What house cleaning actually costs in Toronto

Search this question and you get "$150 to $600". That range is technically true and practically useless, because it spans a studio condo and a five-bedroom house. The number you personally will pay is set by about six things, and once you know them you can predict it within a few dollars.

Everything below is what we charge, published in full. We are one company in one market, so treat it as a worked example rather than a survey. Where the wider Toronto market sits, we say so and say it is approximate.

The short answer, by home size

These are standard cleans at our published flat rates. They are generated from the same pricing model the calculator uses, so they cannot drift out of date.

Standard cleans, at our published flat rates. Generated from the live pricing model.

A deep clean on the same home runs about half again as much, and a move-out clean about two thirds again. Both are explained further down.

Hourly rate or flat rate

Toronto cleaners quote one of two ways, and the difference matters more than the headline number.

Hourly is common at roughly $35 to $65 per cleaner per hour across the market, with most established companies sitting in the middle of that. It sounds transparent. The catch is that you are buying time, not a finished home, so the risk of a slow day sits with you. A three-hour minimum at $59 is $177 whether or not the kitchen got finished.

Flat rate quotes the home, not the clock. We price on bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage and the type of clean, and that price holds whether the visit takes two hours or five. If a home turns out to be worse than described we say so before we start rather than quietly running the meter.

• Hourly suits odd one-off jobs where nobody can predict the scope.
• Flat rate suits recurring cleans, where you want the same number every time and no surprises.
• Be careful comparing the two. An hourly quote is not cheaper because the number is smaller, it is just unfinished.

The six things that actually move the price

In rough order of how much they matter:

1. Bathrooms. The single biggest driver per unit. A bathroom takes longer than a bedroom and is the room a clean gets judged on. Each full bathroom adds meaningfully more than each bedroom.
2. Bedrooms. Straightforward and roughly linear.
3. Square footage. Floors, and the walking between things. Two homes with identical bed and bath counts price differently if one is 900 square feet and the other is 2,400.
4. Type of clean. Standard, deep, move-out and post-renovation are progressively heavier and priced as multipliers of the same base.
5. Frequency. Recurring work is cheaper to deliver because the home never gets far from clean. That saving is passed on rather than pocketed.
6. Condition. Not a line item, but honest: a home that has not been properly cleaned in a year needs a deep clean first. Anyone who quotes a standard clean for that is either going to rush it or ask for more money on the day.

Why the first clean often costs more

This surprises people, so it is worth being direct about it. If a home has not had a thorough clean recently, the first visit is a deep clean and priced as one. After that, recurring visits are standard cleans at the standard rate.

It is not an upsell, it is arithmetic. Baseboards, shower glass buildup, the tops of door frames and the inside of the microwave take hours the first time and minutes thereafter. Companies that skip this step either take the money and do a surface clean, or come back asking for more once they are inside. We would rather say it upfront.

Recurring discounts, with the real maths

Discounts for recurring cleans are close to universal in Toronto, usually 10 to 20 percent. Ours:

Worked on a 3 bed semi-detached.

The number worth looking at is not the percentage, it is the annual total. Every two weeks at a 15 percent discount is 26 cleans a year. Monthly at 10 percent is 12. The per-visit price is lower on the biweekly plan and you get more than twice as many visits, so compare what you actually spend across a year rather than what you spend on Tuesday.

What is usually not included

Almost every Toronto cleaner treats the following as extras rather than part of a standard clean. They are genuinely additional work, not padding, but you should know they are separate before you compare two quotes.

Flat, per visit. Tick them at booking.

Things that are commonly excluded entirely, by us and by most others: exterior windows, anything requiring a ladder beyond a two-step, mould remediation, pest issues, biohazards, and moving heavy furniture. If a quote seems unusually low, check whether it includes the inside of the oven and the fridge, because those two are the most frequent silent exclusions.

Tax, and why quotes are harder to compare than they look

There is no tax added to our prices. What the calculator shows is what the invoice says and what you pay. Nothing appears at checkout that was not on screen.

That is worth knowing when you compare us to anyone else, because most Toronto quotes are shown before 13 percent HST is added. A quote that looks $20 cheaper than ours is often not, once tax lands on it. When you are weighing two numbers, the only fair comparison is the final amount you will actually be billed, so ask each company directly whether tax is included in the figure they gave you.

How to compare two quotes fairly

A checklist that takes two minutes and saves the usual arguments:

1. Is it hourly or flat? If hourly, ask for an honest estimate of hours for your home, then multiply.
2. Is tax included, or added at checkout?
3. Is the first clean priced differently from subsequent ones?
4. Are oven, fridge and interior windows in or out?
5. Are supplies and equipment included, or do you provide them?
6. Do they keep notes on your home, or does each visit start from scratch? This is the difference between a clean that gets better over time and one that starts from zero.
7. What happens if something is missed? Get the remedy in writing, not the sentiment.