Most UK businesses buying commercial cleaning in 2026 pay £15 to £30 an hour, with £18 to £25 the band most quotes land in, and a monthly contract typically costing anywhere from £300 to £5,000+ depending on size, frequency and specification (The Clean Space). Behind those wide ranges sit a handful of variables you can actually control. This guide sets out the going rates per hour, per square foot and per month, what moves them, and how to sanity-check a quote from either side of the table.
One tool worth opening alongside this page: our free commercial cleaning cost and contract calculator turns a schedule, a pay rate and your overheads into a monthly cost and a price at a chosen margin, in about four minutes.
Hourly rates in 2026
Hourly pricing is the planning benchmark, though most providers confirm a fixed monthly fee after a site survey rather than billing by the hour (The Clean Space).
| Service | Typical hourly rate |
|---|---|
| Standard office cleaning (UK-wide) | £15 to £30, core band £18 to £25 |
| London office cleaning | £20.50 to £26.80 (April 2026 average) |
| Regional cities (e.g. Manchester, Leeds) | roughly £11 to £20 |
| Deep cleaning | £30 to £45 |
| Medical and specialist cleaning | £30 to £100 |
| Commercial kitchen deep cleans | £15 to £40 plus VAT (full teams £100 to £200 per hour) |
| Out-of-hours premium | add roughly £5 to £10 per hour |
Sources put the marketplace average for an office cleaner at about £18 an hour (Bark), London roughly 10 to 20% above regional cities (Serna FM, Salem Cleaning Pro), and evening, early-morning and weekend slots dearer because they are harder to staff (MyBuilder, Cleaner Connect).
A floor worth knowing before you judge any of those numbers: the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026 (GOV.UK). Once employer National Insurance, pension, holiday cover, insurance, supervision and materials are added, a legitimate charge-out rate below about £15 to £16 an hour has almost no room left. Quotes below that level are usually paying for themselves somewhere you cannot see.
Cost per square foot and per square metre
For premises above a few thousand square feet, per-area pricing is the better comparison. One convention matters: UK firms quote per clean or per month, not per year, so treat any annual per-square-foot figure you see quoted online with suspicion.
| Premises type | Per sq ft, per clean | Per sq m, per clean |
|---|---|---|
| Warehouse and industrial | £0.05 to £0.15 | £0.50 to £1.50 |
| Retail | £0.10 to £0.20 | £1 to £2 |
| Office | £0.10 to £0.30 | £1 to £3 |
| Medical and healthcare | £0.20 to £0.40 | £2 to £4 |
The ladder makes intuitive sense: warehouses are large, open and mostly floor; offices add desks, kitchens and toilets; medical premises carry hygiene standards that roughly double the office rate (Salem Cleaning Pro). Within the office band, basic daily tasks (bins, dusting, vacuuming) sit at the £0.10 to £0.15 end, fuller specifications higher (Sentrex).
A worked example from the same source: a 2,000 sq ft office cleaned five times a week at a typical £0.18 per square foot comes to about £360 a week, which lands around £1,500 to £1,600 a month.
What a month actually costs
Pulling the hourly and per-area figures into monthly money, published benchmarks look like this:
| Setup | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Small office, light schedule | from £80 to £150 a month |
| Typical UK contract range | £300 to £5,000+ a month |
| London office, 1,000 to 2,000 sq ft, daily clean | £75 to £150 per visit |
| Manchester office, five visits a week | £1,200 to £2,400 a month |
| Leeds office, five visits a week | £1,000 to £2,200 a month |
| Larger warehouse or retail site | £1,000 to £3,000 a month |
All are ranges from published 2025-26 guides (The Clean Space, Serna FM, Salem Cleaning Pro); your quote will move with everything in the next section. To translate a weekly schedule into a monthly cost for your own numbers, the cleaning contract calculator does the arithmetic, including employer on-costs, materials and travel.
What moves the price
- Frequency. Daily cleaning costs less per visit than weekly, and far less than ad hoc: travel, set-up and admin get spread across more visits.
- Visit length. Budget at least two hours per visit, three or more for compliance-heavy sites. Fixed tasks take the same time however small the premises: 10 to 15 minutes per toilet cubicle, 20 to 40 for a kitchen, so a 45-minute visit to a 3,000 sq ft office leaves barely 25 minutes of actual cleaning (Urban Cleaning).
- Specification depth. Bins-and-vacuum is one price; add kitchens, washroom consumables, internal glass and touchpoint sanitising and the hours rise.
- Who supplies what. Equipment and consumables sit in the price somewhere: if the contractor provides them, they are built into the rate, so agree upfront who supplies what and make sure quotes are compared on the same basis.
- Hours of access. Out-of-hours and weekend work carries a premium, and keyholding or alarm responsibility adds admin and trust requirements, which is why DBS-checked staff are standard practice for unsupervised office access.
- Staff density and footfall. A high-density open-plan office needs more cleaning than an executive suite of the same floor area; a busy shop more than a quiet showroom.
- Location. London and the South East run roughly 10 to 20% above the national average, pushed by the London Living Wage.
Contract or ad hoc?
A recurring contract wins on price per visit and on accountability: a fixed monthly fee, a set specification and someone to phone when standards slip. It is the right shape for any premises that customers or staff use daily. Ad hoc or one-off cleaning earns its premium for end-of-tenancy cleans, post-build sparkle cleans, annual kitchen deep cleans and genuine emergencies. If you find yourself booking ad hoc cleans monthly, you are paying the premium without the benefit: get contract quotes.
Demand for recurring contracts is climbing, too: commercial cleaning enquiries rose 11.3% month-on-month in our May UK SME Service Demand Index, driven by recurring-contract enquiries rather than one-off cleans.
If you run a cleaning business: pricing the job
Everything above describes the market you are quoting into, and the same figures cut the other way. Your floor is your true delivered cost: wages at or above £12.71 an hour, plus the roughly 18 to 25% of employer on-costs (National Insurance, pension, holiday cover), plus materials, travel and your time. Your ceiling is the local going rate in the tables above. The margin lives between the two, and the most common mistake is quoting a market-looking hourly rate that quietly pays you less than employing yourself.
Run any contract through our commercial cleaning cost and contract calculator before you send the quote: it works back from a target net margin rather than a naive markup, shows your effective charge-out per hour to sense-check against this page, and flags when the pay rate underneath would dip below the legal minimum. And when the numbers say the contract only works at £13 an hour, walk away; price the job, not the day rate explains why the work you decline is part of the margin you keep.
