What commercial cleaning costs in Eastern Ontario

How to read these ranges before you budget

Recurring janitorial work is quoted per square foot per month, not per square foot per visit, because the monthly figure already has visit frequency built into it. A rate quoted without a frequency attached is meaningless, and it is the most common reason two cleaning quotes look impossible to compare.

Two identical 10,000-square-foot offices can differ by more than double on the same room list, purely on how many nights a week the crew attends and how many washroom fixtures there are. That is why every table on this page states the frequency it assumes. If you take a number from here into a budget, carry the frequency with it.

These are published market benchmarks for Ontario in 2026, cross-checked against the hourly labour rate so the tables agree with each other. They describe the middle of the market, not your building, and they are not what Emerald Cleaners would charge you. Facilities at the edges of the market fall outside these ranges regularly.

• Use the ranges to sanity-check whether a bid you have received is broadly reasonable.
• Do not use them to hold any cleaning company, including us, to a price.
• Confirm the frequency, room list and exclusions before comparing any two totals.

Recurring cleaning cost per square foot by facility type

At five visits a week, recurring commercial cleaning in Eastern Ontario commonly budgets between $0.05 and $0.55 per square foot per month depending on facility type. Warehouses sit at the low end because most of the area is open floor. Medical and dental space sits at the high end because detail work and disinfectant contact times take far longer per square foot.

Note that these are monthly rates. A five-night-a-week program is about 21 or 22 visits a month, so the cost of any single visit is a small fraction of the figures below. Dividing a monthly rate as though it were a per-visit rate is how facilities end up with budgets that are off by an order of magnitude.

Monthly budget ranges by facility size and frequency

Monthly cost is cleanable area multiplied by the crew hours it takes to cover it, multiplied by the number of visits a month. A small Eastern Ontario office under 3,000 square feet commonly budgets $400 to $700 a month at two nights a week, while a 10,000-square-foot office at five nights a week commonly budgets $1,800 to $3,600.

The spread inside each cell is real, not padding. Within a single size band, the number of washrooms, the floor mix and how much periodic detail work you expect can move a quote by 40 percent or more. Expect your building to sit somewhere inside a band rather than on a specific figure.

What actually moves the number on your quote

Square footage sets a starting point, but seven other variables decide the final price: visit frequency, washroom fixture count, floor types, occupancy, access hours, the level of detail you expect, and whether consumable supplies are included.

• Visit frequencyGoing from three nights to five nights a week is not a 67 percent increase, because setup and travel time are already paid for. It is usually a smaller jump than people expect.
• Washroom and fixture countRestrooms are the single biggest labour variable in a janitorial bid, and fixture count drives consumable cost. A 4,000 sq ft office with six washrooms costs more than an 8,000 sq ft office with two.
• Floor typesCarpet, VCT, sealed concrete, ceramic and luxury vinyl plank all take different time and equipment. A mixed-floor building needs a mixed plan, which is why floor care is quoted separately.
• Occupancy and trafficA clinic with 90 patients a day soils an entry faster than a professional office with 12 visitors. Traffic changes frequency, not just effort.
• Access and service windowKeys, alarm codes, elevator access and a narrow after-hours window all add coordination. A building that can only be cleaned between 6 and 8 PM prices differently than one with open evening access.
• Level of detailHigh dusting, interior glass, partition walls and baseboards are periodic tasks. If you expect them nightly, say so, because nobody includes them silently at a low rate.
• Supplies and consumablesPaper, soap and liners can be yours or ours. Confirm which, because it is one of the most common reasons two bids are not comparable.

Specialty and one-time work is priced separately

Specialty cleaning is quoted per project, not folded into a nightly rate. Post-construction cleaning generally runs $0.25 to $0.65 per square foot, and commercial carpet extraction generally runs $0.15 to $0.35 per square foot with a minimum charge.

Floor stripping and waxing is quoted after the floor is assessed rather than from a table, because the condition of the existing finish and the number of coats change the labour far more than the area does. The same is true of restaurant tile and grout restoration, where grease depth decides the process.

If a proposal claims a nightly fee includes unlimited restoration work, read the scope. Unlimited is not a method, and the visit that disappears is usually the one you are paying for every week.

Why the cheapest bid is usually the smallest scope

Labour is 50 to 70 percent of a commercial cleaner's cost. A bid well below the others almost always means fewer labour hours, a narrower room list, or a lower frequency, not a better operator.

There is no efficiency trick that removes half the hours from a washroom. When a price is 40 percent below the field, something was removed from the scope, and it is normally periodic floor work, high dusting or the second daily washroom check.

Before you compare numbers, confirm every vendor is pricing the identical room list, frequency and exclusions. Our guide on comparing commercial cleaning bids covers the questions that surface a hidden gap, and the RFP and scope template gives you a document that forces every bidder onto the same footing.

How Eastern Ontario rates compare to Toronto and Ottawa

Hourly janitorial rates in smaller Ontario cities generally run $30 to $45 per cleaner, compared with $35 to $55 in the Ottawa region and $40 to $60 in the Greater Toronto Area. Belleville, Quinte West, Napanee and Picton sit in the lower band.

That gap is a labour-market difference, not a quality difference. It also means a price benchmark copied from a Toronto blog will overstate what a Belleville or Cobourg facility should expect to pay.

Kingston sits slightly higher than the rest of our service area because of institutional and hospitality demand, but still below the Ottawa band.

How Emerald Cleaners arrives at your number

We walk the building, measure the cleanable area, count washroom fixtures, identify the floor types, and confirm access hours. The written quote then lists rooms, frequencies and exclusions so the price is attached to a defined scope you can hold us to.

We do not quote commercial cleaning over the phone from square footage alone. A number produced that way is a guess, and it is the reason so many facilities end up renegotiating in month three.

Our estimates are free, the scope is written down before work starts, and if an agreed task is missed we return within 24 hours to correct it. Emerald Cleaners is fully insured, carries WSIB coverage and uses background-checked staff, which is worth confirming in any bid you receive.