How Much to Charge for Cleaning in Australia (2026 Pricing Guide)

Work out how much to charge for cleaning in Australia and you’ve cracked half the business. Get it wrong and you’re flat out, knackered, and somehow still broke. Get it right and you work fewer hours for more money.

Here’s the truth most cleaners don’t want to hear. The number you charge isn’t really about your skill. It’s about your positioning. And most cleaners pick a price when they start, then never touch it again.

This guide fixes that. Real 2026 rates — by state, by service, by client type. Then the part most guides skip: how to charge at the top of your market without scaring people off.

What cleaners actually charge in Australia (2026)

The national average sits around $48 to $55 an hour for residential cleaning. Most cleaners land somewhere between $35 and $60.

But “average” is a trap. The cleaner charging $35 and the cleaner charging $58 often do identical work. Same vacuum. Same products. Same suburbs. One’s run off their feet just to pay the bills. The other isn’t.

A quick reality check on the floor. The Cleaning Services Award (MA000022) sets the base wage for an employed Level 1 cleaner at around $32 an hour. That’s wages only — before super, insurance, products, fuel, tax, and any actual profit. So if you’re a sole trader charging $35, you’re working for award wages with none of the protection. No sick leave. No holidays. No safety net.

You didn’t start a business to earn less than an employee. Price like it.

Quick example. Two cleaners work the same Adelaide suburb. One charges $45 an hour and fills 35 hours a week. The other charges $58 and fills 28 hours. The second cleaner earns more, works seven fewer hours, and has spare time to quote new jobs and chase reviews. Higher price. Less burnout. More room to grow. That’s the whole game in one comparison.

House cleaning rates by state (2026)

Where you work changes the number. Here’s roughly where the residential market sits per hour in 2026:

• Sydney: $50–$65
• Melbourne: $50–$65
• Brisbane: $50–$60 (average around $58)
• Adelaide: $45–$58 (average around $55)
• Perth: $45–$60
• Canberra: $50–$65
• Hobart: $40–$55
• Darwin: $45–$60

Sydney and Melbourne run hottest — higher rents, higher cost of living, higher everything. Regional areas sit lower, but your overheads and competition usually do too.

The mistake? Pricing off the national average when you work in a capital city. Do that and you leave money on the table every single job. If you’re still setting up — ABN, insurance, the lot — sort that first with our guide on how to start a cleaning business in Australia, then come back to pricing.

Pricing by service type

Not all cleaning is worth the same money. Here’s how the main services stack up.

Standard / regular clean. Your bread and butter. $35–$60 an hour, or a flat weekly or fortnightly rate. Regular clients earn your best rate because the work’s predictable and the home stays easy to maintain.

Deep clean. One-off, intensive, every surface, behind every appliance. Charge a premium — $55–$75 an hour, or a flat $300–$600+ depending on size and condition. It takes longer and it wrecks your body. Price it accordingly.

End of lease / bond clean. The highest-margin job in residential. Full numbers below.

Commercial / office. $45–$65 an hour, or priced per square metre. A different game — usually after-hours, contract-based, and far steadier money.

Want to stop selling time and start selling outcomes? Learn how to attract higher-paying deep cleaning clients — it’s the positioning that lands you the top-tier jobs.

End of lease cleaning prices (flat rate by size)

Bond cleans are where the money lives. Property managers have tight standards, tenants are desperate to claw back their deposit, and nobody wants to risk a bond on a cheap clean.

Typical 2026 flat rates:

• Studio / 1-bed: $250–$480
• 2-bed: $300–$450 (add roughly $100 for carpets)
• 3-bed: $350–$650
• 4-bed: $500–$800
• 5+ bed: $650–$1,000+

Then the add-ons stack up beautifully. Carpet steam cleaning from $50 a room. Oven detail from $40. Walls, windows, blinds — extra. A three-bedroom bond clean with carpets and an oven can clear $600 in a single day.

Charge by the job, never the hour. The client isn’t buying minutes. They’re buying their bond back.

Commercial cleaning rates (2026)

Offices think differently to homes. They want one fixed monthly number they can budget around, and a cleaner who turns up without being chased.

• Standard office: $45–$65 an hour, or roughly $0.20–$0.40 per square metre per visit on a regular contract.
• Specialised (medical, industrial): $60–$85+ an hour.
• After-hours: add 15–25%.

A small office under 100sqm cleaned three times a week runs about $300–$600 a month. A medium 100–500sqm site on a daily contract can sit between $800 and $2,500 a month.

Commercial is slower to win. But it’s the steadiest income in this trade. One solid contract can be worth ten one-off house cleans — and it pays whether it’s raining or you’ve got the flu.

Hourly vs flat rate — which should you use?

Both work. The skill is matching the right one to the job.

Charge hourly when the scope is fuzzy. A first-time clean. A “just do what you can in three hours” job. A place that’s been let go. Hourly protects you if it blows out.

Charge flat when you know the job cold. Regular cleans. Bond cleans. Anything you can scope in five minutes flat. A flat price hides your hourly rate — which is exactly the point. A client who flinches at “$60 an hour” happily pays “$240 for the clean.”

