How much do house cleaners make? Pay for cleaners and owners in 2026

How much do house cleaners make an hour?

The median employed house cleaner in the US made $17.07 an hour in May 2025, which is $35,510 a year for full-time work. Half earned more and half earned less. The lowest-paid 10% made under $13.29 an hour, and the highest-paid 10% made over $23.35.

These figures are for the occupation the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls maids and housekeeping cleaners (code 37-2012), from its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey. We pulled the national, state and industry figures below from the BLS public data API on October 5, 2026. The survey counted 860,670 people in the job.

The yearly figures assume full-time, year-round hours. Many house cleaners work fewer hours than that, so their real yearly pay is lower than the hourly rate suggests. Tips are counted in the OEWS wage figures, and overtime premiums are not, according to the OEWS frequently asked questions.

The median is the better guide to a typical house cleaner salary. The mean is pulled up by a smaller number of high earners, mostly in high-cost states.

Which states pay house cleaners the most?

Hawaii pays house cleaners the most, with a mean of $25.18 an hour, followed by New York, California, the District of Columbia, Nevada and Washington. The lowest averages are in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, all under $13.50 an hour.

Source: BLS OEWS state estimates for maids and housekeeping cleaners, May 2025. Florida and Texas are included because so many cleaning businesses start there.

A higher wage does not always mean more money left over. The top-paying states are also some of the most expensive places to live, and the clients there usually pay more for a clean too. For an owner, the useful question is not “what is the state average?” but “what do I need to pay to hire and keep a good cleaner in my area?” Check the job ads of cleaning companies near you, and use the state figure as a floor, not a target.

Wages also feed straight into prices. Our house cleaning pricing guide shows the same 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom clean priced at $125 with $16 an hour pay and $195 with $26 an hour pay.

Why can residential cleaners earn more or less than the national figure?

The national figure mixes hotel, hospital and nursing home housekeepers with home cleaners, and it leaves out self-employed cleaners entirely. So it is a rough reference for an employee at a residential cleaning company, and not a measure of what independent cleaners or owners make.

Here is where the people in the occupation work, and their median hourly wage, from the same May 2025 survey:

Almost half of the occupation (48%) works in hotels and motels. The industry that includes cleaning companies employs about one in nine, at a median of $17.13, very close to the overall figure.

Three things make residential cleaning pay different from the headline number:

• Who is missing. The OEWS survey does not cover the self-employed or household workers hired directly by a family, according to the BLS. Independent house cleaners, a large part of the trade, are not in these numbers at all.
• Hours. Residential companies schedule around clients’ days, so a cleaner may get fewer than 40 paid hours a week. The hourly rate can look fine while the yearly pay falls short.
• Drive time and tips. House cleaners drive between homes and often get tips from clients. How a company pays drive time and handles tips can move a cleaner’s real hourly pay by several dollars either way.

What do independent house cleaners really take home?

An independent cleaner keeps far less than the price divided by the hours on site. In our example, a cleaner who charges $150 for a 3.5 hour clean earns $42.86 an hour on site, but nets about $25 an hour once driving, supplies, fixed costs, unpaid admin time and self-employment tax come out, before income tax.

Clients report paying house cleaners $40 to $55 an hour on average, according to Thumbtack’s house cleaning price guide, so $42.86 on site is a realistic starting point. Here is one working day, as an example with assumptions you should replace with your own:

Where the example numbers come from:

• Self-employment tax. The rate is 15.3% (12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare), and it generally applies to 92.35% of your net earnings from self-employment once they reach $400 a year, according to the IRS. You can deduct half of it when you work out your adjusted gross income, which lowers your income tax a little.
• Driving. We used the IRS standard mileage rate for business use, 76 cents a mile from July 1, 2026 (72.5 cents from January 1 to June 30), as a stand-in for what a mile really costs in fuel, wear and insurance (IRS).
• Supplies. $10 per standard clean, the same figure our pricing guide uses. Our cleaning business supplies list shows how to work out your own.

Even at $25.23, an independent cleaner earns well above the $17.07 employee median. But that figure has no paid vacation or sick days, no employer health plan, and no pay when a client cancels. A cancelled $150 clean is a lost $150, which is why independent cleaners need a written cancellation policy and a card on file.

How much does a cleaning business make?

