Most owners get three janitorial bids that are wildly different and no explanation of why. Here is exactly how the math works, so you can compare apples to apples.
The three things that set your price
Every legitimate janitorial quote is built from square footage, cleaning frequency, and the production rate a crew can realistically hit in your building.
A wide-open warehouse cleans far faster per square foot than a medical suite with twelve exam rooms. That difference — not a magic per-foot number — is what moves your monthly total.
- Square footage of the actual cleanable area (not the lease number)
- Frequency: 5x/week, 3x/week, or weekly
- Production rate: how many square feet per labor hour your facility allows
- Supplies and consumables — paper, liners, chemicals
Typical ranges you can sanity-check against
For a standard office in the 5,000–15,000 sq ft range cleaned five nights a week, most markets land somewhere between $0.09 and $0.18 per square foot per month.
Specialty work is priced separately: carpet extraction and strip & wax are project services quoted per square foot, not folded into the nightly rate.
Why the cheapest bid usually costs more
A bid that is 40% under the others is almost always understaffed hours. The crew gets 90 minutes for a three-hour building, quality slides in month two, and you are re-bidding by month five.
Ask any bidder how many labor hours per visit they budgeted. An honest company will tell you the number without hesitating.