Commercial cleaning is priced on time, area and risk. Everything else on a quote is a variation on those three. Once you can see which of the three is driving a number, comparing suppliers stops being a coin toss.
Our own commercial work is specialist carpet, upholstery and hard floor cleaning, priced by floor area and surface type rather than by room count. That is the model we explain here, and most of the logic carries across the wider commercial cleaning market too.
The short version
- Floor area and surface type set the base price, not the number of rooms
- Access and working window can change a price more than the cleaning itself
- Soiling level decides how much pre treatment time is needed
- Insurance, RAMS and vetted staff cost money and are visible in a fair price
- A planned schedule is usually cheaper per visit than repeated ad hoc call outs
- A written fixed price beats an hourly rate you cannot audit
The six things that actually move the price
Ask any two contractors why their numbers differ and the answer will almost always sit inside this list. None of it is mysterious, and all of it is worth asking about before you compare figures.
- Floor area in square metres, measured rather than estimated
- Surface type, since rubber, safety vinyl, stone, carpet tiles and sheet carpet all need different methods and different machines
- Soiling level, because heavy traffic lanes and set in contamination need pre treatment dwell time
- Access, including parking, lift availability, water supply, waste disposal and how far the hose has to run
- Working window, since overnight and weekend visits carry a different rate to daytime work
- Frequency, because a planned interval keeps a site at a maintainable level, while a neglected site needs a heavier and more expensive first visit
Why the first visit often costs more
If a floor has never had a proper deep clean, the first visit is a restoration job rather than a maintenance one. There is more soil to remove, more passes required, and often a strip out of old sealer or built up residue before anything else can happen.
A reasonable contractor will tell you this honestly and quote the reset visit separately from the ongoing cycle. A less reasonable one prices the whole contract on the reset figure and enjoys the margin for the next three years.
Hourly rate against fixed price
An hourly rate looks transparent and usually is not. You cannot verify how long a job should take, so you are effectively buying an unaudited number of hours.
A fixed price per visit puts the efficiency risk on the contractor, which is where it belongs. If they are slow, that is their problem. It also makes the cost predictable enough to budget for a year in advance.
What a genuinely cheap quote is usually missing
Insurance cover, proper vetting where a site needs it, RAMS documentation, correct chemicals and enough time on site all cost money. When a price is dramatically lower than everyone else, one of those is being left out.
The most common omission is time. Skipping pre treatment and running a single fast pass leaves a floor looking acceptable while wet and grey again within a fortnight, at which point the cheap quote has cost you two visits instead of one.
How to compare two commercial quotes fairly
Put both on the same basis before you look at the totals. Ask each supplier for the measured area they have priced, the method per surface, whether pre treatment is included, the expected drying time, the working window and what happens if a scheduled visit is missed.
If one supplier cannot answer those in writing, the price difference has explained itself.