Here’s the bit nobody tells you. The faster and better you get, the more flat rate pays you. Smash a $300 bond clean in four hours instead of six and you’ve just earned $75 an hour — without raising a single price.

Regular vs one-off: why frequency changes the price

How often a client books should change what you charge. Most cleaners ignore this and lose money at both ends.

Regular clients — weekly or fortnightly — earn a better per-visit rate. The home stays on top of, the work’s predictable, and you’re not driving to a new suburb every job. That reliability is worth a discount, because it’s the steady income that keeps your week full.

One-off cleans are the opposite. New address, unknown condition, no repeat business, and a clean that’s almost always heavier because it’s been a while. Charge a premium — usually 20–40% above your regular rate. You’re pricing in the risk and the extra grind.

The cleaner who charges everyone the same flat hourly rate is quietly subsidising their hardest jobs with their easiest ones. Don’t be that cleaner.

The real cost of charging too little

Low prices feel safe. They’re not. They’re the most expensive habit in this trade.

Run the maths. At $35 an hour for 30 billable hours a week, you gross about $1,050. Take out products, fuel, insurance, super, and tax, and you’re barely above the wage of someone with zero risk and paid annual leave.

At $55 an hour, same 30 hours, you gross $1,650. That’s $600 more a week for the exact same effort. Over a year, that’s more than $30,000. Same vacuum. Same suburbs. Just a braver number on the quote.

Cheap pricing also drags in the worst clients. The hagglers. The cancellers. The ones who complain about a smudge and never, ever refer you. Your price quietly filters your clients before you’ve even met them. Set it low and you pre-select the painful ones.

5 pricing mistakes that keep cleaners broke

Most underpricing isn’t one big error. It’s a handful of small ones, repeated on every job. Here are the worst.

1. Pricing off what the last guy charged. The cleaner before you might’ve been desperate, dodgy, or about to quit. Their rate isn’t a benchmark. It’s just a number you overheard.
2. Forgetting unpaid time. Quoting, driving, replying to messages, no-shows — none of it pays, and all of it eats your week. If your rate doesn’t cover it, you’re working for free half the day.
3. Charging the same for easy and hard jobs. A tidy regular and a neglected one-off are not the same job. One flat rate for both means your nightmare cleans are paid for by your good ones.
4. Never raising prices. Your costs go up every year — products, fuel, insurance, super. If your rate stands still, you take a pay cut annually without noticing.
5. Competing on price instead of trust. There’s always someone cheaper. Always. Win on being insured, reliable, reviewed, and easy to deal with — not on being the bargain bin of your suburb.

Fix even two of these and you’ll feel it in your bank account inside a month.

How to work out your real minimum rate

Before you set a price, know your floor — the rate below which you’re actually losing money.

Add up your true hourly cost: your time (what you genuinely want to earn), products and equipment, fuel and unpaid drive time, insurance and admin, super and tax, plus all the unbillable hours — quoting, messaging, no-shows.

Here’s the rule most cleaners miss: only about 60% of your working hours are billable. The rest is driving and admin you don’t get paid for. So if you want $40 an hour in your pocket, you need to charge closer to $60–$65 to cover the gaps.

That number is your floor. Never quote under it. Always quote above it.

Run your own number now. Say you want $40 an hour in your pocket and your costs (products, fuel, insurance, super, admin) add up to roughly $12 an hour worked. That’s $52. Now adjust for billable time — only 60% of your hours earn — and you land near $63 to break even on the life you actually want. Quote $55 and you’re quietly going backwards. The maths doesn’t lie, even when the market’s noisy.

The quoting framework that lets you charge more

Price isn’t just a number. It’s how you present it. Same job, two cleaners — the one who quotes with quiet confidence wins the better-paying client every time.

1. Stop quoting on the spot. “I’ll send you a tailored quote tonight” beats a panicked number blurted at the front door. It signals a business, not a backup plan.
2. Quote the outcome, not the hours. “A spotless home, every fortnight, for $180” sells. “$60 an hour” just makes them do sums.
3. Offer three tiers. Good, better, best. Most people pick the middle — so build your ideal price as the middle option. The cheap tier makes it look reasonable. The premium tier makes it look smart.
4. Never apologise for your price. Say the number. Then stop talking. The first person to speak loses.
5. Show why you’re worth it. Insured. Police-checked. Reviewed. Reliable. Those words justify a higher rate before you’ve quoted a cent — and being easy to find online does a lot of that selling for you.

How to raise your prices without losing clients

Be honest — most of your existing clients are underpaying. Fixing that doesn’t have to cost you the relationship.

Give notice. Four to six weeks. Keep it short and warm: costs have gone up, your rate is moving to $X from [date], and you’d love to keep cleaning for them.

Expect to lose one or two. That’s fine. It’s usually the price-sensitive ones who were never going to refer you anyway. The maths still wins big — lose 10% of your clients, raise prices 20%, and you earn more for less work.

Then do it again. Once a year, every year. The cleaners who never raise prices are the ones quietly going backwards while their costs keep climbing.

Your price is a decision, not a guess. Pick the number that pays you properly, back it with a clean quote and a handful of good reviews, and the right clients will pay it without blinking. The cheapest cleaner in the suburb is rarely the busiest in a good way. They’re just the most tired.