What are cleaning packages, and why sell them instead of one price?
A cleaning package is a fixed list of tasks sold at a fixed price. Selling three packages instead of one price gives clients a choice they can understand, moves most of them toward the middle option, and turns “can you also do the baseboards?” into a tier they can pick rather than a favor you do for free.
Cleaning business packages solve four problems that a single price list does not:
- Scope arguments. When the task list is written down, both sides know what $150 buys. Anything not on the list is an add-on or a higher tier.
- Price shoppers. A client comparing you with a cheaper quote can see what the cheaper quote leaves out, because your basic tier shows what a lower price actually includes.
- Quoting speed. Three tiers by home size means you can quote by text in a minute, or let a booking page quote for you.
- Higher average ticket. Some clients always pick the top option when it exists. Without a premium tier, that money stays in their pocket.
This guide covers how to create cleaning packages: what goes in each tier, how to price them, a worked table by home size, and how to present them. The underlying cost math (loaded labor, overhead, profit) is in our house cleaning pricing guide; this page uses the same assumptions so the numbers line up.
What goes in a basic, standard and premium cleaning package?
A basic package covers floors, surfaces, bathrooms and the kitchen at maintenance level. The standard package adds the things a home needs every visit to stay genuinely clean. The premium package adds the build-up tasks of a deep clean. Each tier includes everything in the tier below it.
Name the tiers something plain. “Essential, Complete, Premium” or “Maintenance, Standard, Deep” both work. Avoid “Bronze, Silver, Gold”: nobody wants to buy bronze.
| Area | Essential (maintenance) | Complete (standard) | Premium (deep) |
|---|---|---|---|
| All rooms | Dust reachable surfaces, vacuum and mop floors, empty bins | Plus: dust décor and shelves, wipe light switches and door handles, spot-clean glass, make beds | Plus: baseboards, door frames, vents, ceiling fans, under and behind movable furniture, wall spot-cleaning |
| Kitchen | Counters, sink, stovetop, outside of appliances, floor | Plus: inside microwave, outside of cabinets at hand height, backsplash | Plus: all cabinet fronts, inside oven, inside fridge, degrease hood and behind the stove |
| Bathrooms | Toilet, sink, shower and tub surfaces, mirror, floor | Plus: tile walls in shower, cabinet fronts, fixtures polished | Plus: grout and heavy scale, exhaust fan cover, behind the toilet, inside vanity drawers if emptied |
| Bedrooms and living areas | Floors, surfaces, straighten | Plus: change linens if left out, vacuum upholstery surfaces, interior window sills | Plus: interior windows, blinds, closet floors, mattress vacuumed |
| Typical client | Weekly clients, small homes, tight budgets | Most recurring clients every two weeks | First visit for a new client, seasonal clean, pre-guest, move-out base |
Two rules keep the tiers honest. First, every item must be something a cleaner can finish and a client can check. “Extra attention to detail” is not a task. Second, the step between tiers has to be visible in the home. If a client cannot tell Complete from Essential after you leave, the Essential price is too high or the Complete list is too thin.
Our free deep cleaning checklist and housekeeping checklist are a good starting point for the task lists, and the cleaning checklist template turns them into a printable sheet per tier.
How do you price each cleaning package?
Price each tier from the hours its task list takes, run through the same formula: cleaner-hours times your loaded labor cost, plus supplies, divided by what is left after overhead and profit. Do not price the premium tier and then knock 20% off for the others. Discounts that are not backed by saved time come straight out of your margin.
The assumptions (hypothetical, replace with yours)
- Cleaner pay: $20 an hour. For reference, the median wage for maids and housekeeping cleaners in the US was $17.07 an hour in May 2025 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS series pulled from the BLS public API). That occupation includes hotel housekeepers, so check local job ads.
- Loaded labor cost: $25 an hour (pay plus 25% for payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and paid drive time).
- Supplies: $10 for Essential and Complete, $15 for Premium (degreaser, descaler, more cloths).
- Overhead 20% and profit 15% of the price, so every price is direct cost ÷ 0.65.
