Professional Apartment Cleaning Cost in Vancouver: What to Expect

Unit size sets the baseline because it decides how many surfaces, fixtures, and corners a cleaner has to bring back to standard. Bathrooms and kitchens carry most of the labour, which is why a one-bedroom with two bathrooms often prices closer to a two-bedroom than its floor area suggests.

The bands below cover a standard maintenance clean: kitchen surfaces and exterior appliance faces, bathrooms scrubbed and disinfected, floors vacuumed and washed, dusting throughout, mirrors and glass, and bins emptied. They assume a unit in normal lived-in condition with reasonable access to surfaces.

Two things move a quote above its band. The first is condition. A unit that has not had a thorough clean in six months needs deep cleaning work first, which is a different price point. The second is clutter: cleaners price the time to clean surfaces, not the time to clear them, so a countertop covered in items either costs more or gets cleaned around.

Vancouver apartment cleaning rates run $40 to $60 per cleaner per hour. Flat rates bundle the same work into one number based on unit size and scope. The structures are not interchangeable, and the comparison mistake that costs people the most is simple: a two-person team booked for three hours is six billable hours, not three. A $50 hourly rate quoted per cleaner is $100 an hour on site.

For planning, a standard maintenance clean takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes per 100 square feet. A 600 square foot one-bedroom is a two to three hour job for one cleaner. A 1,000 square foot two-bedroom with two bathrooms is closer to four hours. Deep cleans run about double those times.

Run it once and the answer shows itself. A 700 square foot one-bedroom is two and a half to three and a half hours of work. At $50 per cleaner per hour that is $125 to $175, landing just under the $130 to $180 flat band. Hourly wins on the good day. The moment the unit needs an extra half hour it does not, and on a flat rate that half hour is not your problem. That is the real case for flat rate on recurring work: you know the number before the visit and the company carries the risk of a slow one. Hourly earns its place when scope is genuinely unknown, such as a first visit to a unit nobody has assessed, and booking hourly once then switching to flat is a common move.

This is the distinction most Vancouver pricing guides skip, and it is the one that explains why your quote does not match the range you found online. Our condo cleaning bands run $150 to $200 for a one-bedroom, $200 to $280 for a two-bedroom and $280 to $400 for a three-bedroom or penthouse, where comparable apartment cleaning work sits at $130 to $180, $170 to $250 and $220 to $280 for the same floor area. The gap is modest at the bottom and wide at the top, because finishes and building protocol scale faster than square footage does.

The gap is real work, not a premium for the postal code. Marble and natural stone need pH-neutral products; the wrong cleaner etches them permanently. Engineered hardwood cannot take the water volume that tile shrugs off. Floor-to-ceiling glass in a Yaletown or Coal Harbour unit is a slower job than a punched window, and integrated cabinetry has more edges per linear foot than builder-grade boxes.

Then there is the building. Strata councils commonly ask for proof of liability insurance before granting a contractor access, and access itself is scheduled rather than assumed. That overhead is priced into a condo quote by companies that work in towers regularly, and quietly absent from quotes by companies that do not.

Nobody enjoys paying for a cleaner to stand in a lobby, but that time is real and somebody covers it. In a high-rise, a visit can start with circling for visitor parking, then a concierge sign-in, then waiting on a service elevator that a mover has booked for the afternoon. Twenty to forty minutes disappears before a single surface is touched.

There are three ways a company handles this. It builds the time into a flat rate, which is why tower quotes read higher. It bills the time hourly, which surprises people. Or it ignores the time and shortens the clean, which is the version you find out about later, in the corners.

Occupied units in a strata add a scheduling layer. Under BC's Standard Bylaws, an authorized person needs 48 hours' written notice to enter a strata lot at a reasonable time, per the Province of British Columbia. That does not touch your own suite; you just let the cleaner in. What actually drives the tower calendar is separate: most stratas run their own elevator and loading-bay booking rules for common property, so a visit that misses its window costs everybody a day.

Not every Vancouver apartment carries this overhead. A West End walk-up has no elevator queue, though it may have three flights of stairs and no loading zone. Suburban townhouses avoid the problem entirely, which is part of why the same two-bedroom prices differently across the region.

Frequency discounts exist because a maintained unit is faster to clean. Less buildup on shower glass, less grease film on a range hood, fewer neglected corners. So the more often you book, the less each visit costs. Weekly carries the deepest discount, biweekly typically saves 10 to 15 percent against a one-time booking, and monthly saves 5 to 10 percent.

The per-visit discount is not the number that matters, though. Run the annual math on a one-bedroom at a $155 one-time rate. Monthly service at 5 to 10 percent off is roughly $140 to $147 per visit across 12 visits, so about $1,700 to $1,800 a year. Biweekly at 10 to 15 percent off is roughly $132 to $140 across 26 visits, so about $3,400 to $3,600. Weekly at 15 to 20 percent off is roughly $124 to $132 across 52 visits, so about $6,400 to $6,900, close to double the biweekly total.

So the real question is not which is cheaper, it is which standard you want to hold. Monthly service keeps a unit presentable but lets buildup accumulate between visits, especially in Vancouver bathrooms where humidity works against you year-round. Biweekly holds a genuine standard. Weekly is worth it for households where the unit is working hard, such as a shared two-bedroom or a home office that doubles as a living room.

A common and cost-effective pattern: book one deep clean to reset the unit, then hold that standard with biweekly maintenance visits at the recurring rate. You pay the higher number once instead of paying a recovery premium every few months. Our complete Vancouver apartment cleaning guide covers what a recurring plan includes room by room.

Start with tax. Residential cleaning is a taxable supply, so 5 percent GST applies in British Columbia. A $180 two-bedroom visit is $189 out the door. A quote that omits GST is not the cheaper quote, it is the less complete one, and comparing a tax-inclusive number against a tax-exclusive one is how people end up surprised.

Next, check the arithmetic on a suspiciously low hourly rate. BC's general minimum wage rose to $18.25 per hour on June 1, 2026 according to BC's Ministry of Labour. Once you add payroll costs, WorkSafeBC premiums, liability insurance, supplies, travel between Metro Vancouver jobs, and unbillable tower access time, a two-person crew quoted at under $40 per hour total is not covering its own costs. Something is being left out, and usually it is coverage.

That leads to the third check. WorkSafeBC is blunt about it: hire a contractor who is not registered, or not in good standing, and you can be on the hook for the premiums they owe. The thing that removes that exposure is a clearance letter addressed to you, confirming good standing for the period of the contract. They are free and take a minute online. For a $150 apartment clean it feels like overkill. For the one visit where somebody gets hurt in your unit, it is the only paperwork that matters.

Fourth, read the inclusions rather than the total. Ask what is inside a standard visit and what is billed on top. At P&J the oven interior is an add-on, not part of a standard clean; it is only automatic on move-out and move-in jobs. We say so upfront because it is the single most common assumption people bring to a quote. Interior windows, balcony sweeps and inside-cabinet work are worth pinning down in writing the same way. If you want the room-by-room version, our apartment cleaning checklist has it, and our Vancouver house cleaning cost guide covers the same ground for detached homes.