How Much to Charge for Carpet Cleaning, per Room and per Square Foot

October 21, 2026 · Pricing a service business

To work out how much to charge for carpet cleaning, find the floor rate an hour on site has to earn, then price each job as its hours at that rate plus the solution it uses plus the spotter and machine cost every job carries. Divide by the square feet and you have a price per square foot; divide by the rooms and you have a price per room. In the illustrative example below the floor is $63.84 an hour, an 800 square foot job costs $215.56, which is $0.27 a square foot or $78.39 per hour on site, and 4 rooms of 12 x 15 feet come to $50.30 a room.

None of these are market prices. The income, costs, cleaning speed, solution coverage and machine prices belong to one made-up owner-operator. Time yourself on a job you know, read coverage off your own labels, and use your own figures.

The carpet cleaning price formula

floor rate     = (income / (1 - tax set-aside) + business costs)
                 / paid hours on site a year
job hours      = setup and pack-up + square feet / square feet an hour
job cost       = job hours x floor rate
                 + square feet x solution per square foot
                 + spotter and machine cost per job
price per sq ft = job cost / square feet
price per room  = job cost / rooms

Step 1: how much to charge per hour

The example operator wants $55,000 a year kept, books 30 hours a week on site, and loses a share of those hours to cancellations. Driving and admin are real hours, but no customer pays for them directly.

Divide the year by every booked hour, ignoring cancellations, and the answer is $60.65, short of the floor. Of the 1,968 hours worked in the year, only 1,368 are paid, 70%. That is why the income works out to just $27.95 for each hour actually worked, while the floor a paid hour must earn is $63.84. The same split is worked through in the freelance hourly rate calculator.

The floor is a labor figure. An hour on a carpet job also burns solution and machine time, so the price per hour on site for the 800 square foot job below is $78.39, not $63.84.

Step 2: solution and machine cost per job

Solution is priced by the square foot: each container’s price divided by the square feet it covers, as read from the example’s own labels and counts. Pre-spray and rinse together come to $0.02 a square foot, and the spotter and deodorizer add $2.00 a job. Follow your product’s label for dilution and use; this is cost arithmetic, not a recommendation.

The machine is spread over the jobs it will do:

On paper the portable saves $17.15 a job. But it runs 30 minutes longer, and those minutes at the floor cost $31.92, so the portable job costs $14.77 more in this example. The prices below use the truck mount’s $24.00 of spotter and machine cost per job.

Step 3: carpet cleaning price per square foot

The example cleans 400 square feet an hour, with 45 minutes of setup and pack-up on every job.

The larger job is cheaper per foot, $0.2275 against $0.2695, because the setup time and the per-job machine cost are spread over more carpet. In formula form, each square foot costs $0.1796 (cleaning time and solution) plus a share of $71.88 that every job pays once. A single per-square-foot price undercharges small jobs or overcharges large ones, which is the case for a minimum charge.

If the operator charges $0.30 a square foot today, the 800 square foot job leaves $72.73 an hour after solution and machine, above the $63.84 floor.

Step 4: carpet cleaning price per room

Pricing per room is the same job cost divided by rooms, so it depends on how big your rooms are. The example room is 12 x 15 feet, 180 square feet. A job of 4 such rooms is 720 square feet, 2.55 hours on site, and $201.19 in cost: $50.30 a room.

One room booked alone costs $104.21, because it carries the whole setup and the per-job machine cost. Each added room on the same visit costs only $32.33. Quote one flat room price and the one-room job is the one that loses.

The insight: a flat room price is a bet on room size

A room price hides the square feet. Take a $55.00 room price against a $0.30 square foot price on 3 rooms of different sizes:

Per room bills $15.00 less on this 600 square foot job. At $55.00 a room and $0.30 a foot, the two prices meet at a room of about 183 square feet. Only the 300 square foot room is larger than that, and on its own it bills $35.00 less than the square foot price would, more than the whole job’s gap. Across the job the room price works out to $0.275 a square foot.

So if you quote per room, set the price from the size of the rooms you actually clean, and define what a room is: a size cap, with larger rooms counted as two. Your own job records will show where your room sizes fall.

Stairs, upholstery and spot treatment

Add-ons are priced the same way: minutes at the floor plus product, with no setup of their own because the visit is already paid for.

• Stairs: 3 minutes each, $3.44 a stair, 13 on this job.
• Upholstered seats: 15 minutes each, $16.96 a seat, 3 on this job.
• Stain treatment: 10 minutes each, $12.14 a stain, 2 on this job.

Together those add $119.91 to the visit.

Travel and the minimum charge

A mile costs more than the vehicle. At $0.70 a mile for the vehicle, from the operator’s own records, and 36 miles an hour, each mile also uses a slice of a paid hour: $2.47 a mile in all. The example prices include 20 round-trip miles, since the floor already counts some driving. A 30-mile round trip costs $74.20, and the miles beyond the included 20 add a $24.73 travel charge.

The minimum charge covers setup and pack-up, 30 minutes of cleaning, the per-job machine cost and the included miles: $117.80. At $0.27 a square foot that pays for 436 square feet, so any job smaller than that pays the minimum. House cleaners face the same small-job math in house cleaning pricing, and the window cleaning pricing post works the trip charge the same way.

How these were calculated

The floor rate is income divided by (1 minus the tax set-aside share), plus business costs, divided by booked hours a week x (1 minus the cancellation share) x working weeks. Solution per square foot is each container’s price divided by its labeled coverage, summed. Machine cost per job is price over working-life jobs, plus fuel or running cost per machine hour x machine hours, plus yearly upkeep over jobs a year. A job’s cost is (setup + square feet / square feet an hour) x the floor + square feet x solution + the per-job cost. The minimum is the floor x (setup + minimum cleaning time) + the per-job cost + included miles x the vehicle cost a mile. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that adds the paid hours up week by week and rebuilds the room price as one room plus added rooms, and the two agree to the cent. All inputs are illustrative, not market rates, measured cleaning speeds or product advice. None of this is financial, legal, tax or insurance advice.

To run this on your own year, labels and machine, the pack below has eight linked calculators, so a change to your floor rate flows through every price.