How Much Does Commercial Cleaning Cost in Melbourne?
The cost guide, with the working shown.
Our pricing page gives you the market ranges. This one gives you the arithmetic behind them: three worked examples, what every line on a quote actually buys, and the five ways a quote misleads you without technically lying.
Published 14 July 2026 by Clean My Biz. 9 min read.
A price is just hours and risk.
Almost every commercial cleaning quote in Melbourne resolves to two things: how many labour hours your site genuinely needs, and how much risk the provider carries while they are in it. Everything else, the consumables, the machine time, the insurance certificates, the account management, hangs off one of those two.
That is why the honest market band is wide. Commercial cleaning in Melbourne generally runs $35 to $75 per hour depending on the site and the scope, and both ends are legitimate. The pricing guide publishes those ranges by service type. This guide does what a rate card cannot: it shows how a real site becomes a real number, so you can check the quote in your hand against arithmetic rather than against a feeling.
None of the figures below are Clean My Biz prices. They are the Melbourne market as at 2026, published so you can price us, and everyone else, on the same evidence.
What each line on a quote actually covers.
A quote with one number on it is not a quote, it is a guess with a logo. Here is what should be itemised, and what each item is really paying for.
Labour
The dominant line, usually 70 to 85 per cent of an ongoing program. It is the hourly rate multiplied by the hours your site actually needs, and the hours are the part providers get wrong. Floor area sets the base, but layout moves it: one open floor plate cleans faster than the same square metres cut into offices, meeting rooms and a kitchen. Bathrooms and end-of-trip facilities are the slowest square metres in any building, and they are where a light quote hides its shortfall.
Consumables
Paper, soap, sanitiser, bin liners. These either sit inside your fee, arrive itemised at RRP, or turn up later as a surprise invoice. All three are legitimate. A quote that does not say which one applies is not. For a mid-sized office this is real money, and it is the single most common thing missing from a cheap quote.
Equipment and machine time
Vacuums and mops are assumed. Scrubbers, ride-on machines, rotary floor gear, pressure washers and carpet extraction units are not. If your site has hard floors at any scale, ask whether machine time sits inside the rate or gets billed against it, because a floor care program priced without the machine is not priced at all.
Compliance and insurance
Police checks on every cleaner, public liability cover with certificates you can put in a procurement file, Safe Work Method Statements where the scope needs them, chemical registers, inductions. In medical, childcare and food production this line grows, which is the honest reason those rates sit at the top of the band. A provider who cannot produce the paperwork is cheaper because they are not carrying its cost, and that cost does not disappear, it moves onto you.
Management and quality assurance
Somebody has to hold the scope, run the roster, cover absences and answer the phone when a clean is missed. On a small site that is a few per cent. On a multi-site contract it is the difference between a program that holds its standard and one that quietly degrades. Ask who your account contact is by name, and what happens at 6am when a cleaner calls in sick.
Periodic and one-off work
Carpet steam cleaning, strip and seal, high-level dusting, window cleaning, builders cleans. These sit outside the weekly rhythm and should be priced up front with a stated frequency. A quote that says "periodic work as required" has told you nothing and reserved the right to charge you anything.
Three real sites, priced out loud.
Same method every time: estimate the honest hours, apply the published market range for that service type, then sanity-check the result against the per-visit band. Redo the arithmetic yourself with your own hours if ours look wrong.
A 200sqm office, cleaned three times a week
Call it twenty desks, one kitchen, two bathrooms, a meeting room and a reception. A visit means bins, kitchen, both bathrooms, vacuum through, spot-clean glass and touchpoints. That is honestly 1.5 to 2.5 hours for one cleaner, and anyone quoting 45 minutes is quoting a wipe-down, not a clean.
At the market office rate of $35 to $55 per hour, that is roughly $55 to $140 per visit. Three visits a week is about thirteen visits a month, so the monthly band lands near $700 to $1,800, before consumables and before GST. That is a wide band, and the width is the point: the same office quoted at the bottom and the top of it is the difference between a fast pass and a real program. Sanity check: the market per-visit band for office cleaning is $65 to $220, so a $55 visit is at or under the floor of what the market charges, which tells you the scope is thin.