It depends mostly on how many cleans you run each month and how much of each price is left after labor. In our worked example, an owner keeps about $57,000 a year cleaning alone, about $80,000 cleaning alongside two employees, and about $93,000 running eight employees without cleaning, all before income tax.

The example uses the assumptions from our pricing guide: a $150 standard clean that takes 3.5 cleaner-hours, cleaners paid $20 an hour, a loaded labor cost of $25 an hour (pay plus payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and paid drive time), $10 of supplies, overhead at 20% of the price and profit at 15%. So each clean breaks down into $87.50 of labor, $10 of supplies, $30 of overhead and $22.50 of profit. We also assume each full-time cleaner does 10 cleans a week, about 43 a month.

How to read it:

• Solo. You keep the labor share and the profit of every clean: $110 × 43 = $4,730 a month. For that, you clean about 35 hours a week on site, drive between homes, and do the admin in the evenings.
• You plus two cleaners. You keep the labor share of your own 43 cleans ($3,762.50) plus the profit on all 129 ($2,902.50). Your two employees each earn about $36,400 a year at $20 an hour for 35 hours a week.
• Eight cleaners. You stop cleaning, and what you keep is the profit: 15% of revenue. If you do the office work yourself instead of hiring a scheduler, part of the overhead line is also really your pay.

Notice the pattern. Hiring two cleaners adds about $23,000 a year to what you keep. Growing to eight adds about $13,000 more, but swaps cleaning for managing people, schedules and clients full time. Growth pays mostly when your prices leave a real profit on every clean, because once you stop cleaning, profit is all you have.

The example assumes full schedules, no cancellations and overhead that stays at exactly 20%. Real months are messier. Enter your own prices, client count and costs in the cleaning business profit calculator to see your numbers. For the two-cleaner example, labor is about 58% of revenue ($87.50 of $150) on the cleans your employees do.

How should a cleaning business owner pay themselves?

Pay yourself a fixed, regular amount from the business account, set aside money for taxes from every payment, and keep the rest as a cushion. A predictable owner’s pay is easier to live on than whatever is left at the end of the month, and it shows you quickly whether your prices really support you.

A realistic cleaning business owner salary depends on the stage you are at. Using the worked example above:

• Solo: about $4,730 a month before tax. After self-employment tax ($4,730 × 92.35% × 15.3% = $668.33), about $4,060 a month, or roughly $48,700 a year, before income tax.
• With a small crew: more in total, but some of it is profit that the business may need for a second vehicle, a bigger supply order or a slow month.
• With a larger team: your pay is the profit, so it rises and falls with how full your crews’ schedules are.

A simple routine that works for most small owners:

1. Move a fixed percentage of every week’s revenue into a separate tax savings account.
2. Pay yourself the same amount every week or two, set at a level your slowest month can cover.
3. Leave the rest in the business until you have one to two months of costs saved.
4. Review the amount each quarter, and raise it when the cushion is full.

How you legally pay yourself (an owner’s draw, or a salary through payroll) depends on how your business is set up and taxed, so ask an accountant. Our guide to accounting software for cleaning businesses covers the tools that keep these numbers in order.

How much should I pay my cleaners?

Pay at least what good cleaning companies near you advertise, and never less than your state or city minimum wage. A practical starting point is between the local median and the 75th percentile for maids and housekeeping cleaners, then check that your prices cover it. Nationally, that is $17.07 to $19.03 an hour.

Four checks before you set a rate

1. The legal floor. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and where a state’s law is more generous, you must follow both, so the higher rate applies (US Department of Labor). Many states and cities are well above the federal rate.
2. The local market. Look at your state’s figures above and at current job ads from cleaning companies, hotels and janitorial firms near you. Those are the employers you compete with for cleaners.
3. Your prices. Every $1 an hour you add costs about $1.25 once payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and paid drive time are added. On a 3.5 hour clean that is $4.38, and keeping your margin means about $6.73 more on the price ($4.38 ÷ 0.65). If your prices cannot support a competitive wage, fix the prices first.
4. Employee or contractor. If you set the schedule, supply the products and tell cleaners how to clean, they are likely employees. The IRS looks at behavioral control, financial control and the type of relationship (IRS). Getting this wrong is expensive, so ask an accountant before you hire.

