How much does it cost to start a cleaning business in Australia?

Most solo residential cleaners start for about $2,000–$4,000, and a small team or commercial setup typically needs $5,000–$10,000 or more (as at September 2026). The ABN is free, a business name is $47 a year, public liability insurance runs roughly $400–$850 a year for a sole trader, a national police check is about $56–$100, and the rest is equipment, consumables and a bit of marketing.

Do I need a licence to start a cleaning business in Australia?

No — there's no national or state cleaning licence for general domestic or commercial cleaning. You do need an ABN, and in Victoria a commercial cleaning business that supplies workers to client sites generally needs a labour hire licence (sole traders who clean alone are exempt). Clients will usually ask for public liability insurance and a national police check, and schools or childcare sites require a Working with Children Check.

How much should I charge per hour for cleaning?

Independent residential cleaners in Australia typically charge $35–$60 an hour with a two-hour minimum, and commercial office cleaning generally sits at $35–$50 an hour, rising to $45–$65+ for medical or industrial sites (as at September 2026). Price from your costs, not the competition: a casual award-rate cleaner costs you about $38 an hour including super, before insurance, travel and consumables, so anything under about $50 an hour leaves very little margin once you employ staff.

Do I need insurance to be a self-employed cleaner?

Public liability insurance isn't legally compulsory for a sole trader cleaner, but it's essential in practice: real estate agents, strata managers and commercial clients will ask for a certificate of currency before you start, usually for $5–$20 million of cover. Expect to pay roughly $400–$850 a year as a sole trader (as at September 2026), and add workers compensation the day you employ anyone.

Can I start a cleaning business with no experience?

Yes — no qualification is required and most owners learn on the job. Start with residential cleans where the stakes are lower, build a written checklist for every property, take before-and-after photos, and add end-of-lease or commercial work once your results are consistent.

How to Start a Cleaning Business in Australia

You can start a cleaning business in Australia with a free ABN, public liability insurance, a national police check and a few hundred dollars of gear — most solo operators are trading for $2,000–$4,000, and there's no licence required to clean. The hard parts come after the paperwork: choosing between homes and offices, pricing so you actually make money, and finding clients who stay. Here's the whole process with current costs and rates (as at September 2026).

Residential or commercial? Decide before you buy anything

The two markets need different gear, hours and sales approaches, so pick a lane first.

	Residential	Commercial
Typical clients	Homes, end-of-lease cleans, Airbnb turnovers, NDIS participants	Offices, medical rooms, gyms, strata common areas, schools
Hours	Weekdays, daytime	Early mornings, evenings, weekends
Pricing	Per hour or fixed price per job; two-hour minimum is standard	Per visit or per square metre on a recurring contract
Getting paid	On the day or within the week	Invoices on 14–30 day terms; tenders for bigger sites
Startup gear	Basic kit and your own car	Commercial vacuums, floor equipment, more chemicals
Compliance	Insurance and a police check	Insurance certificates, police checks for every cleaner, site inductions, labour hire licence in Victoria if you use workers

Residential is the easiest way in: low equipment cost, daytime hours, fast payment, and one happy client on a street often turns into three. Commercial pays more per contract and gives you predictable recurring revenue, but clients expect paperwork before you start and will chase you on quality every visit. Plenty of owners start residential, then add a couple of small offices once they've a reliable second cleaner.

Within either lane, a niche helps you charge more: end-of-lease (bond) cleans, carpet and upholstery, window cleaning, pressure washing, Airbnb turnovers or NDIS-funded cleaning.

What it costs to start

The honest range is $2,000–$10,000, and where you land depends almost entirely on whether you're cleaning alone or setting up for a team.

Item	Solo residential	Small team / commercial
ABN	Free	Free
Business name (only if you trade under a name that isn't your own)	$47 for 1 year or $108 for 3	Same
Public liability insurance	$400–$850 a year	$750–$1,200+ a year for a bundled policy with equipment cover
National police check	About $56 through the AFP, or roughly $50–$100 through accredited online providers	One per cleaner
Equipment and first consumables	$600–$1,500	$2,000–$5,000
Vehicle	Your own car	Signage or a second vehicle
Marketing	Free Google Business Profile, cards, flyers	Add a simple website and uniforms
Realistic total	About $2,000–$4,000	About $5,000–$10,000+

Two things soften the numbers. Equipment costing under $20,000 can be deducted in full in the year you buy it under the instant asset write-off, which the 2026-27 Budget made permanent for businesses turning over less than $10 million. And you don't need everything on day one — buy the residential kit, hire a floor scrubber for your first commercial job, and let paying work fund the upgrades. Our startup costs guide covers the buffer you should hold beyond the setup costs.

