WorkbookBarn
What a cleaning business must charge per house to clear $60,000 a year
Computed per-house prices at 4–12 houses a week: from $117–$118 at ten houses a week. Same engine as the free break-even calculator.
Quick answer: To clear $60,000 a year before tax, a solo cleaning business must charge about $117–$118 per house at ten houses a week, $146–$148 at eight, or $195–$197 at six — after covering general liability insurance. Every price here is computed by the same engine behind our free break-even calculator.
Last updated: 2026-08-30
How much is that per house?
| Houses / week | Houses / month | Price per house |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 17.3 | $292–$295 |
| 6 | 26.0 | $195–$197 |
| 8 | 34.7 | $146–$148 |
| 10 | 43.3 | $117–$118 |
| 12 | 52.0 | $98–$99 |
The price range on each row spans the low and high ends of the sourced insurance figure. Whatever the pace, the month has to gross $5,048–$5,100 — the target pay plus insurance.
How did we compute this?
The formula, spelled out: price per house = (owner pay + general liability insurance ÷ 12) ÷ houses per month, where houses per month = houses per week × 52 ÷ 12. Each price was solved through the exact engine our free break-even calculator runs in your browser (bisection on its BreakEvenJobs output until the month clears the nut), then rounded up to the next dollar so the target is actually cleared, never approximated past.
- Owner pay — $5,000/month, which is the $60,000 target ÷ 12. “Clear” here means before income and self-employment tax; see the take-home edition of this arithmetic for how a tax reserve changes the number.
- General liability insurance — $580–$1,200/yr for a cleaning business (Insureon, retrieved 2026-08-27). This is the low/high spread behind each price range — note how little it moves the answer.
What do the published cleaning rates say?
HomeAdvisor’s 2026 guide puts a standard recurring clean at $75–$250 per visit and a deep clean at $200–$400 (source, retrieved 2026-08-27). Read the table against that range: at ten or twelve houses a week the required price sits comfortably inside it. At four houses a week the required $292–$295 is above the standard-clean range — a light schedule only reaches $60,000 on deep cleans and move-outs, not standard visits. That is the honest trade the table is showing you.
What is not in these numbers?
Supplies, fuel and any software are excluded because we will not invent a figure for them — which means every price above is a floor: your real number is these prices plus your real per-visit costs. The calculator has lines for all of them; the free companion kit’s Excel model goes deeper.
Run your own numbers
- Break-even calculator — the engine these prices came from, free in your browser
- Free cleaning companion kit — Excel financial model + printable worksheets
- Residential Cleaning Business Startup Plan — every figure sourced, $14.99
- Startup costs for all 40 trades — the sourced index
¿Prefieres esto en español? ¿Cuánto cobrar por limpieza para ganar $60,000? →
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Educational estimates only. These calculators and workbooks do the arithmetic on the figures you enter; they are general-purpose tools, not financial, investment, tax, legal, lending, insurance or construction advice, and no result is a quote, an offer, or a guarantee of any outcome. Results depend entirely on your inputs and assumptions.