Is a cleaning business profitable? Profit calculator
Enter your clients, prices and costs to see your monthly revenue, profit, margin and break-even point. Change one number at a time to see what moves your profit most.
- Free, no sign-up
- Runs in your browser
- Works on your phone
Monthly profit
$5,408
37.8% margin, $64,891 a year
Monthly revenue
$14,322
Monthly costs
$8,914
Profit per visit
$62
Break-even visits per month
15
Where the money goes
- Revenue: 87 visits × $165
- $14,322
- Cleaner labor (50% of revenue)
- -$7,161
- Supplies (87 visits)
- -$694
- Insurance
- -$150
- Software
- -$59
- Vehicle and fuel
- -$450
- Other fixed costs
- -$400
- Profit
- $5,408
Before owner salary and income tax. If you clean yourself, profit is also your pay.
What makes a cleaning business profitable
A residential cleaning business makes money on the gap between what a visit earns and what it costs to deliver, multiplied by how many visits you do. Fixed costs like insurance, software and a vehicle come out of that gap. Three levers matter most:
- Price per visit. The fastest way to improve profit. If you pay cleaners by the hour, a price increase costs you nothing extra in labor, because the job takes the same time. Use the house cleaning price calculator to set prices from your real costs.
- Labor as a share of revenue. Jobs that run long, drive time between homes and redo visits all push this up. Accurate time estimates and tight routes bring it down.
- Recurring clients. Weekly and every-2-weeks clients fill your schedule predictably and cost nothing to re-acquire. A full recurring schedule is what turns a busy business into a profitable one.
How the calculator works
- Visits = clients × visits per client per month.
- Revenue = visits × average price.
- Costs = labor (revenue × labor %) + supplies (visits × supplies per visit) + insurance + software + vehicle + other fixed costs.
- Profit = revenue − costs. Margin = profit ÷ revenue.
- Break-even visits = fixed costs ÷ (price × (1 − labor %) − supplies per visit), rounded up.
The result is before the owner’s salary and income tax. If you still clean yourself and enter your own labor as zero, the profit is also what you are paid for your time.
Test before you change
Before raising prices, hiring or adding a service area, run the numbers here. Try a 10% price increase with a few clients lost, or a new cleaner with the labor share it brings, and see which leaves you better off.
FAQ
Cleaning business profit questions
Is a cleaning business profitable?
It can be. Residential cleaning has low startup costs and recurring clients, so profit depends mostly on three numbers: your price per visit, what you pay for labor as a share of that price, and how full your schedule is. Use the calculator to test your own numbers rather than relying on an industry average.
What is a good profit margin for a cleaning business?
There is no single right number, and it depends on whether the owner still cleans. Set a target, price your jobs to hit it, and check your real margin every month. If labor alone takes more than about half of revenue, look at your prices first.
What is the biggest cost in a cleaning business?
Labor. Cleaner wages and payroll taxes are usually by far the largest cost once you have a team, which is why pricing by the time a job really takes matters so much.
How many clients do I need to break even?
Divide your monthly fixed costs by what each visit contributes after labor and supplies. The calculator shows this as break-even visits per month; divide by visits per client to get a client count.