Most cleaners set their first price by asking what everyone else charges, then going slightly under. It wins the first few jobs and quietly caps what the business can ever pay you.
A price that holds up is built from three numbers: how long the job takes, what you want to earn for that time, and what the job costs you before you have earned anything.
Start with the hours, not the house
Square footage is a poor guide on its own. A cluttered two bedroom home takes longer than a sparse four bedroom home, and bathrooms take far more time per room than bedrooms do.
Time your own jobs for a fortnight. Write down the start and finish, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and whether it was a regular visit or a first deep clean. Two weeks of real numbers beats any rule of thumb you will read online.
As a rough starting point before you have your own data: a standard visit on a three bedroom, two bathroom home is often around two and a half to three hours. A first deep clean on the same house can easily be double.
Decide what your hour is worth
This is the number people avoid. Your hourly figure has to cover more than the time in the house: the drive, the messages, the quoting, the supply runs, and the weeks when someone cancels.
If you want to take home a given amount per hour worked, the rate you charge has to be higher than that, because a meaningful share of your working week is not billable.
Add what the job actually costs you
Products, laundry, fuel, parking, and wear on equipment. Per job it is rarely huge, but at thirty jobs a month, undercounting it by ten dollars is three hundred dollars a month of your own money subsidising your customers.
Then add a buffer. Some jobs run long. A house that has not been cleaned in six months is not the same job as a fortnightly tidy, even if the address looks identical on paper.
Charge differently for different work
A regular fortnightly clean, a single deep clean and a move out clean are three different products with three different amounts of work. Pricing them the same is the fastest way to lose money on the hard ones.
Move out cleans in particular deserve their own price. Empty houses expose everything, and the customer usually has a deposit riding on the result.
Raise prices on new customers first
If your current prices are too low, you do not have to tell every existing client at once. Set the new price for everyone who enquires from today, and move your regulars up at a natural point, with notice.
Most cleaners find far fewer people push back than they feared. The ones who leave over a small increase were usually the least profitable work anyway.