Gutter Cleaning Pricing Calculator: What to Charge Per Linear Foot

Price a gutter cleaning visit the way you work it: linear feet of run, storeys, ladder access, debris load, guards off and back on, and every downspout flushed.

Quote this per visit

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Enter your loaded hourly rate to build the quote.

One clean against the spring and fall plan, as you would quote them

Booking	Per visit	Visits a year	Per year

Labour: —
Travel: —
Disposal: —
Overhead: —
Margin: —
Quote per visit, before tax: —

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How this is calculated

The quote is built from your own costs, before tax, and margin is applied on price, the trade convention. Prices are before sales tax: whether a cleaning service is taxable is a state question, so this tool computes no tax line and leaves that to your invoice.

labour    = crew × (rate / 60) × minutes
travel    = crew × (rate / 60) × travelMinutes
subtotal  = labour + travel + disposal
overhead  = subtotal × overheadPct
costBase  = subtotal + overhead

from cost:  base = costBase / (1 − targetMargin)
per foot:   base = yourRate × bandMultiplier × feet + downspoutFee × spouts

perVisit  = max(base × (1 − planDiscount), minimum)
perFoot   = perVisit / feet
margin    = (perVisit − costBase) / perVisit

The suggested minutes. A starting point, never a benchmark. A single-storey clear run is modelled at 130 linear feet an hour for one worker, slowed for height (two storeys ×0.7, three or more ×0.5), ladder access (awkward ×0.8, difficult ×0.6), debris (light ×1.15, heavy or packed ×0.75) and guards that come off and go back on (×0.7), plus 15 minutes of setup and 5 minutes a downspout, capped at a working day. Every one of those is a guess about time, not about price, and the minutes box is yours to overwrite the moment you have timed a couple of your own jobs.

Where the per-foot bands come from. Not from the market. The band multiplier is the exact inverse of the same production factors above, so the two halves of the tool can never tell you different stories: if a second storey clears at 0.7 of the ground-floor rate, a foot of it takes 1 ÷ 0.7 of the time and carries 1 ÷ 0.7 of the price. You supply the single-storey rate. The tool scales it, adds your downspout charge, applies your minimum, and then tells you what margin that band actually earned against your cost.

Coupled effects worth knowing. Guards are not a surcharge, they are a second pass: lifting them off and screwing them back on is modelled as a 30% cut in production rate across the whole run, so the price moves with the footage rather than with a flat add-on. Travel is charged for every person in the truck. And the minimum charge is applied after the plan discount, which is what stops a two-visit discount from quietly taking a small job below the number that made it worth driving to.

Height and awkward ladder access move the price here for the same reason they move the risk on the day, so the walk that settles both is worth recording on a job site safety inspection checklist before anyone sets a ladder against the fascia.

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Gutter cleaning is a job that gets underpriced in the same two places every time: the ladder work gets timed as if it were ground work, and the visit gets quoted from a per-foot number somebody else published. This page fixes both. It prices the visit from the hours it actually takes at the height you are actually working, and it reports the per-foot rate afterwards so you have a figure to compare jobs with rather than one to quote from.

Every dollar figure here is yours

There is no average gutter cleaning price on this page, and that is deliberate. Search for one and you will find plenty of numbers; follow their citations and they resolve to homeowner cost guides and lead-generation directories quoting each other, with no regulator, trade body or published survey underneath. Under this site’s cite-or-omit rule that means the tool ships with none of them.

What it gives you instead is the shape of the quote, with every currency field yours to fill. The only numbers it suggests are minutes, and even those sit in an editable box: a clear single-storey run is modelled at 130 linear feet an hour for one worker, slowed for height, access, debris and guards, plus setup and a few minutes for each downspout. They are scoping conventions, not benchmarks. Overwrite them the moment you have timed a few of your own jobs.

The one figure that decides everything else is your loaded hourly rate. If you have never built one, do it in the service hourly rate calculator, and work out what an hour of labour actually costs once payroll taxes, workers compensation, insurance and unbillable time are in it with the labor burden rate calculator.

Price the height, not the footage

Two houses with identical 150 foot runs are different jobs. One is a single-storey ranch with clear ground on all four sides; the other is a two-storey with a deck under the back run, a bed you have to tarp and a service drop over the driveway. The run is the same. The ladder work is not.

So the model prices time: a production rate in linear feet an hour, slowed for storeys, for awkward or difficult ladder access, for debris that has packed down into the low end of a run, and for guards that have to come off and go back on. Then it adds setup and a few minutes for every downspout, because an outlet that is checked and flushed is different work from one that is looked at. The per-foot rate falls out at the end, where it belongs.

