Auto-Detailing Pricing Calculator

Build a per-vehicle detailing quote from your actual labor rate, supply costs, and overhead. Covers vehicle class scaling, mobile vs. shop overhead, and markup vs. margin.

Vehicle class

Scales time and supply cost. Adjust to your own service multipliers.

Services

Enter base hours and supply cost per service for a mid-size vehicle. The class multiplier above scales both automatically. Supply cost defaults are blank — enter your actual product costs.

Labor rate

Detailer rate ($/hr)

Loaded rate (wage + employer costs). Use the Hourly Rate Calculator to compute a loaded rate. Range varies widely by region — enter your actual rate.

Overhead

Operation type

Mobile Shop

Overhead method

Fixed $ % of labor % of total

Overhead amount

Mobile: flat per-job cost (fuel, travel). Shop: % of labor or total (rent, utilities). Enter your actual overhead.

Supply waste

Product spillage, pad wear, disposables. 5% is a typical detailing floor.

Pricing

Mode

Markup Margin

Target

50% markup ≈ 33% margin — a common detailing rule-of-thumb. Adjust to your market.

Contingency

Optional buffer applied to total cost before markup.

Quote total

—

Labor cost: —
Supplies (incl. waste): —
Overhead: —
Contingency: —
Total cost: —
Profit: —
Margin / Markup: —

Service breakdown

Service	Eff. Hours	Labor cost	Supply cost	Row total

Export

How this is calculated

Each service row is scaled by the vehicle class multiplier: effectiveHours = baseLaborHours × multiplier, effectiveSupplyCost = baseSupplyCost × multiplier. The class multiplier reflects that larger vehicles take more time and product. Multipliers are editable defaults — adjust to your shop.

laborCost      = Σ effectiveHours × detailerRate
suppliesRaw    = Σ effectiveSupplyCost
suppliesCost   = suppliesRaw × (1 + waste%)
overhead       = fixed $ | %labor | %(labor + supplies)
directCost     = labor + supplies + overhead
totalCost      = directCost × (1 + contingency%)
price (markup) = totalCost × (1 + markup%)
price (margin) = totalCost / (1 − margin%)

Overhead in pctTotal mode uses post-waste supplies as the base, consistent with the directCost calculation. Tax and licensing are excluded.

How we choose and check our formulas