Know what to charge for profit before you leave the driveway.
Most cleaners underprice by 30–40% and don’t find out for months. BidCalc prices any job on your own rates — margin baked in — then turns it into a branded quote you can send on the spot. It’s a pricing calculator, not a CRM.
Your bid
$262
one-time
Demo rates: 2 cleaners · $25/hr · 1.30 burden · 25% margin — set your own inside
Undercharge by a little, and you work all year for free.
Gut-feel pricing feels free and instant — until it’s wrong. Lowball once and you’ve set a rate you’ll clean at for months. Worse, the cheapest price quietly recruits the worst clients: the ones who nitpick, pay late, ghost, and use your quote to bargain with someone cheaper down the road.
If you’re busy but not making money, second-guessing every quote, and wondering why a full schedule still feels heavy — you’re not lazy. You’re undercharging and don’t know by how much.
- 30–40%
- how much the average solo cleaner underprices their true cost-per-hour
- $0
- what your pricing spreadsheet does for you in a stranger’s kitchen
- 60 sec
- to a defensible, margin-protected number you can hand over on the spot
You don’t need cleaning software. You need the number.
Jobber, Housecall Pro and ZenMaid are schedulers and CRMs that happen to send a quote — $39 to $450 a month for features you’ll never open. BidCalc does the one thing they bury as a sub-feature: it prices the job right, in the moment, on your rates. No scheduling. No dispatch. No onboarding.
The gut-feel quote
$150
“Takes a couple hours, I’ll say a buck-fifty.” No labor burden, no overhead, no margin. It feels safe.
The BidCalc bid
$262
Same 3-bed, 2-bath home — your rates, with burden, overhead and a 25% margin baked in first. The number you can defend.
Real cost math — not “hours × rate.”
A crew costs more than their wage. Payroll taxes, workers’ comp and benefits add roughly 30% on top — then insurance, vehicles and supplies, and the profit you’re supposed to keep. BidCalc bakes all of it into one number, so the price you say already covers cost and hits your target margin.
Set your target margin once. If a job ever dips below it, the margin bar turns red — so you catch money left on the table before you send, not months later. Your cost and margin never leave your phone.
The BidCalc formula
Bid = (Labor × 1.30 + Supplies + Overhead) ÷ (1 − margin)
- 1.30 — labor burden: payroll taxes, workers’ comp, benefits
- Overhead— insurance, vehicle, office, applied on top of labor
- margin— your profit, protected before you ever discount
Then deep-clean and first-visit premiums, recurring-frequency discounts, and pet / smoker / clutter surcharges — applied automatically.
How much should you charge for house cleaning?
Start from your real cost, not a gut number. Take your crew’s labor — cleaners × hours × your hourly rate — and multiply it by about 1.30to cover the labor burden of payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and benefits. Add your overhead (insurance, vehicle, supplies), then divide by one minus your target margin so profit is built in first: Bid = (Labor × 1.30 + Supplies + Overhead) ÷ (1 − margin). For a typical 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom standard clean with a two-person crew at $25/hour and a 25% target margin, that lands around $262 — versus the $150a gut-feel quote often names, which quietly loses money. Deep cleans run about 1.5× and move-out cleans about 2× a standard visit, and recurring weekly or biweekly service usually carries a 10–20% discount. BidCalc runs this on your own rates in seconds.
Read the full pricing guideFrom walkthrough to sent quote in three steps.
Set your rates once
Your hourly rate, labor burden, overhead and target margin — saved as a rate card. Do it one time and never re-derive your true cost under pressure again.
Walk the home, tap the details
Beds and baths or square footage, standard / deep / move-out, frequency, add-ons and condition. Your margin-protected price updates the moment you tap — right there in the client’s kitchen.
Send a branded quote
Download a branded PDF or text a link the client opens in any browser — no login, no app. They see the price; you keep the margin. Win the job before you leave the driveway.
The questions every owner asks first.
Will my clients see my costs or my margin?
Never. Your cost, profit dollars and margin percent live in an owner-only panel that is never part of the branded PDF or the shareable link. The client sees the final price and a clean, itemized breakdown you choose to show — nothing about your markup. Shareable quote pages are also set to no-index, so they never show up in search results.
Do I have to learn software?
If you can answer “how many bedrooms,” you can use BidCalc. It is built mobile-first for the walkthrough: tap the beds and baths or square footage, the cleaning type, and the frequency, and your profitable price is on the same screen. First quote in under a minute — no setup wizard, no manual.
Will the number actually be right for my market?
Yes, because it uses your numbers, not national averages. You set your hourly rate, labor burden, overhead and target margin once, saved as a rate card. Every quote runs the math on your real costs — so the price fits your market, your crew and your area, not a generic table.
How is the price calculated?
BidCalc uses the real cleaning-business cost formula, not hours times rate. It takes your labor (crew size times hours times rate), multiplies by a 1.30 burden factor for payroll taxes, workers’ comp and benefits, adds overhead and supplies, then divides by (1 minus your target margin) so profit comes out first. It also applies deep-clean, first-visit, recurring-frequency and condition adjustments automatically.
Is this another subscription I will forget to cancel?
No. The calculator is free forever for basic quotes and there is no credit card to start. Pro is $29/month (or $290/year — two months free) and unlocks unlimited quotes, branded PDFs and shareable links. You cancel in one click from your account, any time.
Do I need a CRM like Jobber or ZenMaid?
No — and BidCalc is not one. It is a pricing calculator, not a scheduler or CRM. Full cleaning platforms run $39–$450/month and are built for dispatch, scheduling and invoicing. BidCalc does the one job they bury as a sub-feature: turning a walkthrough into a profitable, professional quote in under a minute. Run it on its own or alongside whatever you already use.
Built for solo and small maid-service owners by a real person, not an enterprise sales machine — one focused tool that does its job and gets out of your way.
Free to price jobs. $29 when you want your brand on them.
Free
$0/month
Everything you need to price a job right and stop undercharging.
- The full margin-true calculator
- 3 saved quotes every month
- Private cost, profit & margin breakdown
- Deep-clean, frequency & condition math
Pro
$29/month
Or $290/year — two months free. Cancel in one click.
- Everything in Free
- Unlimited saved quotes
- Branded PDF downloads with your logo
- Shareable client quote links
Cleaning CRMs like Jobber and ZenMaid run $39–$450/month. BidCalc is the focused pricing tool you reach for first — a fraction of the cost, live in seconds.
Walk in knowing your number.
Price your next job for profit in under a minute — free, no credit card, your costs stay private.