooms add labor.
Frequency quoted separately from one-time work.
A pricing profile keeps team quotes aligned.

Try it on a real job with the free cleaning calculator.