A 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home (about 1,600 square feet)
| Package | Example cleaner-hours | Math | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | 3.0 | (3 × $25 + $10) ÷ 0.65 = $130.77 | $135 |
| Complete | 3.5 | (3.5 × $25 + $10) ÷ 0.65 = $150.00 | $150 |
| Premium | 6.0 | (6 × $25 + $15) ÷ 0.65 = $253.85 | $255 |
Notice the gaps. Essential to Complete is only $15, because the extra tasks take about half an hour. Complete to Premium is $105, because deep-clean tasks take two and a half more hours. That is the shape you want: a small step up to the package you recommend, and a bigger, clearly justified step to the top.
As a sanity check, Thumbtack’s house cleaning price guide (updated October 20, 2026) puts the national average for a standard clean at $146 to $202 and a deep clean at $190 to $265, and its deep cleaning cost page gives a range of $189 to $331. Our worked prices sit at the low end of those ranges because the example wage is modest; in a high-wage city the same hours produce higher prices.
To run the math with your own wage, overhead and margin, use the house cleaning price calculator. Time ten jobs of each tier before you trust the hours.
Package prices by home size: a worked example
Using the assumptions above, Essential runs from $85 for a 1 bedroom apartment to $220 for a 5 bedroom house, Complete from $95 to $250, and Premium from $160 to $410. These are the output of an example, not a survey of what companies charge.
| Home | Essential (hours, price) | Complete (hours, price) | Premium (hours, price) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 bed, 1 bath (about 700 sq ft) | 1.75 h, $85 | 2 h, $95 | 3.5 h, $160 |
| 2 bed, 1 bath (about 950 sq ft) | 2.25 h, $105 | 2.5 h, $115 | 4 h, $180 |
| 2 bed, 2 bath (about 1,200 sq ft) | 2.5 h, $115 | 3 h, $135 | 5 h, $220 |
| 3 bed, 2 bath (about 1,600 sq ft) | 3 h, $135 | 3.5 h, $150 | 6 h, $255 |
| 4 bed, 2.5 bath (about 2,200 sq ft) | 4 h, $170 | 4.5 h, $190 | 7.5 h, $315 |
| 5 bed, 3.5 bath (about 3,200 sq ft) | 5.25 h, $220 | 6 h, $250 | 10 h, $410 |
Prices are rounded up to the next $5 (the rounding goes to profit). The Premium column matches the deep clean in our pricing guide because it includes the inside of the oven and fridge; a Premium package that leaves those as add-ons takes about half an hour less per home. Decide what your Premium includes, time it, and pick one number.
Thumbtack’s price guide lists national prices by bedrooms too: $133 to $174 for 1 bedroom, $166 to $250 for 3 bedrooms, $217 to $327 for 5 bedrooms. Treat those as a check on your Complete column, not a target.
For a state-by-state view of what a standard clean costs from local wages, see house cleaning prices by state.
How do you present packages so clients pick the right one?
Show the premium package first, mark the middle package as the one most clients choose, and keep the basic package visible but plain. The top price is the anchor: once a client has seen $255, $150 reads as sensible. Without the anchor, $150 is just a number they will try to beat.
Six presentation rules
- Highest price first in a list, or in the middle of three columns on a web page with the recommended tier highlighted. Both work; what does not work is leading with the cheapest.
- Label the middle tier. “Most popular” or “Recommended for homes cleaned every two weeks.” Most people pick what most people pick.
- Make the basic tier real, not a trap. A client who picks Essential and is happy is a good client. If Essential is so thin that nobody could be happy, it damages your reviews, not your competitors’.
- State the price per visit for the home size, not “from $85”. A client with a 4 bedroom house who sees “from $85” feels tricked when you quote $170.
- Write what is not included under each tier. One line: “Inside oven and fridge, interior windows and laundry are add-ons.”
- Use the same three names everywhere: website, booking page, quotes, the checklist your cleaner carries. If the cleaner’s sheet says “Deep” and the invoice says “Premium”, the client wonders what they paid for.
