Free tool
Office Cleaning Cost Calculator (UK, 2026)
Enter your floor area, how often you need cleaning and where you are. You'll get an honest monthly range built from real output rates and regional hourly pay — not a lead-capture placeholder.
Last reviewed August 2026
A typical UK desk-based office allows 8–10 m² per person, so 20 staff is roughly 180 m².
How this calculator works
Commercial cleaning is a labour business, so every honest quote is built the same way: work out how many cleaner-hours the building needs, multiply by the hourly rate you can actually recruit at in that region, then add consumables and a management margin.
The time element uses industry output rates. A cleaner covers around 300 m² of general office space an hour — desks, bins, vacuuming, kitchen, circulation. That drops to roughly 180 m² in clinical space where colour-coded equipment and infection control slow everything down, and rises to about 500 m² on open warehouse floor. Washrooms are counted separately at roughly twelve minutes each per visit, because they are the single biggest driver of complaints and the one area you should never squeeze.
The rate element uses regional pay. Since the National Living Wage moved above £12, a contractor paying legally in London cannot deliver below about £15.50 an hour once employer NI, holiday pay, cover, insurance and equipment are loaded in. Anyone quoting materially under that is either under-resourcing the hours or not paying properly — both end the same way.
What the calculator deliberately doesn't guess
- TUPE. If you already have a contractor, their staff transfer with their existing pay and service. That can raise or lower the real cost significantly.
- Access hours. Cleaning before 6am or after 9pm carries a premium; daytime cleaning is usually cheaper and greener.
- Condition. A building that has been under-cleaned for two years needs a deep clean before any routine schedule holds.
- Specification. "Cleaned daily" means nothing on its own. Our free specification template sets out what daily should actually cover.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is an online office cleaning cost calculator?+
It gets you inside roughly 15% of a real quote for a standard office. What it cannot see is your building's access hours, the state of the floors, how many washrooms are in constant use, and whether an incumbent contractor's staff transfer to us under TUPE. Those are the four things that move a price once we survey the site.
Is commercial cleaning priced per hour or per square metre?+
Contracts are almost always quoted as a fixed monthly fee, but that fee is built from hours. We work out how long the building takes using output rates (around 300 m² per cleaner hour for general office space), multiply by the hourly rate for your region, then add consumables and management. Per-square-metre figures are useful for comparing buildings, not for buying.
Why is my quote higher than the calculator says?+
The usual causes are washroom density, out-of-hours access, clinical or food-safe areas, and periodic work (carpets, hard floors, windows) that has been bundled into the monthly fee rather than charged separately. Ask any supplier to split the periodic work out so you are comparing like for like.
What is a realistic minimum spend?+
Very few contractors will attend site for less than an hour, so the practical floor for a once-a-week clean is roughly £70–£100 a month, whatever the floor area. Below about 100 m² it is usually cheaper to add your unit to a nearby round than to buy a standalone visit.
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Want the real number for your building?
We survey the site, count the hours honestly and give you a fixed monthly price. No auto-renew, no 12-month lock-in.