House cleaner rate calculator

Methodology

This tool runs the Kindhow Scale, version 1.0: a baseline drawn from a named publication, plus a stack of adjustments you select. Each adjustment is tagged sourced when a publication backs that exact figure, and house judgment when the reasoning is ours. There is no third tag, and no line on this site is unlabelled.

The formula

published    $0.10–$0.20 a sq ft, standard clean        (Angi)
             $0.12–$0.25 deep · $0.23–$0.35 move-out
  × sq ft    the bottom of the band is line 0
  + condition   0–100% of the way up that band            (ours)
  + add-ons     each its own published band               (Angi)
  × state    state median wage ÷ national, 37-2012  (BLS ratio, ours)
  − often    −2% to −20% a visit                          (ours)
  ─────────────
  ÷ $37.50   the price in cleaner-hours          (Angi, $25–$50/hr)
  − supplies −$5.32–$10.64                 (HomeGuide, CPI-carried)
  − direct   those hours at $15.97–$26.61 instead
             floored at the state median wage       (ours, if it binds)
  ─────────────
  = subtotal
  ⌈ $5 ⌉     rounded up, never down
  + $0 line  which of three arrangements you are in  (IRS Pub 926)
  ┌ panel ┐  wage × hours = what reaches the cleaner       (BLS)
             the rest = what stays with the company
             or: self-employment tax, or the $3,000 line

Two sources that have never met

Every page that answers “what does a house cleaner cost” answers it from one side. This one uses two, and the interesting output is the gap between them.

On the price side, Angi publishes $0.10–$0.20 a square foot for a standard clean, from over 90,000 of their own customers, updated March 2026. On the wage side, the BLS’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics publishes what this exact occupation — 37-2012, Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners — actually pays, in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. It is a federal survey of 860,670 people, not a marketplace’s estimate, and the May 2025 estimates were released in April 2026.

Neither publication does the subtraction, because neither has the other’s number. Doing it is the whole point of this page.

Why Angi’s two figures are not a contradiction

Angi leads with “$118 to $238 per visit” and an average of $176, and then publishes a per-square-foot band that puts a 2,000 square foot house at $200–$400. Those look like different claims. They are the same claim from opposite ends: the headline is an average across every home in their sample, apartments included, and it crosses the per-square-foot band at about 1,180 square feet — a believable average size for the homes that buy cleaning. Their own square-footage table settles it, because every row of it is exactly $0.10– $0.20 a square foot. This tool uses the band, because a calculator that already knows how big your house is has no business handing you an average of everybody else’s.

The state control, and why it is tagged ours

Angi’s band is national and has no state cut. The BLS has nothing but state cuts. So the regional adjustment is the ratio between a state’s median wage for this occupation and the national one, applied to the price — on the reasoning that labour is the dominant input into what a cleaning costs, and that the rest of it (fuel, rent, insurance) moves with local price levels too.

Both numbers in that ratio are published. Multiplying one by the other is not, so the line is tagged house judgment — the computed-provenance rule our teacher gift calculator introduced and our babysitter rate calculator extended. The spread it produces is large and honest: Mississippi’s median of $12.19 against Hawaii’s $24.81 is a 104% gap that no national average can represent, and that no percentage of ours should be inventing.

Where the sourced tag stops: the direct-hire floor

HomeGuide is the one publication that prices both arrangements: a service at $25–$70 per cleaning member per hour, and “an individual charges less than a cleaning company most of the time, from $15 to $25”. Those are 2024 figures, so they are carried forward on the BLS’ CPI-U — the same treatment our host gift calculator gives a 2013 wine band, and using the same single CPI table — which makes the individual band $15.97–$26.61 today, a factor of 1.0645.

That band is national, and in some states it is simply wrong. Hawaii’s median for employed cleaners is $24.81 an hour — above the middle of the individual band, which would have the tool claim that working for yourself pays less than working for someone else, with none of the security and all of the risk. So where that happens, the state’s own median becomes the floor, and the line changes tag as it does: it is no longer HomeGuide’s figure, so it stops being sourced and becomes house judgment. Same control, same publication, two different answers about provenance — this time because a source ran out geographically rather than numerically.

The move-out band, corroborated twice

Angi prices a move-out clean with a ceiling and no floor: “up to $0.35 per square foot”. HomeGuide prices a full band, $0.22–$0.33, but last updated it in 2024. Carried forward on CPI-U, HomeGuide’s band becomes $0.23–$0.35 — and its top lands on Angi’s ceiling exactly. Two publications, two years apart, one of them adjusted for inflation by us, arriving at the same number to the cent. That is the strongest corroboration this category has to offer, and it is why the move-out baseline is tagged sourced rather than ours.

The three arrangements

The hire control is the one that changes the answer’s shape rather than its size, and IRS Publication 926 decides between them on control rather than on money. It names “Housecleaning workers”, “Housekeepers” and “Maids” in its own list of household work, so there is no question that this is the right publication — only which of its paths you are on.

