End of lease cleaning costs in Australia 2026

An empty home, kept reasonably clean

The table prices an empty home that has had a normal clean in the last few weeks. If it hasn't, the two "If last cleaned" columns show the difference, and booking asks you so the price already includes it.

Bedrooms and bathrooms, counted honestly

Each extra bedroom or bathroom moves the price by the same fixed step. Count ensuites as bathrooms: wet areas are the slowest rooms in an end of lease clean.

No extras, no discount code

Wall washing, a balcony, the garage and blinds are priced separately, below. A discount code comes off at checkout and isn't in these figures.

"Cleaner time booked" is a plan, not a stopwatch

It is the time our calculator books for one cleaner. Two cleaners share it and are on site for about half as long, for the same price. We don't publish how long jobs actually took until we have enough timed visits to do it honestly.

The same price in every city

Our calculator has no location input, so a two-bedroom clean costs the same in Perth as in Sydney. Local guides explain what other companies charge where you live.

What takes the longest

Kitchens and bathrooms. The oven, range hood and inside cupboards, then grout, shower screens and exhaust fans, take most of the time, which is why an extra bathroom adds as much time as an extra bedroom. Wall washing, a garage or a balcony add their own time, shown under the table.

Why other estimates differ

Companies that put hours in their packages often allow more: one Perth company's price list allows about 6 hours for a one-bedroom vacate clean, 7 for two bedrooms and 8 for three, and a national cost guide estimates 3 to 5 hours for a one-bedroom and 5 to 8 for three bedrooms (both read 2 October 2026). Hours don't compare well between companies: they depend on how many cleaners come, the condition assumed and what's on the checklist. Compare the total and the task list, and ask how many cleaners are coming.

Plan your moving day around it

• Book the clean for after the removalists have finished: cupboards, wardrobes and the space behind appliances can't be cleaned while boxes are in the way.
• Keep the power and water on, and for a larger home expect the cleaners to be there for most of the day.
• Leave time to walk through after the clean, and a few days before the final inspection, so anything missed can be reported within 48 hours and fixed.

It is the title of a Sydney Reddit thread that sits near the top of Google for end of lease cleaning prices, and it is the right instinct: check the number against what it buys.

What can take a one-bedroom clean to $605

• Condition. Built-up grease in the oven and range hood, soap scum and grimy grout, dust on every surface and marked walls take much longer than a home cleaned regularly. Our own price rises with condition, as above, and so do other companies' quotes.
• Extras. Carpet steam cleaning, full wall washing, a balcony or blinds add to the total.
• A furnished home, stairs or difficult access. Some companies charge more for these.

How to check it

Ask the company what condition it assumed and to list every task in the price, then compare it line by line with the checklist above and with what other companies publish (the table below). Published prices usually assume a home in reasonable condition, and every one-bedroom price we found published was below $605. A price isn't unfair because it is higher; it is hard to judge until you know the condition and the work it covers.

These are prices each company publishes on its own website, read on 2 October 2026, beside ours for the same home. Read the scope column: one company's price is for an apartment with one bathroom and lists the fridge as an extra; the other is its own calculator's figure for an unfurnished, single-storey home and doesn't say whether GST is included. The city guides list the local companies.

Fixed price

You know the total before the clean starts. The risk sits with the company: if the job runs long, it's their time. Check what the fixed price assumes (empty home, condition) and what happens if the home doesn't match.

Hourly

An hourly quote is only comparable once you know three things: how many hours they expect, how many cleaners, and whether there's a minimum or a cap. Two cleaners for five hours is ten labour hours on a five-hour visit. Without a cap, a long job is your cost, not theirs.

Labour hours versus time on site

Many price lists, including ours, are built on cleaner time. One cleaner for six hours and two cleaners for three hours are the same labour, the same price and a very different afternoon. Ask how many cleaners are coming so you know when to expect them to finish.

That figure isn't a cleaner's wage. The minimum casual rate under the Cleaning Services Award is $33.85 an hour (Level 1, from 1 July 2026, Fair Work Ombudsman), before super, insurance, travel, products and GST. That is why an hourly end of lease quote well under about $50 usually leaves something out, or comes with more hours than you expect.

If a company quotes by the hour, multiply the rate by the hours it expects and the number of cleaners, add GST if it isn't included, and compare that total with a fixed price for the same checklist. See cleaning prices across Australia for hourly rates more broadly.

A cleaning company

You book a fixed checklist at a fixed price, and the company finds the cleaner and handles a re-clean. With us, the Care & Cover fee in every price includes $10M public liability insurance, ID-verified cleaners and re-cleans under our terms, and you pay after the clean.

