What is a good hourly rate for a self-employed cleaner in the UK?

Most self-employed domestic cleaners charge £15 to £25 an hour outside London and £18 to £30 in London in 2026. After travel time, products and platform fees, the effective rate is usually £14 to £22 an hour, and it rises with regular clients who are close together.

How much can a full-time self-employed cleaner earn?

Realistically £450 to £660 a week gross with a mostly regular client base, working five days and billing five to six hours a day. From that come products, travel, insurance and tax. Higher figures usually mean a second cleaner, short-let turnover work, or both.

Is end-of-tenancy cleaning more profitable than regular cleaning?

Per job, yes, but not always per hour. A two-bed end-of-tenancy clean at around £200 typically takes two people around six hours, which works out similar to a good regular domestic rate. The advantage is volume from letting agents; the disadvantage is that the standard is re-inspected and long days are the norm.

Do I need insurance to be a self-employed cleaner?

It is not a legal requirement for most domestic work, but public liability insurance costs roughly £60 to £200 a year and many letting agents and commercial clients will not book you without it. It covers damage and injury you cause, not putting right your own work.

How much do cleaners earn in the UK? Real rates for domestic, end of tenancy and Airbnb

Cleaning is one of the easiest trades to start and one of the easiest to stay poor in. The gap between a cleaner earning £280 a week and one earning £800 is almost never speed or skill. It is what type of work they take and how many of their clients are repeat.

The four kinds of cleaning work, and what each pays

Work	What the customer pays	What you realistically clear per hour	The catch
Regular domestic	£15, £25 an hour, more in London	£14, £22 after travel and products	Rate is capped, but the work is predictable
One-off deep clean	£120, £250 for a flat	£16, £24	Physically hard, no repeat unless you ask
End of tenancy	£150, £260 for a two-bed	£18, £25	Long days, high standard, agents re-check
Airbnb and short-let turnover	£35, £55 studio, £50, £80 two-bed, £70, £110 three-bed	£20, £30 if the properties are close together	Same-day windows, laundry, key logistics
Commercial and office	Often close to the National Living Wage per hour on contract	Lower per hour, but volume and regularity	Unsociable hours, slow payment terms

Employed agency cleaning sits below all of these. An agency charges the client £20 an hour and pays the cleaner substantially less, because it carries the marketing, the scheduling and the risk. That is the entire reason to go self-employed: you capture the margin, and you also carry the empty diary.

Where the money actually goes

Take a straightforward £60 domestic clean, three hours in a house twenty minutes away.

Time on site: 3 hours
Travel: 40 minutes return
Products and cloths used: about £3
Fuel or fares: about £5

That is 3 hours 40 minutes and £8 of costs, so £52 across 3.7 hours, or roughly £14 an hour before platform fees. Not a disaster, not a business.

Now take the same £60 clean where the client books you every fortnight for two years, and the house is one of three you do on the same street on the same morning.

Travel drops to a few minutes between jobs
Quoting time drops to zero, permanently
On a platform that charges no commission on your own repeat clients, the fee drops to zero too

The same clean is now worth close to £18 to £19 an hour, and it repeats fifty times. That is the whole business in one comparison.

Why repeat clients are everything

Three reasons, in order of size.

Empty slots cost you the full rate. A cleaner with a diary that is 60% full is earning 60% of their potential, no matter how fast they clean. Regular bookings fill the diary in advance.

Acquiring a client costs time you do not bill. Every quote, every message, every visit that does not convert is unpaid. A client who rebooks costs nothing to acquire again.

Density compounds. Four clients in one neighbourhood on one morning is a genuinely different job from four clients across a city. It is the difference between five hours of work and eight.

The practical version: at the end of every single job, before you leave, ask whether they would like the same slot next fortnight, and put it in a diary they can see. That one sentence is worth more than any amount of quoting.

What a realistic week looks like

Part-time, around another job. Two or three cleans a week at £50 to £70, so roughly £120 to £200 a week gross, less fees and costs. This is achievable within a fortnight of starting in a city, once you have a few reviews.

Full-time, mostly regulars. Five to six hours of billed cleaning a day, five days a week, at £18 to £22 an hour effective. That is £450 to £660 a week gross. Out of it come products, travel, insurance and tax. Note the effective hours: almost nobody bills eight hours of cleaning in an eight-hour day, because travel and setup are real.

End-of-tenancy focused. Higher per job, fewer jobs, and you will usually need a second pair of hands. A two-bed at £200 taking two people six hours is about £16 an hour each before costs. The money in this work comes from doing two a day and from agent relationships that supply steady volume, not from the headline price.

Airbnb turnover. The strongest per-hour rate in cleaning if, and only if, you can cluster properties. Three two-bed turnovers in the same building at £60 each is £180 for perhaps five hours with almost no travel. The same three across a city is a full day.

What actually raises your rate

In rough order of effect:

Being trusted with keys or a key safe. A cleaner who works while the client is out is worth more than one who needs someone home, because it makes the booking effortless.
A DBS check on your profile. Cheap, quick, and it removes the single largest hesitation a customer has about letting a stranger into an empty house. See DBS checks for the self-employed.
Public liability insurance. £60 to £200 a year, and it unlocks lettings agents and commercial clients who will not use you without it.
Bringing your own equipment and products. It justifies a higher rate outright, and it makes your standard consistent.
Specialising upward. Ovens, carpets, after-builders cleaning and short-let turnover all pay better than general domestic, and all take some kit and some learning.
Behaving like a business. A proper invoice, a written quote, arriving in the window you promised. On this platform you can generate a receipt or invoice for every job from your invoices, which matters enormously to landlords and agents.
Reviews. Cleaning is the category where reviews do the most work, because the customer is trusting you with their home.

The honest downsides

It is physically hard, and hard in a cumulative way, knees, shoulders, back. Cancellations happen at short notice and are unpaid unless you have a policy and enforce it. Products and equipment wear out faster than you expect. Bank holidays and August are quiet. And there is a real ceiling on hourly rate for general domestic work, which is why the cleaners who grow either specialise or take on a second person.

Tax and admin

Over the £1,000 trading allowance you must register for Self Assessment. Mileage at 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles is usually a cleaner's single biggest deduction, along with products, equipment and insurance. Keep a mileage log as you go. Details in side-hustle tax in the UK.