How much do window cleaners make? The owner math
How much do window cleaners make, worked for a solo owner. Pay per hour, the job count that decides the year, and how many customers a $100,000 year takes.
On this page
- On our model a solo window cleaner clears about $62,400 a year at three jobs a day, $85,000 at four and $39,800 at two, with the price and the van unchanged.
- Each job a day left empty costs $22,600 a year, which makes the diary a bigger lever than the price list.
- A $100,000 year at a $120 job needs 933 visits, more than one person can fit in a year. At $150 it needs 738, and that is reachable.
- The customer count behind $100,000 depends on how often each home books. It is 185 quarterly customers or 369 twice-yearly ones at $150.
A solo window cleaner makes about $62,400 a year before tax on our model at three jobs a day, or roughly $38 an hour once every hour of the working week is counted. The same person makes $85,000 with a full diary of four jobs a day and $39,800 with two, at the same price, in the same van. That gap of $45,200 comes from how full the diary is, not from what a job is priced at, and most pages about what window cleaners make never run it.
We build the software that small local trades run their bookings and rebooking on, so treat this as our view rather than neutral advice. Every figure below is our own arithmetic on a stated model. Put your own prices and minutes in and re-run it.
All figures are in US dollars as a reference point. The arithmetic works the same in any currency.
How much do window cleaners make a year?
The model, stated so you can argue with it. A standard residential job priced at $120, taking about an hour and a quarter on site, with about $7 of card fees and supplies, so $113 of contribution per job. Twenty minutes of driving between homes. A seven hour working day, five days a week, across a 40 week season, because glass is not cleaned in a frozen January. Fixed costs of $450 a month for insurance, the van, ladders, poles and software, and those run for twelve months.
| Jobs per day | Jobs per year | Contribution | Fixed costs | Left before tax | Per hour worked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 (patchy diary) | 400 | $45,200 | $5,400 | $39,800 | $24 |
| 3 (typical) | 600 | $67,800 | $5,400 | $62,400 | $38 |
| 4 (full, tight route) | 800 | $90,400 | $5,400 | $85,000 | $52 |
The hourly column divides each year by 1,640 hours. That is 1,400 on the clock (seven hours across 200 days) plus about 240 for quoting, invoicing and cleaning the squeegee kit, which nobody bills. It is the number that matters and the one a job quote hides, because $120 for an hour and a quarter looks like $96 an hour while the person earning it never sees $96.
Four jobs is the ceiling on this model. Four jobs at an hour and a quarter is five hours on site, and three twenty minute drives take it to six. An hour is left for the day's one bad surprise.
Why does the diary matter more than the price?
Take one empty slot a day. At $113 of contribution across 200 days, it is $22,600 a year gone. That is the entire difference between the three and four job rows, and it is also the difference between a good year and an average one.
Now compare that with a price rise. Raising a $120 job to $132, a 10 percent increase, adds $12 a job. At three jobs a day that is $7,200 across the season. Filling the fourth slot at the old price adds three times as much. Both are worth doing, but the empty slot is the bigger lever and the one owners spend least time on.
Empty slots come from three places we see again and again.
- Gaps between regulars. A home due in the first week of the month that books in the third leaves two weeks of holes behind it.
- Late cancellations. A homeowner who forgets leaves you with a driven van and a gap that cannot be refilled the same morning.
- Scattered addresses. Three jobs eleven miles apart cost more in driving than a fourth job costs to do.
The landscaping version of this argument, where it is worth about $19,000 a year, sits in how to start a landscaping business, and the paid-versus-owner split is in how much landscapers make. Window cleaning is the same shape with a higher ticket and a shorter day.
How many customers do I need to make $100,000 a year window cleaning?
