Guide
San Francisco cleaning prices for 2026: rates and sample budgets
A San Francisco cleaning budget comes down to how much floor the crew covers, how often it comes and how hard the building works between visits. Here are the 2026 market figures for each service, three budgets built from them and the forces that push a number up or down.
The nightly rate behind most budgets
Recurring janitorial service in San Francisco is priced as a monthly rate on each square foot the crew cleans, assuming visits five nights a week. The middle of the city’s market runs from $0.17 to $0.25. A large, open floor with a short task list opens the scale near $0.11, and a packed floor with several restrooms, catered kitchens and a long list of detail work tops out around $0.46.
These 2026 figures draw on published rate data for the San Francisco market. We walk every building in person before pricing it, and that visit is where your own rate gets set.
The type of property shifts where you land inside the band. Warehouse and industrial space prices lower per foot, because the charge follows the floor the crew actually works. Shops and schools sit at or a little under office rates, restaurants sit above them, and medical suites run roughly 20 to 50 percent higher for the extra restroom and exam-room detail. Hotels tend toward the top half, since their public areas never close; our guide to San Francisco hotel cleaning covers how that work is timed.
Porters, carpet, floors and one-time projects
Day and night porters are billed by the porter-hour, usually $37 to $47 an hour in San Francisco, starting near $33 for a short weekday loop and reaching $57 for long shifts, weekend coverage or a busy route across several floors.
Carpet extraction is charged per square foot each time the carpet is cleaned, usually $0.22 to $0.44. Wide open areas with light soil come in near $0.13, and small furnished rooms with heavy staining reach $0.70. Hard floor stripping and refinishing carries a minimum charge and generally falls between $0.50 and $1 a foot, from $0.39 on large floors in good order up to $3 where the finish is worn through in tight, broken-up rooms. Scrubbing and recoating costs less than a full strip, and burnishing less again.
Post-construction cleaning across every phase, from rough cleaning to the punch list, typically totals $0.33 to $0.70 a foot, with simple spaces near $0.24 and dusty, deadline-driven renovations at $1. Pressure washing of sidewalks, entries and plazas usually lands between $0.20 and $0.47 a foot, ranging from $0.13 on open paving to $1 on stained or delicate surfaces. Landscape maintenance and parking-lot sweeping are priced from the property itself: the lot or grounds area, what collects there and how often the crew returns.
Specialty and property-type work is priced after a walkthrough, because the rooms and the rules vary so much: restroom deep cleaning, disinfection and sanitizing, lab and data center cleaning, gyms, car dealerships, shared kitchens and food halls each get a quote built from their own task list.
Three San Francisco budgets, worked through
A life-science building puts 30,000 square feet of offices, conference rooms and staff areas on a five-night plan. At $0.21 a foot, the routine comes to $6,300 a month. Twice a year, 9,000 square feet of carpet in the open offices is extracted at $0.28 a foot, adding $2,520 to each of those months.
A downtown suite of 3,800 square feet holds private offices, two glass conference rooms and a pantry for visitors. The room-by-room layout keeps the crew moving door to door, so it prices at the top of the middle band, $0.25 a foot, or $950 a month for five nights a week.
A mid-rise office building whose lobby is on show from early morning to evening keeps its nightly crew and adds a day porter for five hours each weekday, about 108 porter-hours a month. At $44 an hour, that daytime coverage costs $4,752 a month. Our comparison of day porters and nightly crews explains how the two kinds of visit split the work.
What pushes a price up or down
Labor is the largest part of any cleaning bill, and Class A towers in the city often clean under union wage scales.
Freight-elevator bookings, badge-in desks, loading-dock windows and crews that start only after the last tenant leaves all stretch a shift. Dense, high-traffic buildings whose lobbies and common areas are on show all day often need porter hours on top of the nightly routine.
Other features pull the number down. Open loft floors clean faster than warrens of private offices, large footprints earn a lower rate per foot than small suites, and early access lets the crew finish without waiting on the building.
Lining up quotes on equal terms
Bids only compare when they price the same job. Give every company the same list of rooms, set out as a room-by-room scope of work, plus the same nightly and weekly frequency for each area and the same answer on who buys restroom paper, soap and liners. A bid that leaves out two restrooms or assumes three nights instead of five will look lower without being a better offer.
Then set every bid, as a monthly total and a rate per foot, against the bands above; the bidder checklist in our hiring guide covers the rest.
Our quotes list each area with its frequency, so you see exactly what the price buys.
A few useful answers
Quick answers.
Why does a small suite pay more per foot than a full floor?
Small suites pack restrooms, pantries and private offices into fewer feet, so the crew spends more time per foot moving between rooms. A large open floor spreads the same tasks across more area.
How should we budget for carpet and floor work?
Plan it as periodic lines on their own calendar, each billed by the foot whenever the crew returns to do it. Hot water extraction is often scheduled for a weekend or low-occupancy stretch so the carpet has time to dry.
What sets the final price for our building?
The walkthrough. We see the rooms, the traffic and the access rules, then price your quote from the list of areas and how often each one is cleaned.
Why do porter hours appear separately from the nightly rate?
Porters work while the building is occupied and are billed by the hour, while the nightly routine is priced by the foot. Keeping them apart shows what each kind of coverage costs.
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