A 1,000sqm warehouse, cleaned weekly
A small-to-mid warehouse: a pick and pack floor, a mezzanine office, amenities, a lunchroom. Weekly means amenities and lunchroom properly done, office vacuumed, and the floor swept or machine-scrubbed. Realistically 3 to 5 hours, and the spread depends almost entirely on whether that slab gets a machine or a broom.
At the market warehouse rate of $40 to $60 per hour, that is roughly $120 to $300 per visit, or about $520 to $1,300 a month across 4.33 weekly visits. Two warnings on this one. First, floor machine time is the line that most often sits outside the hourly rate, so confirm it. Second, a warehouse quoted at the very bottom of the band is usually pricing amenities only and treating the slab as somebody else's problem. Warehouse cleaning lives or dies on the floor.
A medical suite, cleaned daily
Five consult rooms, a treatment room, reception, a staff kitchen, two bathrooms. Daily, five days a week. The clean itself is not much longer than the office at 1.5 to 2.5 hours, but the standard is different: colour-coded equipment so nothing crosses between clinical and amenity areas, hospital-grade disinfectant with real contact times, and a documented clean that survives an audit rather than an inspection.
At the market medical rate of $45 to $70 per hour, that is roughly $90 to $175 per visit, and about $1,950 to $3,800 a month across roughly 21.7 visits. One thing that is not in that number: clinical and infectious waste is almost always handled by a separate licensed contractor, not your cleaner. If a cleaning quote for a medical site appears to include it, ask what they mean, because they are either misunderstanding the obligation or absorbing a risk they are not licensed to carry.
What the three have in common
In every case the hours did the work, not the rate. A site quoted at $40 an hour against optimistic hours costs more per year than the same site at $55 an hour against honest ones. The shortfall does not vanish. It comes back as a variation, a re-clean, or a standard you spend your own time chasing.
Four checks, in four minutes.
Ask every provider for the same thing: a line-itemised scope against your actual floor plan, with frequency, consumables treatment and extras priced up front. Then run these four checks on what comes back.
Consumables
Are paper, soap and liners included, itemised at RRP, or excluded? All three are fine. Silence is not. This is the most common gap between two quotes that look the same.
After-hours
Is evening or weekend work standard in the rate, or does a loading appear on a later invoice? Complex access, inductions, escorts and alarm protocols add minutes to every single visit.
Compliance
Police checks, public liability certificates, and SWMS where the work needs them, in writing, not implied. If they cannot produce the documents now, they will not produce them for your auditor.
The exit
Month-to-month after a pilot is a provider backing its own service. A long lock-in behind a teaser rate is a provider pricing your inertia. Read the escalation clause before you sign.
If a quote you are holding does not survive those four checks, the cheap number is not cheap, it is incomplete. That is the whole test, and it is the same one we hand to prospects who are comparing us against someone else.
Five ways a quote misleads without lying.
None of these are fraud. Every one of them is legal, common in the Melbourne market, and costs you money.
1. The rate without the hours
One provider quotes $38 an hour, another $52, so the first looks 27 per cent cheaper. But the first costed your office at one hour a visit and the second at two. The cheap rate is attached to half a clean. Compare the total, and make them state the hours.
2. Consumables that quietly are not included
The quote says "cleaning services as scoped" and stops there. Three months in, a consumables invoice arrives, and it was never in the number you compared. Ask in writing before you sign, not after.
3. Periodic work that is "included" but capped
Carpet steam cleaning is included, annually. Your site needs it quarterly. Technically true, practically useless, and the three extra visits are billed at whatever the rate card says by then. Make the frequency explicit for every periodic item.
4. The teaser rate with an escalation clause
An attractive first-year figure sits above a clause lifting the fee by CPI plus a margin annually, on a three-year term you cannot exit. Year one is the marketing. Years two and three are the actual price, and by then you have no room left to argue about them.
5. Scope written in adjectives
"Thorough clean of all areas." "Detail as required." "Regular attention to high-traffic zones." These are not tasks, they are moods. A scope you can enforce reads like an inventory: this room, these tasks, this frequency, this standard. If you cannot point at a line and say that did not happen, you cannot hold anyone to it.
The questions behind the number.
Shorter answers live on the pricing guide and the full FAQ. These are the ones that need the working.
How much does it cost to clean a 200 square metre office in Melbourne?
How many hours should a commercial clean actually take?
Are cleaning consumables included in the price?
Why did my cleaning bill go up after the first few months?
Do commercial cleaning prices include GST?
Price the specific service.
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