Window Cleaning Pricing Calculator: Per Pane, Per Window, Per Storey
Price a window cleaning job from the units you counted: panes or windows, inside and out, storey by storey, plus screens, tracks and your own job minimum.
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.
panes = counted panes, or windows × panesPerWindow
exterior = panes × 2 min ÷ (storeyFactor × conditionFactor)
interior = panes × 2 min × 1.25 ÷ conditionFactor (inside and out only)
minutes = 15 setup + exterior + interior + screens×1.5 + tracks×2
labour = crew × (rate / 60) × minutes
travel = crew × (rate / 60) × travelMinutes
overhead = (labour + travel) × overheadPct
costBase = labour + travel + overhead
from cost: base = costBase / (1 − targetMargin)
per unit: base = yourRate × unitMultiplier × units
+ screenFee × screens + trackFee × tracks
perVisit = max(base × (1 − planDiscount), minimum)
margin = (perVisit − costBase) / perVisitThe suggested minutes. A starting point, never a benchmark. One pane, one side, ground floor, standard condition is modelled at 2 minutes for one worker: wet it, squeegee it, detail the edges, move along. A screen is 1.5 minutes to pull, clean and refit; a track or sill is 2 minutes; setup is 15 minutes; and a single visit is capped at a working day. Overwrite the minutes box the moment you have timed a few of your own jobs.
Inside and outside are two different jobs. This is the part most per-pane pricing gets wrong. The outside is ladder or pole work, so it slows with height: two storeys clear at 0.75 of the ground-floor rate and three or more at 0.55. The inside of a third-floor window is reached from the hallway, so the storey factor never touches interior time. What slows the inside instead is furniture, blinds and drop cloths, modelled as 1.25× the time of the same pane outside at ground level. Adding interiors therefore does not double the visit, it adds about 2.25× the ground-floor exterior time in total. Glass condition is the one factor that cuts across both sides: heavy condition glass clears at 0.7 of the standard rate, inside and out alike, which is why it is a separate setting rather than folded into the height. Those three factors, 0.75 or 0.55 for height, 1.25 for interiors and 0.7 for heavy condition, are every factor in the model: multiply them out and you can reproduce both the suggested minutes and the per-unit multiplier by hand.
Where the per-unit rates come from. Not from the market. The unit multiplier is read straight off the time model above, so the two halves of the tool can never tell you different stories. You supply your ground-floor exterior rate for one pane or one window; the tool scales it for the sides, the height and the condition, adds your screen and track charges, applies your minimum, and then tells you what margin that rate actually earned against your cost on this house.
Coupled effects worth knowing. Heavy condition glass, whether that is construction dust, hard water spotting or years of neglect, slows both sides and not just the outside. Screens and tracks are counted separately because the customer can decline them and the time leaves with them. Travel is charged for every person in the van. And the minimum charge is applied after the repeat-booking discount, which is what stops a standing round from quietly taking a small job below the number that made it worth driving to.
Glass is often sold beside a recurring house clean rather than on its own, and the standing rates for that side of the round belong on a published house cleaning price list so a customer can read the cadence and the home size off one sheet before they call.
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Window cleaning is priced in things you can count. Panes, windows, screens, tracks: the customer has a fixed number of each, you can count them on the walk round, and the invoice can list them. That is what makes this job different from every square-foot pricer on this site, and it is why quoting it from an area figure or from somebody else’s per-pane rate goes wrong so reliably.
Count the glass, then price the time
The tool takes either unit. Count panes if you want the finer measure, because a divided-light window and a single sliding pane are plainly not the same work. Count windows if that is faster on site, and tell it how many panes a typical window has, so the time model still works in glass rather than in openings. A double-hung window is two sashes, which is where the default comes from, and it is an editable box like everything else here.
From there it is time. One pane, one side, at ground level and in standard condition is modelled at two minutes for one worker: wet it, squeegee it, detail the edges, move along. Screens, tracks, setup and the drive are added on their own lines. Then your loaded hourly rate, your overhead and your margin turn that into a price. If you have never built a defensible hourly rate, the service business hourly rate calculator is where it starts, and the labor burden rate calculator is how you find out what an hour of somebody’s time actually costs you once payroll taxes, workers compensation and unbillable hours are in it.
The inside and the outside are two different jobs
This is the part that per-pane rate cards usually get wrong. The outside of the glass is ladder or pole work and it slows down with every storey. The inside of a third-floor window is reached from the hallway, so height does not touch it at all. What slows the inside down instead is furniture to shift, blinds to lift, drops to lay and sills to wipe before you can start.
So the model treats them separately: the storey factor applies only to exterior time, and interior panes carry a furniture-and-blinds factor instead. The practical result is that adding interiors does not double the visit. A ground-floor house done inside and out comes to roughly 2.25 times the exterior-only time, and a three-storey one shifts the balance the other way, because the outside has become the expensive half.
Glass condition cuts across both. Construction dust, hard water spotting and years of neglect slow the inside and the outside alike, which is why the condition setting is separate from the height setting rather than folded into it.
Two ways to price it, checked against each other
Most operators eventually sell from a rate card, and the tool supports that directly. Switch it to per-unit mode and enter your own ground-floor, exterior-only rate for one pane or one window. It scales that rate for the sides, the height and the condition using the same factors as the time model, adds your screen and track charges, applies your minimum, and then tells you what margin your rate card actually earned against your cost on this particular house.
That comparison is the point of the page. A per-pane rate that works on a bungalow and quietly loses money on a three-storey with interiors is the most common pricing fault in this trade, and you cannot see it from the rate card alone. You can see it immediately when the quote sits next to the cost of the visit.
Where the minimum belongs
A twelve-pane job fifteen minutes away can be a good hour’s work or a wasted morning, and what decides it is the minimum charge rather than the rate. This tool applies the minimum after any repeat-booking discount, so a standing round cannot pull a short visit under the number that made it worth loading the van. If you have not set a minimum, or you are working out whether to bill the drive separately, the trip charge and service call fee calculator is where that number comes from.
Where this sits next to your other work
If you also wash the house, the deck or the drive, that job is priced by wet surface area rather than by countable glass: quote it in the pressure washing estimate calculator and put the two on one invoice. If you clean the inside of the house as well as the inside of the windows, the house cleaning price calculator prices that work by square footage or room count, with its own frequency discount. And if the gutters are on the same quote, the gutter cleaning pricing calculator prices that visit in linear feet by storey.
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, 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: ladder standards, pole work and fall protection 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.