The third row is the one that catches people, and the trigger is lower than it sounds. A weekly cleaner on this page’s example is $6,760 a year, so the $3,000 line arrives in the spring. Federal unemployment tax is a separate and lower test again — $1,000 in any one calendar quarter, then 6% on the first $7,000, usually cut to 0.6% by a state credit. The same thresholds drive our babysitter rate calculator, because it is the same publication and the same table.

Notice what ticking “I provide the cleaning supplies” does. It takes $5.32–$10.64 off the visit, which is HomeGuide’s figure carried forward — and it is also one of the things the IRS weighs, because Publication 926 says a self-employed worker “usually provides their own tools”. One checkbox, a small discount, and a nudge toward the third row of that table.

Adjustments — house judgment

Angi prints bands and prices nothing inside them. These are the two controls that decide where inside you land, and both are ours. Neither is hidden, and both can be switched off.

Everything else on the form has a citation. Each add-on is a band Angi publishes for exactly that task — inside the refrigerator at $10–$40, inside the oven at $20–$40, windows at $4–$10 each, laundry at $5–$20 a load — and each is charged at the same point in its band as the house is in its, so a job that is overdue does not get a bargain rate on the oven. The band is theirs; the position is the same one you can see on the line above it.

The $0 lines

Every arrangement produces one, and they are all sourced, worth nothing, and the most consequential thing on the ledger — which is the shape of every $0 line on this site. The service is the employer, not you closes the tax question entirely, and is a real part of what the higher price buys. They are self-employed, not your employee is the answer most people hiring direct are actually looking for, and it carries a second piece of good news: no 1099 either, because paying for personal household services is not a trade or business of yours. This makes you a household employer is the one nobody wants, and printing it is the reason this tool asks who you hired at all.

What this tool will not do

• It is not tax advice and it is not legal advice. It quotes a published regulation and does arithmetic on it. Whether a particular cleaner is your employee is a facts-and-circumstances test that the IRS, not a web page, decides — and your state may add its own wage rules, its own unemployment insurance and its own definition of a domestic worker. A standing arrangement is worth twenty minutes of an accountant’s time.
• The cleaner-hours figure is a division, not an observation. Angi publishes a price per square foot and, separately, $25– $50 per cleaner per hour. Dividing one by the other is how this page gets from a price to hours, and it is ours. Treat it as the scale of the job — two people for half that time — rather than a stopwatch.
• The BLS does not count the self-employed. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics covers wage and salary workers, and a large share of the people cleaning houses directly for households are not that. So the wage column is a solid figure for someone working for a company and a reasonable proxy for someone working for themselves — not the same thing, and the page will not pretend otherwise.
• It will not tell you the price in your actual neighbourhood. A state is a wide place, and cleaning prices vary more between a city and its exurbs than between some states. Treat the answer as the middle of a range you should still get two quotes against.
• It does not include a tip. Angi publishes 10%–20% for house cleaning, and that is a separate decision from the price — our holiday tipping calculator has a housekeeper row and owns that question.
• It has no view on whether you can afford it. There is no line here telling you to be more generous and none telling you to economise. The bands are what other people actually paid; what you do with that is your business.

Sources

• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics — 37-2012 Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners — the wage side: hourly 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile for 51 states and the District of Columbia plus a national figure, May 2025 estimates released April 2026, covering 860,670 wage and salary workers. Median $17.07 nationally.
• Angi — How Much Does Professional House Cleaning Cost? — the price side: $0.10–$0.20 a square foot for a standard clean and $0.12–$0.25 for a deep one, “up to $0.35” for a move-out, $25–$50 per cleaner per hour, the add-on bands, and 10%–20% for a tip. From over 90,000 Angi customers, updated March 2026.
• HomeGuide — House Cleaning Prices — the individual-versus-service rate gap, the move-out band and the supplies saving. Last updated 2024, so every figure taken from it is carried forward on CPI-U (×1.0645).
• IRS Publication 926 (2026) — Household Employer’s Tax Guide — “Housecleaning workers”, “Housekeepers” and “Maids” in the list of household work, the control test that separates an employee from a self-employed worker and from an agency’s worker, the $3,000 cash-wage threshold, the 7.65% each-side rate, and the $1,000-a-quarter FUTA test.
• IRS — Self-Employment Tax (Social Security and Medicare Taxes) — 15.3% on 92.35% of net earnings, used in the panel to show what a self-employed cleaner pays out of the fee.
• BLS CPI-U, all items, US city average (CUUR0000SA0) — the index every carried figure on this page moves on, shared with our gift reciprocity calculator so there is one CPI table on this site rather than several.

Informational only, not professional advice. The Kindhow Scale is a published model, not a standard, and the lines marked house judgment are our reasoning and nothing more. Nothing here is tax, legal or employment advice: the thresholds are quoted as the IRS publishes them, your state may impose more, and whether a particular person is your employee is decided on the facts rather than by a calculator. Last reviewed: August 2026. Scale version 1.0. The BLS releases new wage estimates each spring, Angi revises its bands through the year and the IRS thresholds change each tax year, so this page is re-checked on the site’s monthly cycle and hard-reviewed each spring.