Last Updated on September 8, 2026
We went looking for published UK commercial cleaning rates so we could tell you where you sit. We could not find them, and after ten attempts across six publishers that absence is the finding.
What we actually found
One figure. Checkatrade, updated August 2026 and stated as verified by CIOB and RICS professional estimators, publishes that office cleaning costs £150 to £450 an hour in the UK. The same figure appears on a second Checkatrade page, which is repetition rather than corroboration.
That page does not state whether the figure is per operative or per site. Given the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026, it is plainly a site or team rate. We are reporting it as published and flagging the ambiguity rather than reinterpreting somebody else’s number.
Checkatrade also acknowledges that for large or multi-floor offices some companies charge by size, per square foot or metre, and publishes no rate for that, stating those require site inspection.
What we could not find, and where we looked
- A second published UK commercial cleaning rate. Ten attempts across Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark, PriceYourJob, HouseholdQuotes and Konnect You. All either returned errors, redirect-looped, or carry no commercial cleaning guide at all.
- Any published cost per square metre or square foot for office cleaning.
- Any published FM contract rate. The nearest UK dataset is BCIS OpX, which is a paid subscription whose price is not published.
- Any published cost per lead for cleaning or FM.
Konnect You, formerly Compare My Move, publishes detailed guides for conveyancing, surveying, removals, international removals and clearance, and has no cleaning category at all. The comparison infrastructure that exists for house surveys simply does not exist for this sector.
The boundary that matters
Checkatrade publishes domestic cleaning rates of around £25 an hour for an independent cleaner and around £25 to £30 for an agency, updated September 2026.
That is domestic, not commercial contract cleaning, and it must not be presented as the latter. It is worth knowing because a small business owner googling cleaning cost will find the domestic figure and bring it to a commercial tender conversation, which is a specific and predictable misunderstanding you can defuse on your own site.
Build your price from the floor up
Since there is no benchmark, the honest thing is to publish your structure. Every component below is knowable and most of it is public.
| Component | What sets it |
|---|---|
| Operative pay | National Living Wage £12.71 from April 2026, or Real Living Wage £13.45, £14.80 in London |
| Employer costs | National Insurance, pension, holiday pay accrual |
| Cover | Sickness, holiday and no-show cover, which is the product the client is really buying |
| Supervision | Ratio of supervisors to operatives and how often sites are audited |
| Consumables and equipment | Whether included or recharged, and at what margin |
| Accreditation and insurance | CHAS from £429, BICSc from £330, employers and public liability |
| Margin | The bit everyone hides and clients assume is larger than it is |
A tender that shows that structure is doing something no competitor is doing, because none of them can point at a published market rate either. You are not revealing a secret. You are being the only legible option.
The wage position as a marketing argument
Real Living Wage accreditation is held by over 16,000 UK employers. In a sector where staff turnover is the main cause of service failure, paying above the floor is both an operational choice and the clearest possible explanation of why your price is higher.
The honest version of that argument names a number: this is what we pay, this is our annual turnover rate, and this is what we do when someone is off. A client who has been through a bad contract recognises all three immediately.
One practical note: the Living Wage Foundation does not publish its accreditation fee. It is a sliding scale by organisation size and no figures were on any page we could open. Ask before you budget.
Where the contracts are advertised
| Route | Published position |
|---|---|
| Contracts Finder | Covers contracts worth over £12,000 including VAT. You can search and apply without an account |
| Find a Tender | High value contracts, usually above £139,688 including VAT. Replaced the EU journal from 1 January 2021 |
| Constructionline | Bronze at £75 joining plus £150 annual. Higher tiers not published |
| Cost per lead, any platform | Not published anywhere we could open |
Neither GOV.UK page uses the word free, so we are not claiming they are, but neither states a payment barrier either. For a firm with no marketing budget, those two portals are the most concrete route to contracts in this sector and they are chronically underused by small operators.
What to publish, concretely
- Your pricing model, component by component, without necessarily giving a rate.
- Your wage position, and your staff turnover figure if it is good.
- The cover policy for sickness, holiday and no-shows.
- Supervision ratio and audit frequency.
- What is included and what is recharged: consumables, equipment, deep cleans, periodic works.
- Accreditations with the free SSIP verification link.
- A dated review line.
Common questions
How much does commercial cleaning cost in the UK?
There is almost no published data. The only mainstream UK figure we could find after ten attempts is Checkatrade’s £150 to £450 an hour for office cleaning, and that page does not state whether it is a per-operative or per-site rate. Against a £12.71 National Living Wage it is plainly a site rate.
Is there a cost per square metre for office cleaning?
Not one that is published. Checkatrade acknowledges that some firms price by size and declines to publish a rate, stating that those require site inspection. We found nothing else.
Should a cleaning firm publish its hourly rate?
Publishing the model matters more than publishing the rate. In a market with no benchmark, a client cannot tell whether your number is good, but they can tell whether your structure is honest, and that is the comparison you can win.
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