Set up the legal basics

1. Get an ABN. It's free and takes minutes. Most cleaners start as sole traders and move to a company once they employ staff or chase commercial contracts, where the liability protection matters more. Follow our step-by-step ABN guide if you haven't done it before.

2. Register a business name if you need one. Trading as "Jane Nguyen" needs nothing extra. Trading as "Sparkle Clean Brisbane" means registering the name with ASIC — $47 for one year or $108 for three. Check it's available on ASIC's register and as a .com.au domain first.

3. Decide on GST. Registration is compulsory once your GST turnover reaches $75,000 — you have 21 days from realising you'll cross the line. Below that it's optional, and the decision cuts both ways: registering lets you claim back the GST on your equipment and fuel, but adds 10% to your prices for residential clients who can't claim it. Commercial clients generally don't care either way as long as your invoices are correct.

4. Open a separate bank account and put a fixed percentage of every payment aside for tax from the first job. Sole traders pay income tax on their net profit, and nothing is withheld for you along the way.

Insurance and checks clients will ask for

Public liability covers you if you damage a client's property or someone is injured because of your work — a bleach spill on carpet, a slip on a wet floor. Most commercial clients specify $10 million or $20 million of cover; a sole trader doing domestic work can usually get $5 million for around $400–$600 a year, with $10 million typically $400–$700 and bundled packages (liability plus equipment and personal accident cover) around $750–$1,200. Turnover drives the premium more than anything else.

Also consider portable equipment cover (your vacuum walks out of an unlocked van), personal accident or income protection (sole traders don't get sick leave), and workers compensation, which becomes compulsory under your state or territory scheme the moment you employ anyone. Business insurance explained walks through what each policy actually covers.

National police check. Real estate agents, strata managers, commercial clients and NDIS participants routinely ask for one, so get it before you start pitching. It costs $56 through the Australian Federal Police or roughly $50–$100 through ACIC-accredited online providers, and every cleaner you later hire should have one.

Working with Children Check. Required if you clean schools, childcare centres or similar sites. It's state-based and the name and process vary, so check your state's scheme.

Licences: what you do and don't need

There's no cleaning licence in Australia. Three things can still catch you out.

Labour hire licensing. In Victoria, most businesses that supply cleaners to commercial premises need a labour hire licence from the Labour Hire Authority, and the clients who use them must only engage licensed providers. Sole traders who do all the cleaning themselves, single-director companies where the director does the work, and domestic-only cleaners are exempt. Maximum penalties in 2026-27 are $167,280 for an individual and $669,120 for a company, and they apply to the client as well as the cleaner. Queensland runs its own labour hire licensing scheme that can also capture cleaning businesses supplying workers to client sites, so check with Labour Hire Licensing Queensland before you take on staff there.

Work health and safety. You're responsible for your own safety and your workers'. That means keeping Safety Data Sheets for every chemical, colour-coding cloths to avoid cross-contamination, safe manual handling and no improvised ladders for window work. Commercial sites will ask for a safe work method statement and proof of induction.

Council and chemical rules. Home-based businesses have local rules about storage, signage and vehicles, and you can't tip chemical waste down a stormwater drain. A quick call to your council settles both.

How to price cleaning jobs

Underpricing is the mistake that kills cleaning businesses, and it usually starts with copying a competitor's ad.

Work	Typical charge-out (as at September 2026)
Residential regular clean, independent cleaner	$35–$60 an hour, two-hour minimum; experienced operators in capital cities charge more
Commercial office	$35–$50 an hour
Medical, industrial or specialist sites	$45–$65+ an hour
After-hours commercial work	Add 15–25%
Long-term contracts (three or more visits a week)	Clients expect 15–30% off the casual rate

Three ways to structure it:

Per hour is simple and transparent but punishes you for getting faster.
Per job — a fixed price after a walkthrough — is better for regular homes and end-of-lease cleans. Quote from your target hourly rate multiplied by realistic hours, plus consumables and travel, and never quote an end-of-lease clean without seeing the property.
Per visit or per square metre is how commercial contracts work. Price the first month conservatively, time every visit, and adjust at review.

Now check your floor. If you employ a casual cleaner at the award's Level 1 rate of $33.85 an hour, super at 12% takes that to about $37.91 before workers compensation, travel between jobs, chemicals, insurance, quoting time and your own wage. Charging $40 an hour for that worker means you're subsidising the client. Employing staff only stacks up somewhere north of $50 an hour, which is why so many solo cleaners find their profit falls when they first hire.

Finding your first clients

Cleaning is a trust purchase, so your first ten clients come from proof, not advertising.