This is the question page one answers with a shrug, so here is the arithmetic. To keep $100,000 after $5,400 of fixed costs you need $105,400 of contribution, and the number of visits that takes depends on the price of a job.
| $120 job (about 1.25 hours) | $150 job (about 1.5 hours) | |
|---|---|---|
| Contribution per job | $113 | $143 |
| Visits needed in a year | 933 | 738 |
| Fits in 800 visits a year? | No | Yes |
| Customers if each books monthly | 78 | 62 |
| Customers if each books quarterly | 234 | 185 |
| Customers if each books twice a year | 467 | 369 |
At $120 a job a solo owner cannot get there at all, because 933 visits is more than 800, the most one person fits into the season on this model. The fix is not a faster squeegee. It is a larger or more complete job at a higher price, or a second person.
At $150 a job it is reachable, and it needs about 3.7 jobs a day, nearly a full diary every single working day. That tells you what the real requirement is. It is not 185 customers on a list. It is 185 customers who actually book every quarter, on a route tight enough to fit four a day.
The number to watch is how many of your customers come back when they are due. A home that cleans quarterly and lapses after one visit is worth about $143 to you, and a home that stays for five years is worth about $2,860 at the same price. The wider case for that is in how to get repeat customers.
How many houses can a window cleaner do in a day?
On our model, four, with an hour of slack. Longer jobs or longer drives bring it to three.
This is the figure that surprises people coming from a salaried job, because a skilled cleaner can do a standard house in under an hour. The time does not go on the glass. It goes into driving, parking, moving the ladder, knocking on a door and being paid. We wrote about the same effect for a van that goes to the customer in how much mobile dog groomers make, and the answer was identical. Drive time, not work rate, is what sets the ceiling.
Is $50 an hour for cleaning good?
It is better than it sounds when it is a clock-time number and weaker than it sounds when it is a job-time one. A $120 job taking 75 minutes bills at $96 an hour on site. Divide the year by every hour worked and the same owner earns $38. So $50 an hour of true earnings is a strong year on this model, and is about a four job a day year.
If you are paid a wage rather than running the business, $50 an hour does not apply. Someone employed by a window cleaning company is paid for every hour in the day, which is the reason the owner's number looks so different once the unpaid hours are counted.
Do I need a license to wash windows?
It depends on where you work, and we will not publish a tidy table of places because published versions contradict each other. Ask your local licensing authority what a residential cleaning business needs before you take the first booking. Most places expect a registered business and public liability cover. Work from a ladder at height, or from ropes on a tall building, generally carries safety rules of its own, and those are the ones to confirm first. We covered the same question for another trade in do you need a license to groom dogs.
What we do for a window cleaning business
Every number above starts with two inputs, a priced job and an honest duration. If those live in your head, none of it is computable. Putting a price and a real duration behind each service is where we would start, and managing your services is where those live.
The part that fills the diary is rebooking. You set the interval that matches your customer, quarterly for most homes, and the reminder lands when they are due with a one tap link to book the next visit. It is covered in recurring visits and rebooking. Reminders go out by email. Taking a deposit at booking is the blunt tool for the empty slot a cancellation leaves, and how you charge explains the options.
That is one of the live storefronts we run. It is a mobile car detailer, not a window cleaner, and we would rather say so than dress up a mockup. We have no window cleaning storefront yet. It is the closest thing we run to a window route though, a van going to the customer, with a priced service list, a booking button and a deposit taken to hold the slot.
Two things we leave to you. We do not plan your route or run payroll, so the wage and drive figures above stay yours to work out. And the revenue figure on your dashboard counts payments taken through Growth Onward, so cash handed over at the door does not appear in it, which understanding your revenue explains.
You can put a test booking through the live demos to see the whole loop before deciding anything.
The short version
A solo window cleaner makes about $62,400 a year on our model at three jobs a day, $85,000 at four and $39,800 at two. The price and the van do not change between those numbers. The diary does.
A $100,000 year is reachable at $150 a job and not at $120, and it takes about 185 customers who book every quarter. The wider argument across every local trade we work with is in how local service businesses get and keep customers. More on this trade sits in the window cleaning hub, and the money side of the other trades is in pricing and payments.