How Much Do Cleaners Charge in the UK? (2026)

If you’ve not got the time, energy or motivation properly clean your own home, you may have considered bringing in a professional cleaner.

Even if you can handle your own cleaning, it can sometimes be good to call in a professional. Professional cleaners will know how to properly clean areas that you may either miss, or simply not know how to clean properly.

Obviously hiring a cleaner costs money though. To get an idea for the average prices around the UK, we looked at 20 locations and collected the advertised prices from five cleaning companies per location.

£18 per hour was the median price offered for regular home cleaning across the UK. This ranged from £16 per hour in Southampton to £20 per hour in London and Norwich, though our sample size was fairly small, so there’s no guarantee Southampton will always be cheaper than London or Norwich.

The figures we collected were from agencies and companies rather than independent self-employed cleaners. Independent cleaners can be cheaper than companies, but this isn’t always the case.

 

 

 

How much should you spend on a home cleaner in the UK?

Based on our data, £18-£20 is a reasonable amount to expect to spend on a home cleaner in the UK at the time of writing. Of course, it can still be worth paying more for a company you trust to do a good job.

 

Scheduling weekly cleaning can work out cheaper per hour

Among the companies we looked at that published weekly and fortnightly prices, fortnightly cleaning worked out about 5.5% less per hour compared to weekly cleaning. Whether or not this makes weekly cleaning a better deal depends on your needs – if you only need your home cleaning once a fortnight it might be better to pay a slightly higher per-hour rate.

 

 

Things that affect the cost of cleaning

Several things can affect how much it costs to hire a cleaner, including the following:

• How often the cleaner visits – Weekly rates can be lower than fortnightly rates.
• Minimum booking time – Some companies have a two- or three-hour minimum, so you can’t just book one hour a week.
• Cleaning products and equipment – Some cleaners bring everything with them, but others expect you to provide products or a vacuum cleaner etc.
• Agency or booking fees – Some companies offer seemingly attractive hourly prices, but have agency or booking fees
• Often advertised rates are “from” prices – Depending on the details of what you book, your actual quote may be higher.
• The type of clean – Special types of cleaning such as deep cleaning and end-of-tenancy cleaning often cost more.

 

Is it worth getting a cleaner?

Many people use cleaners to supplement their existing cleaning routine, rather than completely replace it.

For instance, if you’re busy and want to take a day off from your cleaning schedule, bringing in a cleaner once a week for a few hours could save you a lot of time.

You should carefully consider what your own time is worth. Even if your own time is worth less than what the cleaner charges, consider that a cleaner will work a lot more efficiently.

You also don’t necessarily have to hire a cleaner for everything, you can just use them to do chores that you don’t like doing yourself.

A lot of cleaning companies will offer a service specific to cleaning up a home after builders have been working there. This usually costs more due to the extent of cleaning needed and possible specialist equipment.

 

How many hours a week do you need a cleaner for?

Getting an exact figure is difficult, as it will depend heavily on how big your home is and how much work you are willing to handle yourself.

If you’re bringing in a cleaner to handle all the cleaning for a larger family home, you may need upwards of 6 hours every week.

For smaller homes,  2 hours might be enough – see this article on what a cleaner can do in 2 hours.

A lot of cleaners tend to have a minimum number of hours they will be willing to work on job – this is often 3 hours minimum.

There will likely be a lot of trial and error in the process of determining how long to hire a cleaner for.

We suggest just bringing in the cleaner and trying them out. You can always up the hours later if you need to.

Some cleaning services may even perform an inspection and give you a quote to tell you how long you need a cleaner for as well as how much it’ll cost.