Commercial cleaning is priced from three inputs: the area being cleaned, how often it gets cleaned, and the standard it’s held to. All three resolve into labor hours, and labor is the dominant cost. That’s why a credible number follows a walkthrough. Nobody prices a building accurately from a phone call and a square-footage guess.
Key takeaways
Most facilities managers get three quotes with three different numbers and no way to tell why they differ. The quotes rarely show their working. Here’s what sits underneath the figure, and what to ask for so the three become comparable.
You’re paying for hours on your floor. In May 2025 the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook for janitors and building cleaners put the median wage at $17.71 an hour, or $36,840 a year. Supplies and equipment matter, but they’re a rounding error next to payroll.
That single fact explains most of what looks strange about cleaning quotes. A contractor cannot cut the price without cutting hours, or cutting what those hours are spent doing. There’s no third option hiding in the supply cupboard.
Because frequency multiplies everything else. A scope cleaned five nights a week runs 260 service visits a year. The same scope at three nights runs 156. That’s the same building, the same tasks and the same standard, at two-thirds of the annual labor.
This is also the lever you have most control over, and it shouldn’t be pulled uniformly. Restrooms and breakrooms usually need nightly attention. A records room behind a keypad rarely does. Frequency belongs per area, not per building.
Splitting it that way is usually how a scope gets cheaper without getting worse. We quote recurring contract cleaning area by area for exactly this reason.
Because the things that drive the hours aren’t visible from a square-footage figure. Two 20,000 square foot offices can differ by a third in labor depending on partition density, floor types, restroom fixture counts, entry matting and how many of those floors need machines rather than mops.
A phone quote is a guess dressed up as a number. It gets corrected later, either by a change order or by the crew quietly doing less. Neither is a good outcome for the building.
Our pricing page sets out what we look at on a walkthrough and what comes back in your customized cleaning plan.
Enough detail that a different contractor could price the same scope and you could compare the two. At minimum that means areas listed separately, a frequency against each, the tasks included at that frequency, and the periodic work priced apart from the recurring work.
It should also name a standard. Most institutional scopes specify APPA Level 2, Ordinary Tidiness, from the five levels documented in the University of Lethbridge facilities standard for APPA cleaning levels. A level is inspectable. An adjective isn’t.
Periodic work belongs on its own line. Carpet extraction and floor refinishing are scheduled by condition, so bundling them into a flat monthly figure hides both what you’re getting and when. The difference between the two kinds of work is covered in our piece on janitorial versus commercial cleaning.
A bid well under the others has usually bought fewer hours, and the hours come out of the work nobody checks on a Tuesday. Restroom detail, edges, corners, high dusting, and anything requiring a machine. The lobby stays presentable, which is the part that gets looked at.
The bill arrives later as capital. Floor finish is sacrificial by design, and once grit wears through it, you’re replacing tile rather than refinishing it. Carpet behaves the same way, because the soil left in the pile is abrasive.
There’s a labor-market reason too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 321,800 openings for janitors and building cleaners each year through 2035, mostly to replace people leaving the occupation. A contractor pricing below the local wage is buying churn, and churn is why a crew that knew your building in March doesn’t in June.
What facilities managers ask us most when they’re comparing three numbers that don’t line up.
Usually quoted as a monthly figure, built underneath from area, frequency and standard. Per square foot is a useful sanity check between similar buildings, but it hides the frequency and the standard, which is where two quotes on the same building actually diverge.
Almost always because they’re pricing different scopes. Different frequencies, different task lists, different assumptions about periodic work. Until all three itemize area and frequency the same way, you’re comparing three different jobs that happen to share an address.
Often, yes, by moving frequency per area rather than across the building. Dropping a low-traffic zone from five nights to two while restrooms stay nightly cuts hours where nobody notices. Cutting uniformly is what people feel.
It can be, as long as it’s itemized. Carpet extraction and floor refinishing are scheduled by condition, so a flat monthly figure that quietly includes them makes it hard to tell if they happened. List them separately with an expected frequency.
Roughly thirty minutes. We measure or verify areas, note floor types and fixture counts, look at entry matting and traffic lanes, and ask about hours of access. Your cleaning plan and quote both come from what’s on that sheet.
Sometimes, because stability lowers the cost of staffing a building. It shouldn’t be the main lever though. A term commitment that locks in a scope nobody itemized is a worse deal than a shorter one you can inspect against a written standard.
Want a number you can actually compare against the other two? A thirty-minute walkthrough gets you a customized cleaning plan, itemized per area and frequency, with an accurate quote built from it.
