Service price calculator
Price any job from crew, hours, materials, and overhead – then see how it stacks up against real Tofu Field Service invoices for cleaning and lawn care.
How to calculate a service price
What service jobs actually bill for: Tofu invoice data
A cleaning business on Tofu bills a median of $461 per invoice, with half of all businesses between $279 and $889. Lawn care and landscaping businesses bill a median of $921 – from $433 for a mowing-only account to $1,241 for landscaping work. These are whole invoices, so one can cover several visits or line items.
Median invoice by service type
| Service | Businesses | Invoices | Typical low (p25) | Median invoice | Typical high (p75) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residential cleaning | 436 | 31,264 | $256 | $385 | $761 |
| Deep clean | 382 | 24,181 | $304 | $454 | $722 |
| Move-out cleaning | 259 | 23,488 | $230 | $347 | $475 |
| Commercial cleaning | 639 | 55,922 | $303 | $580 | $1,167 |
| Window cleaning | 142 | 12,798 | $352 | $620 | $942 |
| Post-construction cleaning | 86 | 4,362 | $323 | $507 | $1,034 |
| Lawn care (mowing) | 700 | 61,392 | $218 | $433 | $962 |
| Lawn maintenance | 1,096 | 68,744 | $333 | $766 | $1,885 |
| Landscaping | 1,479 | 132,919 | $500 | $1,241 | $3,125 |
| Irrigation | 318 | 28,274 | $560 | $1,220 | $2,825 |
| Fertilization | 84 | 4,759 | $202 | $386 | $897 |
Source: Tofu invoice data, 2024–2026, USD only. Median of each business's average invoice; sub-trades with fewer than 30 businesses are not shown.
Recurring work is not cheaper per invoice: cleaning businesses on recurring plans bill $475 against $436 for one-off jobs. In lawn care the gap runs the other way – $551 recurring against $1,395 one-off – because one-off invoices include landscaping projects, not because pros discount repeat visits.
How to bid a job
To bid a job correctly, price your costs first and your competitors second. Start with the scope – what is included, what is extra, how many visits – then work through five numbers. Each one is a field in the calculator above.
- Crew hours – workers × hours on site, plus drive time. A 3-hour job for two people with a 30-minute drive is 7 crew hours, not 6.
- Loaded labor cost – wage plus payroll taxes, insurance, and benefits. In construction those extras average about 44 cents on every wage dollar (BLS, June 2026).
- Materials at cost – the margin covers them; marking them up on top is double counting unless you price parts separately.
- Overhead per billable hour – monthly overhead divided by the hours you actually bill.
- Margin and minimum – divide cost by one minus the margin, and never go below the minimum charge that covers a trip.
How much should I charge for my services?
Charge your job cost divided by one minus your target margin. On the default job – $390 in labor, materials, and overhead – a 20% margin gives $488. The same job at other margins is in the table below. Need an instant quote to hand the customer? The receipt above is the quote – turn it into an estimate with one click.
| Target margin | Price | Profit | Markup | Per crew hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10% | $433 | $43 | 11% | $62 |
| 15% | $459 | $69 | 18% | $66 |
| 20% | $488 | $98 | 25% | $70 |
| 25% | $520 | $130 | 33% | $74 |
| 30% | $557 | $167 | 43% | $80 |
| 35% | $600 | $210 | 54% | $86 |
| 40% | $650 | $260 | 67% | $93 |
Default job: 7 crew hours at $25, $40 in materials, $25 an hour of overhead – $390 in cost.
How to calculate overhead per hour
Overhead is everything you pay whether or not the crew is working: rent, trucks, insurance, software, your own salary. Michael Stone puts it at 25% to 54% of revenue for contractors, with 8% net profit as the floor (Markup & Profit). Divide it by the hours you bill, not the hours you pay.
| Monthly overhead | Divided by | Overhead per hour | On the default job (7 crew hours) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $6,000 | 240 billable hours | $25.00 | $175 |
| $6,000 | 346 paid hours | $17.34 | $121 |
| Gap | – | $7.66 | $54 underpriced |
Job costing: check the bid against the real cost
Job costing is comparing what you bid with what the job actually cost once it is done. The formula is the one above – labor + materials + overhead – run twice: once with estimated hours, once with real ones.
The default job bid at 7 crew hours costs $390 and earns $98. If the crew spends 8.5 hours, labor rises to $213 and overhead to $213, cost to $465, and profit falls to $23 – a 5% margin on a bid that promised 20%. One extra hour and a half is the difference between a good job and a free one.
How to turn a bid into a flat rate
A flat rate is a bid you have already done. Price your standard tasks here once – a deep clean of a 3-bedroom home, a spring cleanup, a water heater swap – and save each as an item with a set price. Flat rate beats time-and-materials when the job is repeatable and you know your hours; keep hourly for diagnostics and unknowns. In Tofu, saved prices live in the price book, so every quote uses the same number.
How to turn the price into an estimate
The receipt above is already an estimate. Here is the default job as the customer sees it:
| Line item | Price |
|---|---|
| Deep clean – 2 cleaners, about 3 hours | $448 |
| Cleaning supplies | $40 |
| Total | $488 |
Overhead and profit do not appear as lines – they are inside the labor price, where they belong. Build it in the free estimate generator, or send it from Tofu as an estimate the customer approves on their phone; the invoice copies the same lines when the job is done.
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Check out more free resources
Free estimate generator
Turn the price above into a branded estimate with labor and materials lines.
Open the tool
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Markup calculator
Price a single part or line with markup and margin.
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House cleaning cost calculator
Detailed cleaning pricing by home size and job type.
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How much to charge as a contractor
Rates and job prices from real invoices.
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Service pricing FAQ
Price it once. Send the estimate in a tap.
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