How Much Should You Charge for Commercial Office Cleaning?
By Andreas Hirzinger, CleanScope founder·Published July 18, 2026·Updated July 18, 2026
Ask five operators what office cleaning "goes for" and you'll get five numbers, because most of them are quoting different things — some mean monthly, some per visit, some a per-square-foot rate nobody labeled. With around 1.25 million janitorial businesses competing in the US (IBISWorld, 2026), the operator who knows exactly what a building costs to clean sets the price; everyone else copies a table and hopes. This guide gives you real, engine-computed rate tables by office size, service frequency, and state — and shows what moves each number.
What do office cleaning contracts actually cost per month?
These rows come from CleanScope's public calculation engine — ISSA 612 production-rate math with a $16.00/hr base wage and standard labor burden (the national seed profile), nightly service five days a week, routine scope (vacuuming, trash, restroom servicing):
| Office size | Monthly contract price | Per sqft (monthly) | Labor hours per visit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small office — 7,500 sqft | $1,331/mo | $0.177/sqft/mo | 2.7 hrs |
| Mid-size office — 10,000 sqft | $1,727/mo | $0.173/sqft/mo | 3.5 hrs |
| Large office — 20,000 sqft | $3,455/mo | $0.173/sqft/mo | 6.9 hrs |
Annualized, the mid-size example is a $20,728 contract. Treat these as calibrated starting points, not quotes: floor mix, fixture counts, and your actual crew wage move every row. You can rerun any of them with your own numbers in the office cleaning cost calculator.
Why does price per square foot change with building size?
Because some work doesn't scale with square footage. Restroom servicing is fixture-based — a 7,500 sqft office with a full restroom core spends a bigger share of each visit on fixtures than a 20,000 sqft office does, so its monthly rate per square foot runs higher ($0.177 vs $0.173 in the table above). Trash routes and entrance areas behave the same way.
That's the honest reason flat per-square-foot pricing fails in both directions: it overprices big open-plan buildings and underprices small fixture-heavy ones. Scope the tasks, and the square-foot rate becomes an output of the math instead of a guess you defend later.
How does cleaning frequency change what you should charge?
Frequency is the single biggest lever on the monthly number. Same 10,000 sqft office, same tasks, same labor profile:
| Service frequency | Monthly contract price | Per-visit equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| 1× per week | $345/mo | ~$79.70/visit |
| 2× per week | $691/mo | ~$79.70/visit |
| 3× per week | $1,036/mo | ~$79.70/visit |
| Nightly (5×/week) | $1,727/mo | ~$79.70/visit |
Notice the per-visit cost barely moves — the building takes ~3.5 hours to clean whether you come once or five times a week. This table is also your defense when a prospect wants to "cut the price": dropping frequency cuts visits, not your per-visit economics.
One labeling warning, because it causes real damage: many published rate tables don't say whether their square-foot figure is monthly or per visit. The nightly example above is $0.173/sqft per month but only $0.008/sqft per visit — a 20× difference. Every rate in this article is labeled; make sure every rate in your proposal is too.
How much do office cleaning rates differ by state?
Labor is most of the price, so state wage levels and employer burden move the whole contract. Same 10,000 sqft nightly office, run through the public engine's state labor profiles (2026 seed data — verify your local wage and rates before quoting):
| State profile | Monthly contract price | Per sqft (monthly) |
|---|---|---|
| Georgia ($13.50/hr base) | $1,474/mo | $0.147 |
| Florida ($14.00/hr base) | $1,532/mo | $0.153 |
| Texas ($16.00/hr base) | $1,727/mo | $0.173 |
| New York ($17.00/hr base) | $1,903/mo | $0.190 |
| California ($18.00/hr base) | $2,018/mo | $0.202 |
For calibration: the national median wage for janitors and cleaners was $17.27/hr in May 2024 (BLS OEWS), across roughly 2.4 million people in the occupation (BLS, 2024). If your market pays above the profile wage, your price should sit above the table — in a $110 billion industry (IBISWorld, 2025) there is room to charge for reliable labor; there is no room to eat its cost. State-specific presets: Texas rates · California rates.
How do you set your number instead of copying a table?
The tables above are calibrated examples, not your price list. Your number comes from four inputs:
- Labor hours — from the building's zones, tasks, and fixtures (ISSA 612 production rates).
- Burdened wage — your crew's wage plus FICA at 7.65% (IRS), your state unemployment rate (Texas 2026: 0.32%–6.32% on the first $9,000 — Texas Workforce Commission; verify yours), and workers' comp if you carry it.
- Overhead — supplies, equipment, travel, admin (the examples use 10%).
- Profit — the examples use 15%; pick what survives a counteroffer.
The full walkthrough-to-proposal sequence, with the same worked example expanded step by step, is in the companion guide: How to bid a commercial office cleaning contract. CleanScope runs that entire chain from a recorded phone walkthrough — deterministic ISSA 612 math plus your labor burden, never an AI-guessed price — and returns a client-ready proposal in about three minutes.