Gutter cleaning and window washing cost in 2026

Gutter cleaning and window washing are the two services homeowners search for together and almost never buy together, which is the whole opportunity. Gutter cleaning runs $0.95 to $2.25 per linear foot and window washing $4 to $8 per pane in most US markets as of 2026. The reason to sell them on one visit is not the customer discount. It is that the ladder, the truck and the drive are paid for once and billed twice.

How much does gutter cleaning cost?

Gutter cleaning prices per linear foot, and the number climbs with every story. In 2026 the working bands are $0.95 to $2.25 per linear foot, with the national average landing somewhere between $200 and $360 per appointment depending on which cost aggregator you read. By height:

• One story: $145 to $250. A 125 to 200 foot roofline, worked from a step or extension ladder at grade, one person, 45 to 90 minutes.
• Two stories: $180 to $360. An extension ladder, more setups, a slower pace, and real fall exposure. This is where the price jump is largest relative to the extra work, and it should be.
• Three stories: $210 to $450 and up. Often a two-person crew, sometimes a lift or a rope descent system, and always more time.

Most single-family homes carry 125 to 200 linear feet of gutter, which is close enough to the perimeter of the roofline that you can estimate it from an address and a satellite view. That is why gutter cleaning is one of the few exterior services you can price over the phone with confidence, as long as you also ask about stories and guards.

Labor is roughly 70 percent of a gutter cleaning price, which is why the number moves with your market's wages more than with material cost. For context, BLS reports median pay for janitors and building cleaners at $17.71 an hour, or $36,840 a year, in its 2025 data. Loaded with payroll taxes, workers compensation, the truck and the ladders, a cleaning tech costs a business well above that raw wage, and exterior work carries higher comp rates than interior work because of the fall exposure.

How much does window washing cost?

Window washing prices per pane or per window, and the two are not the same thing. A double-hung window with an upper and lower sash is two panes. Quote in panes and you and the customer are counting the same objects.

• $4 to $8 per pane for standard glass, ground-floor exterior.
• $8 to $20 per window inside and out, with exterior-only near $6 to $13 and interior adding roughly $2 to $3 per window.
• $160 to $200 for a typical eight to ten window home, exterior only.
• $150 to $450 for a full residential job inside and out, with a national average near $221.
• Large picture and bay windows: $8 to $15 per pane, because reach and glass area both go up.

Then the add-ons, and these are where window jobs make or lose money. Screens run $5 to $10 each to remove, wash, dry and reinstall, and a house with twenty screens is a real block of labor nobody quoted. Hard water stain removal is $10 to $30 per window and it is a chemical restoration process, not a harder squeegee pass, so it needs its own line and its own expectation-setting. Storm windows are $30 to $40 each because there are three surfaces instead of two. Sills and tracks add $1 to $5 per window and are the single most commonly assumed-included item in the trade.

Second story and above adds $3 to $5 per window, whether you are climbing a ladder or running a water-fed pole from the ground. Water-fed pole work changes the economics substantially on a two-story house: no ladder setup per window, no walking the ladder around the perimeter, and a much better safety profile. If you are building a window route and you do not own a pole system yet, that is where the next equipment dollar goes.

Should I bundle gutter cleaning and window washing?

Yes, and the arithmetic is unusually clean. Sold separately, each job carries its own drive, its own setup, its own teardown and its own minimum. Sold on one visit, you pay for all of that once.

Run the numbers on a one-story home. Gutters alone: $185. Windows exterior alone: $175. Sold separately that is $360 in revenue against two drives and two setups. Sold together at a 12 percent bundle discount, the customer pays $317, and you spent one drive and one setup. Your revenue per hour on site goes up even though the invoice went down, because the unbillable half of the day disappeared. Most operators land on 10 to 15 percent as the discount that closes the bundle without giving away the gain.

The bundle also fixes the seasonality problem. Gutter work peaks in late spring and after leaf drop. Window work runs through the middle of the year and into the holidays. An operator selling both keeps a crew busy across more of the calendar than one selling either, and that is worth more than any single job's margin.

Pressure washing is the natural third leg, and the same logic applies. If you already have the truck and the water at the property, house wash, driveway and walkways are incremental revenue against a setup you already paid for. The pressure washing pricing calculator prices that side, and the exterior cleaning pricing guide covers how the three services fit together as a route.

What drives the price up?