An independent cleaner or a marketplace job

Often cheaper, and good cleaners work this way. Before you agree, ask for their ABN and references, whether they hold public liability insurance, whether they bring products, whether GST is included, and exactly what they'll do if the agent finds something missed. Consumer Protection WA's advice applies everywhere: walk through the job first, don't pay in full up front, and inspect before you pay.

Either way, keep the invoice

If your landlord claims cleaning costs against your bond, an itemised invoice for the clean you paid for is useful evidence, and in Western Australia an invoice counts for more than a quote. Under the Australian Consumer Law, any cleaning service must be done with due care and skill.

Here is how a lower headline price can end up costing more. Quote B is an illustration built from prices we saw in our Sydney market check on 2 October 2026, not one company's real quote.

Quote B, as advertised

• Two bedrooms, from $390.
• Oven: $60 extra.
• Inside cupboards and drawers: $50 extra.
• Prices exclude GST.

Quote B, like for like

$390 + $60 + $50 = $500, plus 10% GST = $550. It is "from" a two-bedroom price, so a home that needs more work could cost more again.

What to check either way

Both quotes still leave out carpet steam cleaning, which you book separately if your lease needs it, and both should tell you what happens if the agent finds something missed.

In September 2026 we corrected an earlier version of this analysis that had counted the bundle's own oven, cupboard and window items as separate purchases. The table counts only items chosen outside the bundle. Carpet steam cleaning was offered on the old platform; we don't offer it today.

Carpets were a Melbourne habit: 35% of our Melbourne end of lease bookings added carpet steam cleaning, against 17% in Sydney (see end of lease prices in Melbourne).

Book for after the removalists have gone and, where you can, a few days before the final inspection. That leaves time to walk through, tell us within 48 hours if anything on the checklist was missed, and have it fixed before the agent arrives.

Leave the power and water on until the clean is finished. In our records February and January had the most end of lease cleans and September the fewest, and end of lease cleans fell on a weekend more often than other cleans. Those are counts of our own bookings, so they can't promise a quiet day near you.

What a cleaner can promise is to come back and fix cleaning it missed. Ours: tell us within 48 hours of the clean, with photos if you have them, and we schedule a re-clean of those items at no cost, completed within seven business days of the original clean. If it is still not right after that, we review it and give a fair credit or refund. That is a re-clean promise, not a bond guarantee, and it sits on top of your rights under the Australian Consumer Law. See our terms.

Many companies advertise a "bond back guarantee". In the terms we read, it usually means a free re-clean of the items booked, reported within a window of 24 hours to 7 days, often with the agent's report as evidence. Read the conditions, not the headline.

Keep your own evidence

Take dated photos before and after the clean, compare the exit condition report with the one from when you moved in, and keep receipts. Queensland, the only state that publishes the reasons for bond claims, reported cleaning as the most common reason in 2025–26, at 22.7% of claim reasons; 57.2% of Queensland bonds were still refunded in full.

Today's prices

Read from the same calculator the booking form uses each time this page is shown, including GST and the Care & Cover fee, for an empty home recently cleaned with no extras or discount code. The calculator has no location input, so prices are identical in every city.

Booking history

Completed move-in and move-out cleans on our previous booking platform (December 2015 to March 2025), matched to our production records; cancelled and unfulfilled bookings excluded. "Charged" is the booking total after discounts, including extras and any GST added; bookings with an unpaid balance are left out of amounts. A median needs at least 30 bookings from 20 customers, a middle-half range 50, and a share 30. Most of these bookings were in Sydney, so we show city figures only where a city clears those thresholds. Our current platform began in April 2026 and its end of lease cleans will be added once there are enough.

Market prices

Prices that cleaning companies publish on their own websites, read on 2 October 2026, for end of lease cleans of 1 to 4 bedrooms. We exclude comparison guides and marketplace estimates, copied or franchise price tables, pages dated before 2025 and prices that include carpet steam cleaning, and we never average the ends of a range.

History of this guide

• 2 October 2026: moved from Cleaning 101 into our pricing guides, with live prices replacing a dated table, market prices for seven cities and the state rules re-checked against official sources. The old address redirects here.
• 20 September 2026: every booking figure re-run against the production database and the historical export; the totals, bedroom mix, Sydney share and extras counts reproduced.
• 19 September 2026: removed inferred property types and unreproduced ratios, separated dated example prices from final booking prices, and clarified the 48-hour reporting window.
• 6 September 2026: withdrew a claim that 87.2% of customers bought extras, after finding that the bundle's own oven, cupboard and window items had been counted as separate purchases.
• First published 5 September 2026.