Pay for drive time between homes

Under federal law, travel from job site to job site during the workday is work time and must be counted as hours worked, while the ordinary commute from home to the first job is not (US Department of Labor). For a house cleaner who visits two or three homes a day, that can be an hour or more of paid time a day. Build it into your loaded labor cost, and keep routes tight so less of it is needed.

If you want new hires to know exactly what the job involves before they apply, our free house cleaner job description tool writes the posting with your pay, hours and duties.

Should you pay cleaners hourly, per job or by commission?

Hourly pay is the simplest and the safest for employees. Per-job pay rewards fast cleaners but can drop below minimum wage on a long job. Hourly pay plus a small commission is a common middle ground: a guaranteed floor, plus a share of the work they do.

Here is what each structure pays on the same $150 clean, planned at 3.5 hours, if it goes to plan and if it runs to 5 hours:

• Hourly is easy to explain and to run through payroll, and it is fair on long, dirty jobs. It needs accurate time tracking and good job estimates, because the business carries the cost of a slow clean.
• Per job (a flat amount or a percentage) tells cleaners what each visit is worth and rewards efficient work. The risk is rushed cleans, and unfair pay on homes that take longer than quoted. For employees, total pay still has to meet the minimum wage that applies for the hours worked, and hours over 40 in a workweek need overtime at no less than one and a half times the regular rate (US Department of Labor).
• Hourly plus commission keeps a floor under pay and gives cleaners a reason to care about the size of the job, and about add-ons like inside the oven. Pay stubs are slightly more complex.

Whatever you choose, track real clock-in times so you can see which homes run long and which cleaners need help. BroomBook takes hours from clock-ins in the crew app, lets you correct a timesheet with the reason kept, adds commission per cleaner and per add-on, and exports a CSV for your payroll provider. It does not run payroll or file taxes. Details are on the cleaning payroll software page.

How should tips work for house cleaners?

Tips belong to the cleaners who did the work. Pass on every tip in full, on the next paycheck, and split tips on team cleans by a rule everyone knows. Under federal law, an employer cannot keep employees’ tips under any circumstances, and managers and supervisors may not keep tips received by employees either, including through tip pools (US Department of Labor).

• Let clients tip by card. Many clients pay by card and rarely carry cash. A tip option on the card charge after each clean makes tipping easy.
• Split team tips evenly by default. If two cleaners did the visit, each gets half. Uneven splits by hours are fairer on paper but cause more arguments.
• Show tips on the pay stub. Cleaners who can see each tip trust that they are getting all of it.
• Do not count on tips as pay. Set the wage so it stands on its own. Tips are a bonus, and they vary a lot from client to client.

In BroomBook, a tip added when the client’s card is charged after the job is split evenly across the cleaners on that visit and shows on the payroll page next to their hours and wages.

How does pay affect whether cleaners stay?

Pay is the first reason a cleaner joins and one of the main reasons they leave, but steady hours, paid drive time and fair treatment matter almost as much. A cleaner earning $1 more an hour with half the hours they need will still leave for a job with a full week.

Turnover is expensive even when nobody sends you a bill. As an example, if each new cleaner needs three training cleans alongside you, that is 10.5 hours at a $25 loaded cost, or $262.50 of wages, plus your time, the job ads, and the risk that clients who liked the old cleaner leave too. Many clients prefer to see the same cleaner in their home every time.

What keeps good cleaners

• A competitive base rate, checked against local job ads at least once a year.
• Steady, predictable hours. Recurring clients make this possible. Publish schedules early and avoid cancelling a cleaner’s whole day at short notice.
• Paid drive time and mileage. A cleaner driving their own car between homes notices quickly when that time and those miles are not paid.
• Every tip, visibly passed on.
• Raises on a schedule, for example after 90 days and then once a year, so cleaners can see a path.
• Realistic job times. Re-quote homes that always run long instead of asking cleaners to rush them.
• Clear jobs and checklists on their phone, so nobody arrives at a home without the access notes or a list of what the client expects.

Owners often see a raise as pure cost. Run the numbers before you decide: a $1 raise adds about $6.73 to the price of a 3.5 hour clean in our example, while replacing one cleaner can cost hundreds of dollars in training wages alone. If you are still building the team, our guide on how to start a cleaning business covers when to make your first hire.