Six drivers, roughly in order of impact on the number:

1. Stories and roof height. The single biggest lever. A second story typically adds 25 to 50 percent to a gutter price, and $3 to $5 per window on glass. It is not the extra feet, it is the setup time, the slower pace, and the fall exposure you are insuring against.
2. Roof pitch and landing. A steep pitch means the ladder cannot lean where you want it, and a walkout basement or a hillside lot adds effective ladder height on one elevation. Both are invisible on a satellite view and both are why you ask.
3. Gutter guards. Most systems must be unscrewed or unclipped, set aside, and reinstalled, adding 30 to 60 percent to the labor on that stop. Screw-down mesh is the worst; snap-in screen is the easiest. Ask what system it is before you quote a number.
4. Debris load. Dry leaves scoop out. Wet leaves and pine needles compact into a mat you dig out by hand, and a heavily clogged system can add 40 percent or more. A property under heavy pine is a different job than the same house under oak.
5. Glass condition and screens. On windows, hard water spotting, paint overspray, adhesive residue and construction film are all restoration work priced separately. Twenty screens at $5 to $10 each is $100 to $200 of labor that has to be on the quote.
6. Access. Shrubs planted against the foundation, a fenced yard with no gate wide enough for a ladder, a deck under a run, a pool along one elevation, parked cars. Every one of these slows the setup, and the customer never mentions them on the phone.

How much does region change the price?

Because labor is roughly 70 percent of the ticket, regional wage differences move exterior cleaning prices about as much as they move any trade. Expect the Northeast and West Coast metros to run 20 to 40 percent above the national bands, and much of the South and lower Midwest to run 10 to 20 percent below.

Climate changes the work itself, not just the wage. The Pacific Northwest and the Northeast have heavy leaf and needle load, which pushes gutter frequency to two or three visits a year and raises the debris surcharge. The desert Southwest has almost no leaf load but severe hard water, so window jobs there carry restoration line items that a Seattle operator rarely quotes. Coastal markets deal with salt film on glass and a faster re-soiling cycle, which is exactly the condition that sells a quarterly program instead of a one-time clean.

Do not import a national average into your own price book. Take the bands here, then verify locally: call three competitors in your market as a homeowner and get quotes on your own house, and cost out one real job of your own down to the minute. That is the only regional data that matters, and it takes an afternoon. Our methodology page explains how we build and check these ranges.

How should a pro quote this work?

Build a price book, then quote from it. Guessing at each job is how two identical houses get quotes $90 apart from the same company.

For gutters, the inputs are linear feet, stories, guards yes or no, and debris load. Set your per-foot rate for one story, define your multiplier for the second and third, add a flat adder for guard removal and reinstall, and hold a minimum charge of $125 to $175. Four inputs and a phone call gets you a defensible number.

For windows, the inputs are pane count, inside and out or exterior only, screens, stories, and glass condition. Count panes rather than windows, because that is the unit the labor follows. Build the count on the first visit, save it to the customer record, and every future quote for that house takes thirty seconds. The window cleaning quote calculator does this math from pane count and access, and the pressure washing prices guide covers the adjacent service most exterior operators add next.

Then decide whether chemicals and disposal are in the price or on the invoice. For gutter work, bagging and hauling debris is a real cost on a heavy property and it deserves a line. For windows, hard water treatment consumes product and time that a per-pane rate does not cover. Neither belongs buried in the base rate.

The last piece is turning the quote into a scheduled recurring visit rather than a one-time job, because a customer on a twice-a-year gutter program plus a twice-a-year window program is worth several times a one-off call. Claver for gutter companies and Claver for window cleaning hold the pane count, the linear feet, the guard type and the price book on the customer record, so next spring the job rebuilds itself instead of being re-quoted from scratch. Pricing starts at $1 for 14 days, then $19/mo.

Why safety is part of the price

Every dollar above a homeowner's DIY cost on this work is buying ladder competence and an insurance policy, and the rules are not optional. Under OSHA 1910.28(b)(1)(i), general industry requires fall protection for an employee on an unprotected side or edge four feet or more above a lower level. Construction work is governed by 1926.501 at six feet. A non-self-supporting ladder must extend at least three feet above the upper landing surface, and it belongs at roughly a 4 to 1 angle: one foot out from the wall for every four feet of working height.

Those rules translate directly into price. A second story means an extension ladder set correctly, moved more times, with a second person footing it on soft ground. A third story usually means a lift, a rope descent system, or a water-fed pole, plus the training that comes with them. IWCA is the industry body most professional window cleaning companies work through on safety practice and training, and being able to say so on a quote is worth real money against the guy with a bucket in a pickup.

It also sets the honest boundary with a homeowner. Anything reachable from a step ladder is genuinely a DIY job. Anything on a second story is a hospital visit waiting for somebody who does it twice a year, and falls from ladders remain one of the most common serious home-maintenance injuries. That is not a scare tactic to add to a quote, it is the actual reason the two-story price is higher than the one-story price, and saying it plainly closes more jobs than discounting does.