How Much Does House Cleaning Cost in the UK? 2026 Price Guide

Ring three cleaning companies and you will get three prices that cannot be compared, because they are quoting three different products. One is selling hours. One is selling a finished property against a checklist. One is selling a machine and an operator for an afternoon. Until you know which you need, comparing the numbers is guesswork.

Below are the 2026 UK figures for each, plus a diagnostic so you buy the right job in the first place. Prices exclude VAT unless stated: most sole-trader cleaners sit under the £90,000 registration threshold, and most agencies do not.

Stop at the first line that matches your house — that is the job you are pricing. Most people who feel they are overpaying bought hours when they needed a one-off reset, or a general cleaner when they needed a machine.

• •The house is broadly in order but you are losing an hour a day to it — you need regular domestic cleaning, priced by the hour, weekly or fortnightly.
• •Surfaces look fine but the grout is grey, the oven glass is opaque and the skirtings are furry — you need a one-off deep clean, not more weekly hours. Regular cleaning maintains a standard; it does not create one.
• •You are moving out with a deposit at stake — an end of tenancy clean is a different product: priced per property, worked to an inventory checklist, backed by a 48–72 hour re-clean guarantee.
• •One item is the problem — carpet, sofa, mattress, a limescaled shower screen — you need a specialist. A cloth cannot pull soil out of a pile; that is carpet cleaning with hot-water extraction.
• •A smell survives every clean — that is a source problem (damp, a spill under the underlay, a blocked waste). More hours will not touch it.
• •The property is a void, post-builders or badly neglected — a surveyed job. Anyone quoting it down the phone will re-price on the day.

Two models dominate. Self-employed cleaners charge by the hour and keep the fee. Agencies charge more because the rate covers employer's liability, £5 million public liability, DBS checks, sickness cover and often VAT. Deep cleans and end of tenancy are quoted per property instead: you are buying an outcome, not a stopwatch.

• •Self-employed regular cleaner: £15–£22 per hour outside London, £20–£28 inside the M25.
• •Agency regular cleaner: £20–£30 per hour outside London, £26–£36 in London, plus 20% VAT where the agency is registered.
• •One-off deep clean: £30–£45 per hour, or £220–£320 fixed for a 2-bed, £280–£450 for a 3-bed.
• •End of tenancy: £150–£220 (1-bed), £200–£300 (2-bed), £280–£400 (3-bed), £380–£560 (4-bed).
• •Minimum booking: usually 2 hours, or 3 on a first visit.

Bolt-ons are where quotes diverge most. An end of tenancy price that excludes carpets and the oven is not cheaper than one that includes them — it is a smaller job.

Domestic cleaning is overwhelmingly labour. Consumables — microfibre, degreaser, limescale remover, bin liners, machine pads — run £1.50–£3.00 per working hour, so materials are 8–14% of an hourly rate. Machine work shifts that: on a carpet clean, chemicals, machine depreciation and van fuel take nearer 25–30%, which is why carpet cleaners carry a minimum charge rather than a per-room rate alone.

• •Oven deep clean (dip-tank method): £60–£95 single, £85–£130 double, £120–£190 range cooker.
• •Carpet cleaning: £30–£45 per room, £70–£90 minimum call-out. Stairs and landing count as one room.
• •Upholstery: £45–£70 for a two-seater, £70–£110 for a three-seater plus armchair.
• •Interior windows and sills are usually included. Exterior windows: £15–£35 a visit for a terrace or semi.
• •Fridge or freezer interior: £20–£35. A full defrost adds an hour and is rarely included by default.
• •Hard-water areas: allow an extra 45–90 minutes per limescaled bathroom.

Two identical-looking three-bed semis can differ by 40% on the same job. These are the variables that do it, in rough order of weight.

• •Region. The South East and London run 25–45% above the North East, Wales and much of the Midlands, tracking local wages rather than difficulty.
• •Condition, not size. Ten years of grease behind a hob adds hours; an extra bedroom adds about 20 minutes.
• •Frequency. Weekly work is quoted 10–15% under one-off rates because the property never falls far. Monthly rarely works — four weeks of build-up needs deep-clean time.
• •Pets. A shedding animal adds an hour to a three-bed, and hair in carpet needs a pile rake before extraction.
• •Access. A third-floor flat with no lift, or a controlled parking zone with no permit, adds £5–£15 a visit or gets declined.
• •Whether you supply materials and a working vacuum — worth £1–£2 an hour with some self-employed cleaners.

These are annual totals, not headline rates — the only honest way to judge the spend. Set it alongside your annual home maintenance budget rather than treating it as a luxury line of its own.

• •Two-bed terrace, Leeds, fortnightly. Self-employed cleaner, 3 hours at £17 = £51 a visit, 26 visits = £1,326. Add a spring deep clean at £240 and one oven clean at £75. Annual total: £1,641.
• •Four-bed detached, Surrey, weekly. Agency at £27 an hour plus VAT, 4 hours = £129.60 a visit, 50 visits = £6,480. Add two oven cleans at £110 and three rooms of carpet at £135. Annual total: £6,835.
• •End of tenancy, three-bed semi, Birmingham. £310 fixed including interior windows, plus £70 for two bedrooms of carpet and £85 for the double oven the inventory lists separately. Total £465 against a £1,400 deposit, and about 11 hours you would otherwise work yourself.

Convert any fixed price back into labour hours and ask whether the answer is physically possible. A three-bed end of tenancy done properly is 8–12 person-hours. A £180 quote implies two cleaners for four hours at under £23 an hour between them — corners cut, or a re-clean you end up chasing. A £550 quote needs a reason attached, such as a heavy grease load or mould clauses in the inventory.

Ask five questions and get the answers in writing: how many cleaners for how many hours; is VAT included; are materials and machines included; what is excluded; how long the re-clean guarantee runs. For regular work, a written cleaning schedule agreed with your cleaner is the cheapest way to stop hours drifting.

These figures come from quotes and invoices across ten UK regions in the first half of 2026, weighted towards independent cleaners and small local firms rather than national booking platforms, whose listed rates sit at the top of every band. In each range, the low end reflects the North East, Northern Ireland and rural Wales; the high end London and the South East.

Two caveats. Cleaning rates track the National Living Wage and outran general inflation through 2024–26, so any figure from an older article will be low — re-check annually. And the cheapest quote is usually cheap for a structural reason: no insurance, no employment status, no cover when your cleaner is ill. You may be happy to carry that risk, but know that you are.