How to price a house clean in Australia: hourly vs flat rate

There are two questions hiding inside "how much should I charge": what is my hour worth, and what is this job worth. Answer them separately first, then decide who carries the risk of the job running long.

Step 1: your floor price per hour

Start from what the year costs, not from what other cleaners charge. Every number below is a replaceable assumption — put your own in and the arithmetic still holds.

• Running costs: car, insurance, equipment, chemicals — A$4,800 a year
• Phone, booking software, accounting — A$1,200 a year
• Income you need before tax — A$60,000
• Total to cover: A$66,000
• Billable hours: 46 weeks × 25 hours = 1,150
• Floor price: 66,000 ÷ 1,150 = about A$57 an hour

That is the number below which a job makes you poorer for doing it. Anything above it is a judgement about what the market will bear, which is a different question and a much easier one.

Two things that quietly break the maths

• Travel and quoting are not billable. Five hours a week driving and quoting means your 25 billable hours actually consume 30. Recalculate with the real number or the floor price is fiction.
• The gaps between jobs are not free. An hourly rate only works when jobs sit back to back. A day with three 90-minute gaps is a day at half pay.

Step 2: the same job, priced both ways

A standard three-bedroom, two-bathroom clean you expect to take three hours:

• Hourly at A$65: 3 × 65 = A$195, and if it takes four hours the client pays A$260
• Flat rate A$210: the client pays A$210 whether it takes 2.5 hours or 4 — so you carry the overrun
• Flat rate with a stated cap: A$210 for up to three hours, then A$35 per extra half hour, agreed before you start

The third structure is the one most solo cleaners should be using. It gives the client a number they can say yes to, and it still protects you on the day the house is worse than it was described.

Why the floor price becomes A$65, not A$57

The floor is where you survive; the rate is where you choose. Most solo cleaners end up 10 to 15 per cent above their floor, because the floor assumes every week is full — and it is not. Winter, cancellations and a quiet January all come out of the same 1,150 hours. Round up, then quote the rounded number without apology: a rate that sounds calculated gets argued with far less than one that sounds arbitrary.

When the client says it is too expensive

Ask which part. Nine times out of ten the answer is either "the whole thing is more than I expected" or "I only need part of it", and those are two different problems. The first is scope: clean less, keep the rate. The second usually means the quote was unclear about what was included. Cutting the rate to win the job tells this client the first number was invented — and tells you what your work is worth on a bad day.

When flat rate is the only option that works

• The client is comparing quotes, and a range cannot be compared to a number.
• It is a bond clean or an end of lease clean, where the outcome matters more than the hours.
• The client will not be home, so nobody can authorise extra time halfway through.
• You already know the property — then a flat rate is not a guess, it is a price.

When hourly is the honest answer

• The first clean of a property you have never seen, in unknown condition.
• Regular clients who want a different scope each visit.
• Commercial or shared spaces where somebody else sets the standard.

Do not price from the rate tables on Google

Search for cleaning rates in Australia and the top results are mostly American sites and software companies publishing "2026 average rates" that were not measured anywhere near your suburb. They are useful for exactly one thing: guessing what number a client saw before they called you. Your floor price comes from your own costs; your market price comes from the quotes the client already has.

The one number to review every month

Not your hourly rate — your quoted hours versus actual hours. If you quote three and it takes four, your flat rates are quietly subsidising the client, and no hourly increase fixes it. Track it across ten jobs and the pattern tells you whether to raise prices or fix the quote.

Once the number is right, the next problem is the quote itself — a correct price in a message nobody answers is still a lost job.