Pool Service Pricing Calculator (Australia): What to Charge per Visit and Month

How much to charge for pool cleaning in Australia comes down to two prices, not one: a summer price on your summer cadence and a winter price on your winter one, each built from what the pool costs you, with GST on top if you are registered. The calculator above does that from your own costs and shows the monthly figure, the per-visit figure and the GST inside each.

GST goes inside the price you quote

GST is 10% in Australia. business.gov.au calls it “a tax of 10% on most goods, services and other items sold or consumed in Australia”, and a registered business collects it as “one-eleventh of the sale price”. You must register once your GST turnover reaches $75,000 or more, and once you are registered the invoice you issue to a customer must be a tax invoice.

So the calculator works in a fixed order. It builds the cost, takes the margin ex GST, then adds GST, because GST is collected for the tax office and is never part of what the pool earns you. The headline is the GST-inclusive monthly figure and the breakdown carries the ex-GST price and the GST inside it. Untick the box if you are not registered and the GST line disappears; the price your work is worth does not change, only the tax on top of it.

Summer and winter are two different prices

The US calculator next door assumes one cadence all year. An Australian round does not run that way. One national cost guide puts it in a sentence: “Summer is peak season for Australian pool services.” The visit pattern shifts with it. The defaults here are weekly in summer and fortnightly in winter, a starting point rather than a finding, because the same guide’s Perth page reads: “Frequency: fortnightly in summer and monthly in winter is the common Perth pattern”. Rather than pick a winner between two descriptions of two different cities, the calculator makes both cadences inputs.

Each season is priced as its own monthly tier. A weekly month carries 52 ÷ 12, about 4.33 visits; a fortnightly month 26 ÷ 12, about 2.17. The monthly price falls in winter, but the per-visit price rises, because overhead such as insurance and software is a monthly cost spread over fewer stops. Set the number of months on the summer cadence and the tool annualises the two tiers, then gives you the level monthly figure if you would rather bill the same amount every month of the year.

For when the season actually turns, and what the published 2026-27 outlook means for an early start, the southern-hemisphere pool season hub sets out the published record.

Chemicals: in the visit, or on the invoice

Ask what a pool service costs in Australia and the answer to “are chemicals included?” depends on who you ask, sometimes on the same page. The national guide states: “Chemicals are usually included in regular service plans but charged separately for one-off visits.” Its own pricing table lists regular service with “chemicals extra”. Its Perth page settles on “included in some service plans, charged per visit in others; ask which”. When the sources contradict each other, the authority is your own quote, so the calculator gives you a switch instead of a ruling.

Included, the chemical cost sits inside the visit price and earns your service margin. Billed on top, the service price covers labour, drive and vehicle only, and chemicals go on the invoice at cost plus a chemical markup you set. The cost of the pool is identical either way; what moves is where the money shows up and how much margin it carries. The effective margin row tells you which structure earns more, and the chemical cost and margin calculator is where a per-product markup gets worked out properly.

The chemical line itself is a cost, not a dose: what one visit’s product costs you per 10,000 litres of pool. The quantities belong to your test kit and the product label, which is the authority on anything you put in the water.

Litres first, and the salt pool question

Volume scales the chemical line, so measure it rather than guess it. The pool volume calculator turns dimensions into litres. A salt pool adds a cost the chemical line should carry: the salt top-ups. Work out how much a top-up takes in the pool salt calculator, cost it, and fold it into your cost per 10,000 litres for the months it applies. If you work in gallons and miles, the units toggle converts the boxes in place and the price does not move.

The labour line starts at the floor, not at a guess

Labour is built from a wage, not typed as a loaded rate, because that is where Australian pricing goes wrong. The wage box starts at the national minimum wage: the Fair Work Commission’s Annual Wage Review 2026 set it at $1,004.90 a week, or $26.44 an hour, from 1 July 2026. That is a floor, not a rate. The award or agreement covering your staff may set more, and an owner-operator pricing their own hour at the floor is pricing it at the lowest rate the system allows an employee. The tool warns if you type less than the floor.

On top of the wage go super and the other on-costs. business.gov.au puts it in one line: “The SG rate is 12% of your employee’s qualifying earnings.” Leave, the workers’ compensation premium, payroll tax if it applies to you, and the hours nobody pays for go in the on-costs box, which starts at 10% as a placeholder only. Fold in public liability as overhead; the public liability insurance guide covers what the cover tiers mean.

New Zealand: NZD, 15% and KiwiSaver

Switch the market control to New Zealand and four things change. The currency becomes NZD. GST becomes 15%: Inland Revenue says that once registered “you’ll need to charge GST at 15% on most taxable supplies”, and the GST inside an inclusive price is 3/23 of it. Registration is required when, in Inland Revenue’s words, “Sales from your taxable activity are at least $60,000 a year”. The wage floor becomes the adult minimum wage, $23.95 an hour from 1 April 2026. And the super box becomes the KiwiSaver employer contribution, starting at the 3.5% Inland Revenue gives as the lowest rate.

Where this page stops

This calculator sets a recurring monthly price for one pool. It deliberately prints no Australian price bands: the US pool service price calculator checks its result against US dollar tier bands, and no equivalent Australian band is published, so none is invented here. A pool that has turned green is a one-off job priced on a different axis, visits and recovery time rather than a monthly rate; the green pool cleanup pricing calculator for Australia prices that job, and the account that follows it lands back here.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is stored, uploaded or sent, and the exports are files you keep.