What it costs
We do not publish a rate card, because a rate card would be a guess about your building. What we can do is show you the arithmetic underneath a quote, and what other businesses publish, so you can tell a real number from an optimistic one.
Start here
Supplies, equipment and insurance all go into a number, and so does the time of whoever does the work. How big a share that time takes is measured two ways. In the 2022 Economic Census, janitorial services businesses across the United States reported $31.4 billion of annual payroll against $72.6 billion of revenue: about 43 cents of each revenue dollar, by this page’s division, and a national figure rather than a New Jersey one. One industry consultant, Mickey Crowe, put labor and benefits at 55 to 90 percent of a cleaning contract in a 2017 CleanLink column, calling it a very general range. The arithmetic below starts with what an hour of a cleaner’s time costs a compliant New Jersey employer.
The state minimum wage is $15.92 an hour for most workers as of 1 January 2026, and can go up each 1 January by any increase in the CPI-W inflation index. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2025 figures for janitors and cleaners (except maids and housekeeping cleaners) in the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area, a 22-county area that takes in Bergen County and New York City, give a median hourly wage of $20.60 and a 10th-percentile hourly wage of $16.83. On top of the wage, an employer carries Social Security and Medicare, federal and state unemployment, New Jersey temporary disability, workforce development, workers’ compensation at the rate for the class that covers commercial cleaning contractors, and mandatory earned sick leave accrued at one hour per thirty worked, up to forty hours a year. Family leave insurance is not on that list: New Jersey sets a new employer’s rate for it at zero, and the worker pays it.
Stacked together at 2026 rates, for an employer in its first three calendar years paying a cleaner under $44,800 a year, with workers’ compensation at the New Jersey manual rate for class 9014 and every accrued sick hour taken, those add about 18 percent on top of the wage for full-time work, and about 19 to 20 percent for someone working 1,200 hours a year or fewer, where the sick leave and the fixed federal unemployment tax weigh more. So a cleaner paid $19 an hour, an example rather than anyone’s actual rate, costs that employer about $22.40 to $22.80 for each hour worked, before a single bottle of chemical, a vacuum, a certificate of insurance, a supervisor’s time or one dollar of profit. The arithmetic is this page’s own, from the published rates listed under Sources, and an insurer’s adjustments to the workers’ compensation rate would move it.
Those costs are set by law and published rate tables, not by any one company. When a bid comes in far beneath what that arithmetic allows, ask the bidder which of those costs it leaves out, and whose payroll the person in your building will be on.
The variables
Square footage alone does not set the number, and none of the reasons are mysterious.
A 200,000 sq ft distribution building might hold 6,000 sq ft of office and break area that drives most of the recurring labor. A quote priced off the building footprint rather than the space that actually gets cleaned will be wrong, in one direction or the other.
Five nights a week is not five times the cost of once a week, because a space cleaned nightly carries less soil into each visit. Costa1Cleaning's New Jersey guide calls frequency the single biggest lever on per-visit cost, and it is the first thing to revisit if a quote comes back higher than expected.
Restrooms consume labor out of all proportion to their floor area. Two fixtures in a small suite is a different job from twelve in a building running three shifts. Fixture count and headcount matter more here than square footage does.
Carpet, VCT, LVT, sheet vinyl, polished concrete and sealed stone each want different equipment, different chemistry, and different periodic cycles. A building with waxed VCT carries a strip-and-refinish obligation that a carpeted building simply does not.
Medical space costs more per square foot than general office in every published guide read for this page. ISSA lists medical and healthcare facilities at $0.14 to $0.29 per square foot against $0.09 to $0.17 for general office, higher, it says, because of infection prevention and specialized processes, and Liverman Commercial Cleaning's New Jersey guide says medical cleaning typically costs 30 to 50 percent more per square foot than standard office cleaning. Trained staff, dedicated equipment per zone, documented procedures and disinfectant dwell times are recurring costs. The published ranges overlap, though, so a clinical space quoted near general office rates is worth asking how those costs are covered.
