How Much Does House Cleaning Cost in Massachusetts?

Most cleaning companies will not give you a number until someone has walked through your house. That is not caution, it is a sales tactic. A cleaner who has been doing this a while can price a two bedroom, two bathroom home within about ten percent from four questions. So here is the whole card, and then the honest explanation of what moves it.

What we charge on the North Shore and the seacoast

Every number below is per visit, and covers most homes of that size. That is what we price against, because it is the most common house we walk into. A house that is unusually large, or that needs more work than usual, is quoted on its own.

• Recurring clean, $199. Weekly, every other week, or monthly.
• Deep clean, $389. One long visit that resets the whole house.
• Move in or move out clean, $519. An empty house, every surface.
• Short term rental turnover, $169. Based on a two bedroom rental.

Bigger homes cost more. Smaller homes cost less. Anything unusual gets its own number. You can get your own number from the price tool in about thirty seconds, and you can see the full card on the pricing page.

Why hourly pricing usually costs you more

A lot of local cleaners quote by the hour, somewhere between $45 and $75 per cleaner per hour in this part of Massachusetts. Two cleaners for three hours at $55 is $330, and that is for a visit nobody promised would finish.

The problem with hourly is that it pays for time rather than for a finished house. If the crew is slow, you pay more. If they are fast, they get punished for it. A flat price puts that risk on us, which is the correct place for it, and it means the number you hear on the phone is the number on the invoice.

The four things that actually change your price

1. Bathrooms, more than square footage

A bathroom takes roughly three times as long per square foot as a bedroom. A 2,400 square foot house with four bathrooms is a longer visit than a 3,000 square foot house with two. When a quote asks for bedrooms and bathrooms rather than total square feet, this is why.

2. How long since the last clean

This is the single biggest variable, and it is why deep cleans exist. A house on a biweekly schedule stays at a steady state. A house that has not had a full clean in a year has soap scum that needs dwell time, oven interiors, baseboards, and window tracks. That is a different job, and pretending otherwise is how a cleaner ends up rushing your house to make the number work.

3. Pets, and how many

Two shedding dogs can add forty minutes to a visit, mostly in floors and upholstery. It is not a surcharge so much as a real difference in the work.

4. Frequency

Weekly visits price below the biweekly rate, because less accumulates between them. Monthly prices slightly above it, because a month of dust genuinely takes longer to get out. Biweekly is the rhythm most homes settle on, and it is the one we would pick if you asked.

What should be included and often is not

Ask any cleaner whether these are in the price or extra. On our visits they are in the price.

• All supplies, cloths, and vacuums. Nothing of yours gets used up.
• Window sills.
• Trash out, and a fresh liner in every bin.
• The vacuum emptied before we leave, not left full in your closet.

Things that are genuinely extra almost everywhere, including here: inside the oven and inside the refrigerator on a recurring visit, exterior windows, and anything requiring a ladder above standard height.

What a year actually costs

People underestimate this because they think about the visit rather than the year. Biweekly at $199 is 26 visits, about $5,174 a year. Monthly at a slightly higher per visit rate is roughly a third of that. Knowing the annual number before you start is more useful than knowing the visit number, and it is the reason we publish rates instead of quoting them one house at a time.

Prices near you

The rate card is the same across our whole service area. If you want the page for your town, we have one for each of them, including Newburyport, Beverly, Salem, Gloucester, and Portsmouth. The full list is on the service area page.