The free house cleaning price list maker lays packages out by home size as a page you can print or post. If you take bookings online, a booking page that asks for bedrooms, bathrooms, package and frequency can show the price and let the client pick a time in one go; Broombook’s online booking page works that way, with packages and add-ons priced by home size.
How should packages change for weekly and monthly clients?
Keep the same three packages and vary the price by frequency, with the discount tied to the time a regular visit saves. In the worked example, the Complete package for the 3 bedroom home is $170 every four weeks, $150 every two weeks and $135 weekly, because the job takes 4, 3.5 and 3 hours.
Most owners find that two sales do most of the work:
- First visit on Premium, then Complete on a schedule. The home has not been kept to your standard yet, so the first clean takes longer. Selling the first visit as Premium is honest, it protects your cleaners’ time, and the client sees the difference between the two tiers in their own home.
- A Premium visit once a season. Offer recurring clients a quarterly upgrade to Premium at the Premium price. It keeps the home from drifting and adds four higher tickets a year per client without any marketing.
Do not create a fourth “recurring” package. Frequency is a multiplier on the tier, not a tier of its own, and a 3 × 3 grid (three packages, three frequencies) is as complex as a price list should get. The cleaning business profit calculator shows what a mix of weekly, every-two-weeks and monthly clients means for your monthly profit.
Which tasks stay add-ons, and which belong in a package?
Keep as add-ons the tasks that only some clients want and that take a fixed, separate block of time: inside the oven, inside the fridge, interior windows, laundry, inside cabinets, and organizing. Fold a task into a tier when most clients buying that tier expect it.
| Task | Essential and Complete | Premium | Example add-on price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inside oven | Add-on | Included | $35 (about 45 minutes) |
| Inside fridge | Add-on | Included | $25 (about 30 minutes) |
| Interior windows | Add-on | Included up to 10 windows | $40 (about an hour) |
| Baseboards, whole home | Add-on | Included | $30 (about 45 minutes) |
| Laundry, one load folded | Add-on | Add-on | $15 (20 minutes hands-on) |
| Inside kitchen cabinets, emptied | Add-on | Add-on | $30 (about 45 minutes) |
| Change linens, per bed | Add-on | Included | $10 (10 minutes) |
Add-on prices come from minutes: in the worked example each cleaner-minute costs $25 ÷ 60 ÷ 0.65, about $0.64 at full price, so a 45 minute task is about $29 before rounding. If a client orders three or more add-ons on a Complete clean, the Premium package is usually cheaper for them and simpler for you, and your booking page or quote should say so.
Keep add-on prices scaled to the home: baseboards in a 5 bedroom house take far longer than in an apartment. Price them per home size or per window, not one flat fee for every home.
What goes wrong with cleaning service packages?
The common failures are too many tiers, tiers that are not defined as tasks, scope creep nobody charges for, and discounts set by feel instead of by time. Each one shows up as a smaller margin or a confused client.
- Five packages. Clients cannot hold five lists in their head and will ask you to pick, which puts you back to quoting by hand. Three is enough. If you need a fourth, it is probably one of the other types of cleaning services (move-out, post-construction, Airbnb turnover) with its own page.
- Tiers defined by adjectives. “Thorough” and “detailed” are not tasks. If your cleaner cannot tick it, the client cannot see it, and you cannot defend the price.
- Premium work at Complete prices. A cleaner who does the baseboards to be nice has just given away 45 minutes. Train crews to the list and to offer the upgrade, not to do it quietly.
- Discounts from the top down. “Premium $250, Complete 20% off, Essential 35% off” looks tidy and ignores how long each takes. Price from hours up.
- No minimum. A studio on Essential at $70 can still cost you 90 minutes with driving. Set a minimum visit price that covers the drive.
- Never revisiting the hours. Time ten jobs per tier, per home size, twice a year. If Complete on 4 bedroom homes keeps running to 5 hours, the price is wrong, not the cleaner.
Once your packages are set, put them in writing in your cleaning service agreement, and use the cleaning estimate template for anything outside the three tiers. If you sell to offices as well, the same good-better-best structure works with frequencies and square footage; our guide to office cleaning prices covers it.