A building that can be entered at 6pm and worked continuously takes fewer paid hours than one with a security desk, a badge process, a 9pm start, and areas that must be cleaned around occupants. In a distribution building, work that fits a shift-change gap can take fewer hours than work forced into a fixed window.
Paper towels, toilet tissue, hand soap and the like are what one industry consultant, Mickey Crowe, calls consumables. In a 2017 CleanLink column he put consumable supplies at 5 to 9 percent of a total contract, a range he called very general, moving with traffic or tenant count, five- or seven-day operation and contract size. Bergen Commercial Cleaners' pricing guide says there is no universal convention on who provides liners, paper products and soap, so whether they are in your number or bought separately is one reason two quotes can appear to differ when they do not.
The ranges, honestly
ISSA, the Association for Cleaning & Facility Solutions, lists general office cleaning at $0.09 to $0.17 per square foot in a pricing guide dated 4 December 2025. It prints no time unit beside that range, though its worked example divides a monthly contract cost by cleanable square footage. National cost guides print office bands with no time unit either: HomeGuide $0.08 to $0.20 for a standard office, in a guide dated 13 December 2023 under a 2026 title, and Angi $0.10 to $0.20, updated 30 May 2026. Across the three, offices run from $0.08 to $0.20 per square foot. Each was read on its own page on 13 September 2026, and none of them is this company’s rate. Those figures are useful for orientation and misleading as a quote, for two reasons.
First, none of those guides says what wage its range assumes or prints a separate New Jersey rate, and ISSA itself lists wages, benefits and staffing availability among what influences local market pricing. By this page’s arithmetic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2025 medians for janitors and cleaners, New Jersey’s was about 2 percent above the national figure, and the New York-Newark-Jersey City area’s about 16 percent above it. The New Jersey guides that print square-foot figures tie them to a visit or a month, so none can be laid against ISSA’s range. Costa1Cleaning, in Monmouth County, puts standard offices in North Jersey (Bergen, Essex, Hudson) at $0.14 to $0.22 per square foot, and its guide multiplies a rate by square footage to get a per-visit cost. Liverman Commercial Cleaning, in Springfield, prints $0.05 to $0.15 per square foot per cleaning for standard offices. Bergen Commercial Cleaners, in Saddle Brook, uses $0.18 to $0.34 per gross square foot per month for offices cleaned twice a week, which it describes as a budgeting reference informed by ISSA’s office guidance rather than a market average. A quote near the bottom of a published range deserves the question any low bid does: what wage is it built on?
Second, the national per-square-foot figures describe general office space and print no cleaning frequency beside them; ISSA says its rates vary with services, frequency and complexity. They do not describe a medical suite, a warehouse where a small office and break area account for most of the cleaning labor, a building with twelve restrooms, or a space with waxed VCT that needs periodic stripping. In each of those cases the per-square-foot figure is not slightly off. It is the wrong unit.
Which is why this company will quote from a walkthrough. Not as a sales tactic — because measuring the space, counting the fixtures and identifying the floors is how a number gets produced that still holds in month nine.
How a real bid is built
Not the lease square footage. The space that actually gets cleaned, broken out by type — open office, private offices, restrooms, break room, corridors, warehouse floor.
Each task and surface has a realistic production rate. Open office vacuums quickly; restrooms and break rooms do not. Applied across the scope, this produces the crew-hours per visit — the actual quantity being bought.
Hours multiplied by the true employer cost per hour, plus supplies, equipment, vehicle, insurance, supervision and administration. This is the cost of serving the building. Ask any bidder to break their number down this way.
Margin has to cover the account going wrong — a callout, a re-clean, an equipment failure. On a quote from this company, New Jersey sales tax will be shown as its own line, never folded into the rate; the rate and the reading behind it are on the credentials page.
Comparing bids
Cleaning services are taxable in New Jersey; the rate and the Division of Taxation entry behind it are on this site's credentials page. A quote that does not show it has either folded it into the number, left it out, or is not collecting it, and it is worth asking which. It should appear as its own line.
