Recurring commercial cleaning runs about $0.07 to $0.20 per square foot per month, and most offices land between $0.10 and $0.18, according to pricing guidance published by ISSA, the worldwide cleaning industry association. A 6,000 square foot office cleaned five nights a week usually falls somewhere between $600 and $1,100 a month. That range is wide because square footage is only where the pricing starts.
If you are collecting bids right now and they came back hundreds of dollars apart, the gap is almost never about one company being greedy and another being generous. It is about what each one counted.
What actually sets the price
Five things move a commercial cleaning number more than square footage does: how much of the space is genuinely cleanable, how many restroom fixtures there are, how many nights a week the crew comes, what the floors are made of, and how many people move through the building on a normal day.
- Cleanable square feet, not gross square feet. You are not paying anyone to clean the elevator shaft or the mechanical room. A 10,000 square foot suite might have 7,200 feet that a crew actually touches, and a bid written off the lease number will be high.
- Restroom fixture count. Restrooms are the slowest room in any building per square foot, and in community associations they are the single most complained-about zone. Two restrooms with four fixtures each is a different job from six restrooms with twelve, even in the same building.
- How many nights a week. Five nights is not five sevenths of seven nights. Trash and restrooms do not scale down neatly, because a building that sits two days needs more on the day the crew returns.
- Floor type. Carpet vacuums quickly. Tile and grout, VCT that has to be stripped and refinished, and polished concrete each carry their own program and their own line on the quote.
- Who is in the building. A 30-person professional office and a clubhouse running banquets through season generate different volumes of everything, on the same floor plan.
Labor is the floor under all of it. Commercial cleaning labor generally costs $30 to $75 an hour to put on site once wages, payroll taxes, insurance, supervision and supplies are counted. Any monthly number has to cover the hours the scope requires, or the hours get cut later.
Why two bids on the same building can differ by 40 percent
Two bids on one building differ because the two companies scoped different work, not because one found a cheaper way to do the same work. One quote may include restroom restocking, floor care and glass; the other may have quoted trash, vacuuming and restrooms and left the rest to be added later as extras.
This is the most common way buyers get burned, and they usually do not find out until month four. Here is how one customer of a national franchise described it in a public complaint:
The checklist they give you to sell the service lures you in and the crews that come out do not do half of what we are supposedly paying for.
Coverall customer complaint
So compare the scope documents side by side before you compare the numbers. If one bid does not have a written scope, you do not have two bids. You have one bid and a price.
What is different about pricing in Lee and Collier counties
Collier County carries a higher cost index than Lee County, so the same scope in Naples or Marco Island generally prices above the identical scope in Fort Myers or Cape Coral. Two other Southwest Florida factors move the number, and neither shows up in a national pricing guide.
Season
From November through April a club, an amenity center or a seasonal retail plaza runs materially more traffic than it does in August. Restrooms get used more, floors take more, and event turnaround stacks up. A contract priced off summer volume will be underpriced for half the year, which is how a schedule quietly starts slipping in January.
A bid that does not mention season was not written for this market.
Access
Gated communities, clubs and secured office buildings add real time that has nothing to do with cleaning: badging, key control, escort requirements, service entrances, elevator scheduling. It is not much per night. Across a year it is a line item.
What a real bid looks like
A real commercial cleaning bid follows a walkthrough. Somebody comes out, walks every room you want cleaned, counts fixtures, looks at your floors, asks who is in the building and when, and then writes it up. A number given over the phone before anyone has seen the space is a guess that gets revised later.
What you should have in your hand before you sign:
- A written scope of work, room by room or zone by zone, with frequencies attached to each task.
- A flat monthly price, not a per-job estimate that moves.
- What is specifically excluded, and what those items cost if you want them.
- How floor care is handled, and whether stripping and refinishing is inside the monthly number or quoted separately.
- Who your named contact is, and what happens when you call at seven on a Monday morning.
- Proof of insurance, and confirmation the crew is background checked.
- The cancellation terms, in plain language.
Sabal quotes after walking your building, across the full range of services on one contract. We do not publish a per-square-foot rate on this page, because a number attached to a building nobody has seen is not a bid.
What a low bid usually means
A bid that comes in well under the others is usually not a discount. It is a smaller scope, fewer hours, or a company that has priced the work below what it costs to staff and intends to make the difference up on turnover.
Turnover is the mechanism worth understanding, because it explains the pattern most buyers recognize. Janitorial separation rates regularly exceed 50 percent according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and contract cleaning companies run around 200 percent industry-wide. When the crew changes, nobody in the building knows where the supply closet is, which restroom runs out of paper first, or that the west stairwell gets mopped on Thursdays.
That is why service on a low bid tends to hold for a few months and then decline. The work was priced for a crew that would not stay.
Questions to ask before you sign anything
- What did you count as cleanable square footage, and how did you get to that number?
- How many restroom fixtures are in this bid?
- Which tasks are nightly, which are weekly, and which are monthly or quarterly?
- Is floor care included in the monthly price or billed separately?
- Who checks the work, how often, and can I see what they filed?
- What happens in season, and does the price change?
- Who answers when there is a problem at seven in the morning?
The fifth question is the one most companies cannot answer, and it is the one that predicts whether you will still be happy in month eight. We wrote the longer version of that list in how to choose a commercial cleaning company, and you can see the inspection record it refers to on The Sabal Standard.
Common questions
How much does commercial cleaning cost per square foot?
Recurring commercial cleaning generally runs $0.07 to $0.20 per square foot per month, with most offices between $0.10 and $0.18 (ISSA). The rate depends on cleanable square footage, restroom fixture count, how many nights a week the crew comes, and floor type.
How much does it cost to clean a 5,000 square foot office?
A 5,000 square foot office cleaned five nights a week typically falls between $500 and $900 a month in Southwest Florida, depending on restroom count and floor type. A building with six restrooms and VCT flooring prices well above one with two restrooms and carpet.
Is commercial cleaning priced per hour or per square foot?
Most recurring commercial cleaning is quoted as a flat monthly price after a walkthrough. Square footage and labor hours are both used to build that number internally, but you should receive one monthly figure attached to a written scope of work.
Why is one cleaning bid so much cheaper than another?
Almost always because the scope is smaller. One bid may include restroom restocking, floor care and glass while the other quoted trash, vacuuming and restrooms only. Compare the written scope documents before comparing the prices.
Does commercial cleaning cost more in Naples than Fort Myers?
Generally yes. Collier County carries a higher cost index than Lee County, so the same scope prices higher in Naples or Marco Island than in Fort Myers or Cape Coral. Seasonal traffic from November through April also affects buildings differently across the region.