Google Business Profile on day one. Free, and reviews are the engine of local cleaning work. Ask every client for one on the day you finish.
Real estate agents and property managers. They need reliable end-of-lease and vacate cleans constantly. Walk in with a card, your insurance certificate and police check, and offer to re-clean free if a bond inspection fails.
Strata managers. Common-area cleaning of small apartment blocks is recurring, low-drama work that's often awarded to whoever turns up and quotes properly.
Airtasker. Good for reviews and filling gaps, poor for margins: the platform takes 12.5–20% of each task plus GST depending on your tier, dropping to 1.9% for repeat clients (as at September 2026). Use it to build a track record, then move clients to direct bookings.
Local groups and letterboxes. Suburb Facebook groups, flyers to small shopfronts and offices, Airbnb hosts and aged-care or NDIS coordinators.

Cluster your jobs by suburb and day so you're cleaning rather than driving. How to get your first 10 customers has scripts and offers you can adapt.

Hiring cleaners

Hire when you're turning down work, not when you're tired. Your two options are employees or genuine subcontractors — and the second is riskier than it looks.

Employees are covered by the Cleaning Services Award 2020 (MA000022). Minimum rates from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026:

Classification	Full-time / part-time hourly	Casual hourly (includes 25% loading)
Level 1	$27.08	$33.85
Level 2	$27.97	$34.96
Level 3	$29.45	$36.81

On top of that, the award sets penalties for weekends and public holidays (150%, 200% and 250% of the ordinary rate for full-time and part-time staff), loadings for shifts starting before 6am or finishing after 6pm, and minimum shift lengths — check the Fair Work pay guide before you roster anyone. You'll also pay 12% super, and from 1 July 2026 it must be paid every payday rather than quarterly, alongside Single Touch Payroll reporting and workers compensation. Our hiring your first employee checklist covers the setup.

Contractors. Paying cleaners as ABN contractors to avoid payroll is common in the industry and often unlawful. A cleaner who works set hours, under your direction, with your equipment and only for you is almost certainly an employee, and sham contracting attracts serious penalties. If you do engage genuine contractors — say, a carpet specialist you refer jobs to — cleaning is a taxable payments reporting industry, so you'll lodge a Taxable payments annual report (TPAR) with the ATO each year listing what you paid them.

Equipment list

Residential starter kit: a commercial-grade barrel or backpack vacuum, flat mop with spare heads and bucket, colour-coded microfibre cloths (one colour per zone), spray bottles and a carry caddy, all-purpose cleaner, glass cleaner, bathroom cleaner, degreaser, disinfectant, scrubbing brushes and non-scratch pads, squeegee, extendable duster, gloves, bin liners, a folding step and a basic first-aid kit.

Add for commercial: a wet/dry vacuum, hazard signs, a trolley, a Safety Data Sheet folder, hi-vis and enclosed footwear, and hire a floor scrubber or polisher until you have contracts that justify buying one. Open a trade account with one cleaning supplier for pricing and delivery, and keep every receipt.

Common mistakes

Pricing off a competitor's ad instead of your own costs and target income.
No written scope. "Clean the house" guarantees disputes. Use a checklist per property, take before-and-after photos, and put cancellation and payment terms in writing.
Skipping insurance until a commercial client asks for the certificate.
Taking every job everywhere. Travel time is unpaid; tight suburb clusters are where the profit is.
Scaling on contractors to dodge payroll, then discovering sham contracting and labour hire rules.
Not banking tax and GST as you go.

Key takeaways

A solo residential cleaning business costs about $2,000–$4,000 to start; a team or commercial setup runs $5,000–$10,000+ (as at September 2026).
You need an ABN, public liability insurance and a national police check — but no cleaning licence. Victorian commercial cleaners with staff need a labour hire licence.
Register for GST once turnover reaches $75,000; below that, weigh the equipment credits against a 10% price rise for residential clients.
Price from your cost floor: an award-rate casual costs about $38 an hour including super before any other overhead.
Real estate agents, strata managers and a strong Google Business Profile beat paid ads for early clients.
Pay staff under the Cleaning Services Award and be very careful about calling cleaners contractors.

Where to get help

Australian Business Register (abr.gov.au) — free ABN registration.
ASIC Connect — business name registration and renewals.
ATO (ato.gov.au) — GST registration, TPAR, payday super and Single Touch Payroll.
Fair Work Ombudsman (fairwork.gov.au) — the Cleaning Services Award pay guide and Pay and Conditions Tool.
Labour Hire Authority (Victoria) and Labour Hire Licensing Queensland — whether your commercial cleaning business needs a licence.
Your state WHS regulator and workers compensation scheme — SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe Victoria, WorkSafe Queensland and equivalents.
business.gov.au — the Australian Business Licence and Information Service (ABLIS) for council and state requirements in your area.
Your accountant and an insurance broker — for structure, GST timing and the right level of liability cover for the clients you're targeting.