Whose payroll the cleaners are on changes what a bid has to cover. At 2026 rates, payroll taxes, workers' compensation and earned sick leave add about 18 to 20 percent on top of wages for a new New Jersey employer, by the arithmetic set out on this page. New Jersey's ABC test decides who counts as an employee, and what that can mean for a property owner is set out on this site's ABC test page.
"Weekly cleaning" is not a scope. Vacuuming weekly and restrooms daily is a different price from both weekly. Without a task-and-frequency schedule attached, two quotes cannot be compared at all, and there is nothing to point at when something is missed.
New Jersey adjusts its minimum wage each 1 January for any rise in the consumer price index. A twelve-month contract with no escalation provision either absorbs that or was priced expecting to. Ask which.
This company’s answers on sales tax and on who does the work are on the credentials page, the ABC test page covers what the employee question can mean for a property owner, and the task-by-task scope that will come before any number is set out on the contact page.
Questions
ISSA, the Association for Cleaning & Facility Solutions, lists general office cleaning at $0.09 to $0.17 per square foot in a pricing guide dated 4 December 2025, with no time unit beside the range. HomeGuide prints $0.08 to $0.20 for a standard office and Angi $0.10 to $0.20 for an office, also with no time unit, so those three national guides together run from $0.08 to $0.20 per square foot, and none prints a separate New Jersey rate. The New Jersey guides that print square-foot figures tie them to a visit or a month, so they cannot be laid against those ranges; they are set out under "The ranges, honestly" above. Every figure was read on 13 September 2026, and none is this company's price. Square footage alone does not set the number; the seven factors above are why.
Liverman Commercial Cleaning's New Jersey guide says ongoing janitorial services are usually priced monthly, based on scope and frequency, but the arithmetic underneath is hourly. New Jersey's minimum wage is $15.92 an hour for most workers as of 1 January 2026 — the rate for employers with fewer than six employees is lower — and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2025 median hourly wage for janitors and cleaners in the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area, which includes Bergen County and New York City, was $20.60. Add the employer's payroll taxes, workers' compensation and mandatory earned sick leave, and by this page's arithmetic a new employer pays about 18 to 20 percent above the wage at 2026 rates, on the assumptions set out above — before any supplies, equipment, insurance, supervision or margin.
Four things can each open a gap: whether the cleaners are employees or are paid as 1099 contractors or in cash; whether the frequency or scope is lower than you assumed; whether consumables are excluded; and whether sales tax has been accounted for. Ask each bidder to state their crew classification and attach a task-and-frequency schedule, and you will see which of them applies.
You will get a rough range over the phone if you know your cleanable square footage, restroom fixture count, floor types and the frequency you want. We will not give you a firm monthly number without walking it, because a firm number produced from a floor plan is a guess that can only be corrected later, upward or by doing less.
Every published guide read for this page prices medical space above general office: ISSA, for one, lists medical and healthcare facilities at $0.14 to $0.29 per square foot against $0.09 to $0.17 for general office. Bloodborne pathogen training, dedicated equipment per zone, EPA-registered disinfectants held to their labeled contact time, and per-visit documentation are recurring costs. The published ranges for the two overlap, so a clinical suite priced near general office rates is worth asking how those costs are covered.
Not per square foot at office rates. Post-construction work goes more slowly than routine cleaning, because drywall dust bonds to surfaces, adhesive and grout haze need dwell time and agitation, and stickers come off one at a time. It will be quoted from estimated crew-hours after a walkthrough. Published guides put it above routine cleaning: HomeAdvisor and Angi each print $0.15 to $0.60 per square foot for post-construction cleanup, against $0.10 to $0.20 for commercial cleaning generally at HomeAdvisor and for offices at Angi, none of it with a time unit and none of it this company's price.
By building type: offices across Bergen County, warehouses and distribution centers, medical and dental suites, and post-construction.
Sources
Set aside thirty to forty-five minutes in your building. A written scope will follow, then a fixed monthly figure with the labor hours behind it shown, so you can check the arithmetic yourself.
