My sister moved forty minutes across town in June, out of a second-floor two bedroom she had rented for five years with two cats. Her lease had a move-out clause with teeth. The carpets had to be professionally cleaned with a receipt, and the apartment had to come back “in the condition received, less normal wear.”
She asked me to help her price it, because I had just spent a week getting quotes for my own house. Move out cleaning cost quotes for her 950 square feet came back at $240, $345 and $318, and not one of them included the carpet. She spent $510 on the two invoices and got $1,150 of a $1,200 deposit back. Here is how each quote was built, and the afternoon of work she wasted.
What a move out cleaning cost actually buys
A move-out clean gets priced as its own job, and it happens in an empty apartment. The work is the inside of things: cabinets, drawers, the oven, the fridge, the medicine cabinet, the closet shelves, the window tracks. You don’t clean inside a kitchen cabinet while your cereal is still in it.
All three companies my sister called described the same tiers. A regular visit keeps up with the week. A deep clean adds the build-up, which is what I paid for when I priced house cleaning prices for our house in September. A move-out clean is the deep clean plus the interiors, done to a standard someone else is going to inspect with a clipboard.
The difference is who decides when it’s finished. My own deep cleaning checklist ends when I say the house feels calm. A move-out clean ends when someone with a clipboard signs off, and what they check is written down in your lease.
Her three move out cleaning cost quotes, side by side
All three came from her city in late May 2026, for an empty 950-square-foot apartment, two bedrooms, one and a half baths, carpet in the bedrooms and hall, vinyl plank everywhere else. Prices swing by region, so read these for how a quote gets assembled rather than as a going rate.
- An independent cleaner who works alone quoted $40 an hour and guessed six hours, so about $240. She used my sister’s supplies, wanted the unit completely empty, and told us up front she does not do carpets or exterior windows. No insurance.
- A local company quoted $345 flat for a move-out on a two bedroom, two people, supplies included, insured and bonded. That number covered inside the oven, inside the fridge, cabinets, drawers, blinds, baseboards and window tracks. They asked how many pets and whether the walls had been painted.
- A national franchise with an online form gave $189 for a “standard clean.” Once she ticked the move-out box, the price went to $258, plus $35 for the oven and $25 for a booking fee, which made $318. The oven had been listed as included on the previous screen.
The franchise quote is the one to read twice. The gap between the advertised number and the checkout number was $129, and every dollar of it appeared after she had typed in her address and her phone number.
The carpet line nobody quoted
Her lease named professional carpet cleaning, with a receipt due at the key handover. None of the three cleaning quotes touched it, because carpet extraction is a separate trade with a separate machine.
A carpet company charged $165 for two bedrooms and the hallway, with a pet treatment on one bedroom where the older cat had an accident in April. That is in the range I found when I priced carpet cleaning cost for our house, and it came with an itemized invoice, which is what the lease actually required.
If your lease uses the words professional and receipt, do not rent a machine from the grocery store. My sister’s building manager told her they had rejected a receipt the month before because it was for a rental unit, not a service.
What pushes a move out cleaning cost up or down
By the third call we could predict the questions, because they are the things that set the price.
Size comes first, usually bedrooms and bathrooms rather than square feet, because bathrooms are the slow rooms. Then pets. Both companies asked, and the flat-rate one said cat hair in carpet edges and baseboards adds time to every room. Then condition: how long since the last real clean, whether there is grease on the cabinet fronts, whether anyone smoked.
Whether the place is empty matters more than people expect. The independent cleaner refused to quote for a unit with furniture still in it. The company would do it, at a higher price, and warned that anything under a box is not their problem.
Timing is the quiet one. My sister called on a Tuesday for a Saturday, which is the last weekend of the month and the busiest hours in the business. One company was already full. The $345 quote held only because she could hand over the keys on a Monday instead.
| Line item | Her lease addendum charges | What a cleaner charged | Who should do it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full turnover clean | $425 minimum | $345 flat, two cleaners | The cleaner |
| Carpet, two bedrooms and hall | $225 | $165 with pet treatment | The cleaner, receipt required |
| Inside the oven | $95 | Included in the flat quote | The cleaner |
| Inside the fridge | $75 | Included in the flat quote | The cleaner |
| Blinds, per window | $25 | Included in the flat quote | The cleaner |
| Burned-out light bulbs | $8 each | Not in any quote | You, for about $2 a bulb |
| Balcony swept, patio cleared | $40 | Not in any quote | You, ten minutes |
Three mistakes that cost money on a move-out clean
- Booking the clean for the same day as the movers. Dust and scuffs arrive with the last trip down the stairs. Leave a day between the truck and the cleaner, and hand over the keys after both.
