How much should pressure washers charge?
Pressure washing is almost always quoted as a flat price per job (sometimes built up from a per-square-foot rate), not an hourly number the client sees — but knowing your real effective hourly rate keeps a big, dirty, or multi-surface job from quietly becoming underpaid. Set your real hourly rate here and use the default visit length as a starting point for a typical single-family house exterior + driveway combo.
Estimate your rate
A starting point for pressure washing — adjust to your own numbers.
~$130.00 / visit
Based on a 120-minute visit at an effective rate of ~$65.00/hour. Formula: (target income + expenses) ÷ (billable hours/week × 50 working weeks), converted to a per-visit price. This is a starting estimate, not a guarantee — adjust for local market rates.
What moves the rate
- Pricing method — most residential jobs are quoted per square foot ($0.15-$0.80/sqft depending on surface and soil level) or as a flat project rate ($100-$1,400); hourly ($50-$160/hr) is mainly used for time-intensive work like gutter cleaning or graffiti removal
- Surface type — driveways/concrete, house siding, decks, fences, and roofs all have different safe pressure levels, cleaning times, and chemical needs, so a multi-surface job commands a higher combined price than any single surface alone
- Soft washing vs. pressure washing — siding, roofs, and delicate surfaces need low-pressure soft washing with specialized chemicals rather than high-pressure spraying, which adds equipment and chemical cost beyond a driveway-only job
- Square footage and soil level — heavy mold, algae, oil stains, or years of neglect add pretreatment time and chemical volume beyond a standard clean
- Bundling — combining a house wash with a driveway/walkway/deck in one visit is a common upsell and usually priced at a discount per surface versus booking them separately
- One-time vs. recurring — many solo operators offer annual or biannual maintenance contracts at a discount to lock in repeat revenue
- Local cost of living and competitor rates
- Minimum job fee — most operators charge $100-150 minimum regardless of square footage to cover drive time, setup, and water/chemical costs
baseHourly of $80 sits just above the nationally cited $50-160/hr range's $78/hr average, and the 120-minute (2-hour) default visit length models a typical single-family house exterior + driveway combo job for a solo operator with commercial-grade equipment, landing the calculator's default output ($160) near the lower-middle of the $120-450 typical per-job range (a standalone driveway averages $155-190, a full house wash $170-360, and combo jobs commonly run $250-450) — actual jobs should be quoted per square foot or as a flat project rate using the factors above, with this calculator mainly protecting against underpricing large, heavily-soiled, or multi-surface jobs. The $5,000/yr expense default reflects a properly-equipped (not bare-minimum) solo rig: general liability insurance (commonly $500-1,500/yr for this trade), commercial auto insurance if running a dedicated work truck/trailer (roughly $1,200-3,000/yr, prorated down for a solo operator's usage), and amortized equipment/consumables (commercial-grade gas pressure washer, surface cleaner, 12V soft-wash system, hose reels, and ongoing chemical replenishment, which together commonly run $2,000-4,000 to acquire and a few hundred dollars a year to maintain and replace) plus scheduling/quoting software (~$300-500/yr) — higher than a lean trade like window washing since pressure washing typically requires a dedicated vehicle/trailer setup and a wider mix of surface-specific chemicals and attachments.