If you do sell from a published per-foot rate, the tool will work that way too. Switch it to per-foot mode and enter your own ground-floor rate: it scales that rate by the same production factors the time model uses, adds your downspout charge, applies your minimum, and then tells you what margin the band actually earned against your cost on this particular house. A band that works on a ranch and loses money on a two-storey is the most common pricing fault in this trade, and that comparison is how you find it.

The minimum is the number that decides whether you go

A short run five miles away can be a perfectly good job or a waste of a morning, and the difference is usually the minimum charge rather than the rate. Set it here and the tool applies it after any spring and fall discount, so a two-visit discount cannot quietly take a small job below the number that made it worth driving to. If you have never set one, or you are deciding whether to bill the drive separately, the trip charge and service call calculator is where that number comes from.

Where the gutter job sits next to the rest of your work

If you also wash the house, the deck or the driveway on the same visit, the gutters stop being the job and become a line inside a bigger one. Price that version in the pressure washing estimate calculator, which carries gutters as a linear-foot line item inside a multi-surface wash quote. Use this page when the gutter visit is what you are selling. Glass sold alongside it is counted rather than measured, pane by pane and storey by storey, in the window cleaning pricing calculator, and the ladder time you have already paid for is the reason the two so often go out as one quote.

Working in Canada, or quoting a Canadian property? The same job is priced in CAD, with the provincial GST or HST rate and the small supplier threshold built in, by the eavestrough cleaning pricing calculator. Eavestrough is simply the Canadian word for the same trough, and the two pages are the same tool with the tax machinery swapped out.

Before tax, and before the safety question

Every figure on this page is before sales tax. Whether a cleaning service is taxable, and at what combined state and local rate, is a state question rather than a national one, so the tool computes no tax line and leaves that to your invoice. Work at height is regulated too, by OSHA or by your state plan, and this page prices the work rather than telling you how to do it: fall protection, ladder standards and training are settled with your safety authority and your insurer, not with a calculator.

Fieldwynn, the field service software this site is built by, has not launched yet. There is no signup wall here and no trial to start: the calculator is free, it runs entirely in your browser, and nothing you type leaves the page.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge for gutter cleaning?

Enough to cover the visit and leave the margin you set, which is a different number in every truck. This page publishes no average and no going rate per foot, because no regulator, trade body or published survey measures one: the figures that circulate are homeowner cost guides and lead-generation directories quoting each other. Build it instead. Your loaded hour, the minutes the ladder work actually takes at that height, your travel, your overhead and your margin. The calculator turns those into a per-visit price and then reports the per-foot rate afterwards, as a number to compare jobs with rather than one to quote from.

Should I price gutter cleaning per linear foot or per job?

Quote per job, measure per foot. A per-foot rate is a summary of a job, never an estimate of one: two houses with identical 150 foot runs are different jobs when one is a single-storey ranch with clear ground on all four sides and the other is a two-storey with a deck, a bed under the back run and a service drop over the driveway. Price the time, then look at what the quote implies per foot. If you do sell from a published per-foot rate, switch the tool to per-foot mode, enter your own ground-floor rate, and it will scale that rate for the conditions and tell you what margin it earned.

Why does the second storey cost so much more than twice the first?

Because the price follows the ladder, not the gutter. A single-storey run is a short ladder, a quick reset and a bucket. Two storeys means an extension ladder, standoffs, more setting up per foot cleared, more care picking a footing on soft ground or a deck, and materially more risk that you carry insurance and workers compensation for. The model slows the production rate to 0.7 at two storeys and 0.5 at three or more, which is a guess about time rather than about price, and one to overwrite as soon as you have timed a few of your own jobs.

How should I charge for gutter guards?

Not as a flat add-on. Guards and leaf screens that have to come off and go back on turn one pass into most of two, and that cost scales with the footage rather than with the house, so the tool models them as a 30% cut in production rate across the whole run. On a short single-storey run that is a few minutes. On a long two-storey run it is a large part of the day. Price it from the time it takes on the run in front of you.

Do I charge sales tax on gutter cleaning?

That depends on your state, and this calculator deliberately does not guess. Whether a cleaning or maintenance service is taxable, and at what combined state and local rate, is a state revenue department question, so every figure here is before tax and the tax line belongs on your invoice. If you also work in Canada, the eavestrough version of this page handles GST, HST and the small supplier threshold in CAD.

What is the difference between this and the pressure washing estimate calculator?

Scope. The pressure washing estimate calculator prices a multi-surface wash and carries gutters as one linear-foot line inside that quote, which is the right tool when the gutters are an add-on to a house wash. This page prices the gutter visit as the whole job: the run, the height, the debris, the guards, every downspout flushed and the minimum that decides whether the truck rolls at all. Same trade, different unit of sale.

How we choose and check our formulas