- Paying a cleaner for the cheap items. Light bulbs, batteries in the smoke detector and a swept balcony are minutes of your time and real money on an invoice, whether it comes from the cleaner or the landlord.
- Not photographing the empty rooms. My sister took pictures after the cleaner left, with the date on her phone. The $50 that got deducted was a blind slat she had broken in March, and the photos are why it was only $50.
When the clean costs less than the deduction
This is the arithmetic that made the decision for her. Her addendum priced a turnover clean at $425 minimum and the carpet at $225, which is $650 before anything else went on the list. Doing it herself risked failing the inspection and paying both her own time and their price.
She paid $345 for the clean and $165 for the carpet, tipped the two cleaners $25 between them, and spent about $12 on bulbs. That is $547 against $650 of deductions she was fairly sure she would get, and the $1,200 deposit came back at $1,150 nineteen days later with an itemized statement.
The rules on that statement vary by state, and I am not going to summarize fifty of them here. USAGov’s tenant rights page points you at the state agency that handles landlord disputes where you live, and it starts with the same advice I would give: read your lease carefully first. If you would rather spend the Saturday than the $345, my moving out cleaning checklist is the order I clean in.
Grab the free printable: my one-page Move-Out Quote Sheet, with the seven questions every cleaner asked, a column for your lease’s charge on each line item, and a box for the carpet receipt. Get the free sheet →
If the place you are leaving is a short-term rental you host, the job repeats every weekend instead of once. I timed my aunt’s cottage turnovers and compared three cleaners in what a turnover clean costs per guest change.
What didn’t work: cleaning the kitchen before the truck came
The weekend before the move, my sister scrubbed the kitchen. Cabinet fronts, inside the cupboards she had already emptied, the backsplash, the floor. It took her most of a Saturday afternoon and she felt good about it.
Then two movers and a dolly came through that kitchen on Monday, and a cabinet door got a black scuff from a strap, and the floor picked up everything the hallway had. The cleaner did it all again on Tuesday. That afternoon bought nothing except the satisfaction of having started.
The one job that was worth doing early was the shower. There was a grey line of mildew along the bottom of the surround that had been there for a couple of years, and she worked on it in April with a vinegar spray from my natural cleaning recipes, then again in May. Old mildew needs a few passes over weeks, not one hard scrub the night before. It was a patch smaller than a bath towel, which is the scale that belongs on your own list. The EPA’s mold cleanup guidance says that if the moldy area is less than about 10 square feet, roughly a 3 foot by 3 foot patch, in most cases you can handle it yourself, and points you to a contractor with mold experience above that. A wall of it is a maintenance request, not a cleaning task, and it should be in writing before you move out.
One more thing she did right. Her whole move was small and short, the kind I wrote about when we priced low cost moving companies together, so the apartment was empty by noon and the cleaner had the place to herself the next morning. An empty unit is the cheapest version of this job in every quote we got.
Frequently asked questions
How much does move out cleaning cost for an apartment?
Her three quotes for an empty 950-square-foot two bedroom, in June 2026, were $240 from an independent cleaner, $318 from a national franchise after the add-ons, and $345 flat from a local company. Move out cleaning cost rises with bathrooms, pets and anything your lease names specifically, and carpet extraction usually comes on a separate invoice.
Is a move-out clean worth it, or should I do it myself?
Compare the quote against your lease’s charges for the same work. Hers listed $425 for a turnover clean and $225 for carpet, so $510 of professional work replaced $650 of likely deductions. If your addendum does not name prices, ask the office what they charge when a unit fails inspection.
Does the landlord have to itemize what they take from the deposit?
Most states require an itemized statement within a set number of days, and the details differ by state. Her statement arrived nineteen days after the handover with one line on it. Check your state agency through USAGov before you sign anything at the final walkthrough.
If you are moving out in the next few weeks, do this in order. Read the move-out clause tonight, write down every line item with a price attached, and get two quotes for the clean and one for the carpet. Book the cleaner for the day after the truck, not the same day, and take photographs of the empty rooms before you hand over the keys.
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