14 July 2026 · Robin Oruman

How much should a window cleaner earn per hour in the UK? · 2026 rates and reality

Real UK window-cleaner hourly earnings by round type, region, and experience. What the honest numbers look like once you deduct van, insurance, equipment, and dead time between jobs. Includes a plain calculator for figuring out your own hourly rate.

The honest UK answer for a solo self-employed window cleaner in 2026 is £30-£50/hour gross while working, which lands at £20-£35/hour net once you deduct van, insurance, equipment, tax, and the unpaid time you spend on quotes, admin, and driving between jobs. Every operator I talk to has a different answer depending on region, round type, and how honest they are with their bookkeeping. This guide walks through the real maths.

I run a small round in the East of England and I built the Squeegify quote widget. Numbers below come from talking with 40+ UK operators over the past 18 months and from my own accounts.

The gross-per-hour numbers, honestly

By round type:

- Traditional (ladder-and-squeegee) domestic rounds — £30-£40/hour while working. Slower per property but historically higher trust with older customers. - Water-fed pole domestic rounds — £40-£55/hour while working. Faster per property, especially on Georgian and Victorian terraces where ladder access is fiddly. - Commercial / shopfront rounds — £35-£60/hour, wildly variable. Depends heavily on account size and contract terms. - Solar panel + gutter add-on visits — £50-£80/hour on specific jobs. Sporadic, needs a marketing effort to find.

Regional adjustment (rough thumb):

- London + SE — add 15-25% - North + Wales — subtract 10-15% - Rural / low-density areas — subtract 10% (more driving) - Coastal / South-West — market-dependent, often similar to national average

The "while working" trap

That gross-per-hour number is almost always quoted as "when I'm actually cleaning." Once you count everything else, it's a different picture.

A typical week for a solo operator:

- 25 hours actually cleaning windows - 8 hours driving between jobs - 4 hours quoting + admin + invoicing - 3 hours equipment maintenance + van cleaning + errands

Total: 40 hours working. Only 25 of them are paid.

So if you're billing £40/hour on paper, your real gross-per-hour is closer to £25/hour across your full week. Which is fine — but it's the number you need for pricing and lifestyle decisions, not the paper number.

Deductions that matter

For a solo operator running one van in 2026 (rough monthly totals):

- Van — £280 (finance + fuel + tax + MOT + repairs, blended) - Water-fed system / poles / kit — £40 (amortised · £2k of gear over 4 years) - Public liability insurance — £25 - Chemicals + pure water top-ups — £30 - Phone + internet + subscriptions (including any quoting software) — £50 - Accountant + bookkeeping — £40 - Uniforms + van sign-writing (amortised) — £15

Total fixed costs: £480/month. Or £120/week.

If you're grossing £1,000/week (which is a solid solo round), you're netting ~£880 before tax. That's £22/hour on the "actually cleaning" number, or £17-19/hour on the full-week number.

Take another 20-25% off for income tax + NI (assuming you're in the basic-rate band) and you're taking home about £14/hour as a self-employed solo window cleaner working a full week.

Compare to national living wage (~£12/hour in 2026 for over-21s) — a well-run round beats it, but not by as much as the paper gross suggests.

How to increase what you actually take home

Three levers in order of impact:

1. Cut dead time between jobs

Every hour driving is £0/hour. The single biggest lever is rounding density — cleaning multiple houses on the same street in the same visit.

Practical: when quoting a new customer, always check if you already have three or more customers on their street. If not, quote them 10-15% higher to cover the extra driving. This doesn't lose you many customers (they've already decided you're the right cleaner) but it protects the hourly rate.

2. Cut admin time

The four biggest admin sinks:

- Writing quotes in evenings (fix: instant-quote widget on your website) - Chasing invoices (fix: automatic invoicing + payment link at time of clean) - Booking new customers (fix: online booking that lets them pick a slot) - Missed / rescheduled visits (fix: SMS reminder 24h before)

A properly set-up admin flow saves 3-5 hours a week. That's a full working day back. My instant-quote widget guide covers this in detail.

3. Push per-property price on new customers

Existing customers hate price rises. New customers don't know your old rates. Every three months, review what you're charging new sign-ups. If it's the same rate you charged three years ago, you've silently taken a pay cut against inflation.

Rule of thumb: new customer prices should track UK inflation +2% per year. If you started at £15 per property in 2020, you should be around £22-25 today.

Team dynamics

The moment you take on a second cleaner, the maths changes. Employed staff bring:

- ~£13-15/hour cost (2026 UK minimum for over-21s is around £12.50, plus NI + holiday + pension) - Van + equipment share cost - Management time you now spend - Sick days + no-shows

The break-even is roughly: the second cleaner needs to bill at least £24/hour of actual work-time for you to net anything. Which is why most two-person rounds still struggle unless they've solved the density problem.

Realistic solo-round earnings targets

Rough benchmarks for a solo operator running one van:

- Year 1 (building round) — £15-20k take-home - Year 2-3 (stable round, ~150 customers) — £22-28k take-home - Year 4+ (dense round, ~250 customers, add-ons) — £30-40k take-home - Year 4+ with a second cleaner — £40-55k take-home combined (business owner nets less than solo of same size, more from second van + van-sharing)

Not life-changing money. Above the median UK income (around £29k in 2026), especially if you're valuing the outdoor time + flexibility + no-one-tells-you-what-to-do premium.

The hourly-rate calculator

If you want to know your own real hourly rate, do this exercise for a typical week:

1. Actual cleaning time — hours you spent squeegeeing or poling 2. Everything else — driving, quoting, admin, van cleaning, equipment 3. Total revenue collected that week — actual money in the account 4. Total costs paid that week — fuel, chemicals, insurance, subscriptions, tax provision (25%)

Real hourly rate = (revenue − costs) ÷ (cleaning + everything-else hours).

Most operators are shocked the first time they do this. It's usually 30-40% lower than what they think. The good news: it's also fixable — every hour of "everything else" you shave off goes straight to your take-home.