Rates arrive in two families: an hourly figure for the labour, and a square foot figure for the outcome. Both are legitimate, they answer different questions, and a buyer holding one of each cannot compare them without knowing the cleaner-hours behind the building. This page carries both from the companies that publish them and shows the conversion.
The hourly family
Hourly rates in this record run from the low twenties to the mid seventies per cleaner, depending on the market and the scope. The number on its own is not a price: two contractors at the same rate can bill very differently by staffing the building differently.
The per square foot family
A square foot rate has already absorbed the productivity assumption. It transfers the risk of a slow night to the contractor, which is usually what a facility manager wants, and it makes buildings comparable to each other.
Converting between them
Cleaner-hours per visit times the hourly rate, divided by cleanable square footage, gives a per square foot per visit figure. Doing that once for each bid turns an incomparable pile into a ranked list.
What a loaded cost tells you about a rate
One page in this record publishes a loaded labour rate, which is what an hour costs the contractor once payroll burden is on it. Any customer rate has to sit above it, and a bid close to it has not priced supervision.
What a rate does not tell you about the crew
Two contractors quoting the same hourly rate can be paying their cleaners very differently, and the difference shows up as turnover rather than as price. A building cleaned by a stable crew that knows it is cleaned better at the same cost, which is why the questions about supervision and staffing in the service pages on this site matter more than another decimal place on the rate.
Questions people ask about commercial cleaning rates
What is a typical hourly rate?
The published figures here span roughly twenty to seventy-five dollars per cleaner per hour, and the spread is mostly market and scope.
Is hourly or square foot cheaper?
Neither systematically. Hourly is easier to audit; square foot is easier to budget and shifts productivity risk away from you.
How many cleaner-hours does a building need?
That is the question behind every square foot rate, and it comes from production rates: how much area a cleaner covers per hour at a given standard.
Do rates include supplies?
Sometimes. It is one of the two lines most often outside a headline rate, the other being periodic floor and carpet work.