How Much to Charge for Gutter Cleaning: A Per-Foot Method for Fall
Fall is gutter season. Leaves come down, gutters fill, and owners start looking for someone to clean them. Requests can pile up fast once the leaves drop. A crew with its prices already written down can answer the pile. A crew pricing from gut feel slows down with every quote.
This post shows how to price gutter cleaning with rules instead of guesses. Every dollar figure below is a labeled hypothetical, so swap in your own numbers.
What changes the price of gutter cleaning?
Four things move the price. Check them in this order every time.
- Gutter length. The linear feet of gutter you'll clean, not the square feet of the house.
- Height. Upper stories mean longer ladders, slower work and more risk.
- Downspouts. Each one gets flushed, so each one gets its own line.
- Debris. The base price assumes normal debris. Bad clogs and roof debris get their own line.
Gutter length is the one input you can estimate from a satellite view. The roofline perimeter is close enough to quote. The other inputs come from the customer or from photos, so ask for the number of stories and downspouts on your quote form and let the rule read the answers.
How to price gutter cleaning with six quote rules
Write these once, then use them on every lead.
- Measure the gutter run. Use the roofline perimeter from a satellite view. If part of the house has no gutters, take that part out.
- Multiply by one rate per linear foot. One rate, every time. Consistency is what lets you quote without a site visit.
- Multiply for height. Use a multiplier for two and three stories instead of a flat ladder fee, so a tall house pays more than a short one.
- Check the minimum. If the gutter charge lands under your minimum, charge the minimum, so a short run is still worth bringing the ladder.
- Add downspout flushing per downspout. Count them, multiply by a rate, and show it as its own line.
- Keep a heavy-clog line for the bad ones. The base price assumes normal debris. When the photos show plants, packed leaves or roof debris, add the line.
Then run one sanity check. Divide the quote by the hours your crew will spend, drive time included. If the answer is under your hourly floor, raise the minimum before you touch the foot rate, because short runs are where the money leaks.
Keep the rules in a sheet anyone on the crew can read. A rule you have to remember is a rule you'll skip.
How much should you charge per foot of gutter?
Quote per foot and let the rule do the math. The right rate is yours, not ours, because it depends on your ladders, your crew cost, your drive time and what the next job would pay you for the same hour.
Say your rate sheet looks like the one below. These are the starting numbers in the free calculator: made-up examples that show the shape of the rules, not a price to copy.
| Input | If-then rule | Hypothetical charge |
|---|---|---|
| Gutter length | Linear feet times the rate | $1 per foot |
| Height | Two stories, times 1.25. Three stories, times 1.5. Applies to the gutter charge only | 1.25 or 1.5 |
| Minimum | If the gutter charge is lower, charge this instead | $149 |
| Downspout flushing | Downspouts times the rate | $10 per downspout |
| Heavy clog or roof debris | Its own flat line, only when it applies | $40 |
Say a one-story house has 150 feet of gutter and four downspouts, with normal debris. A hundred and fifty times $1 comes to $150. The house is one story, so there's no height multiplier, and $150 is over the $149 minimum. Add 4 times $10 for the downspouts, which is $40. The total comes to $190.
Say the same house has two stories. The gutter charge is $150 times 1.25, which is $187.50, rounded to $188. With the downspouts, $228. If it has three stories, $150 times 1.5 is $225, and with the downspouts, $265.
Say the photos show a heavy clog on the one-story house. Add the $40 line. The total comes to $230.
Say a second house is a short one-story run of 100 feet. A hundred times $1 comes to $100, which is under the $149 minimum, so the gutter charge is $149. With four downspouts at $10, the quote is $189. With only two downspouts, $169. Without the minimum, the short run would pay $100 for the same ladder setup and drive time as a longer one.
You can run these exact rules in the free gutter cleaning price calculator. It opens on the first example, $190, so type in your own rates and the quote lines update as you go. To see the minimum at work, change the gutter length to 100 feet.
What to send a gutter cleaning lead
Here's a reply you can copy. Fill in the capitals from your rules, and keep each line separate so the customer can see what they're paying for.
Hi NAME, here's your gutter cleaning quote for ADDRESS. Gutters, NUMBER feet, NUMBER stories: AMOUNT. Downspout flushing, NUMBER downspouts: AMOUNT. Total per visit: AMOUNT. This price holds for NUMBER days. The price assumes normal debris. If the gutters are packed with roof debris or plants, I'll tell you before I start. Pick a time here: BOOKING LINK.
Screen out bad jobs, then quote the rest fast
Not every request should get a price right away. Hold the quote and take a quick look first when:
- The house is taller than the three stories your height rule covers, or the roof is too steep or too fragile for a ladder.
- The photos show plants growing in the gutters, standing water or a gutter that has pulled away. That is a repair job, not a cleaning.
- The gutters have guards or covers that you'd have to take off, and your rule table has no line for it.
- Part of the house has gutters and part doesn't, and the satellite view can't show which.
- The customer asks for something your rule table has no line for, like roof cleaning or gutter repair in the same visit.
- The address is outside the area your crew covers.
Everything else gets priced by the rules, and speed matters here.
Say a request comes in on a Saturday morning in October for the $190 job above. Suppose you reply Monday, and the customer already booked whoever answered Saturday. That's $190 gone.
Say a fall week brings six requests like it, and all six are answered late. Six times $190 comes to $1,140.
Workely's Price workflow handles the quoting half of this. A lead that fits your rules gets a quote from your own prices, ready with a link to book a time, or sent on its own if you turn on auto-send. A lead that doesn't fit waits for your OK, which is where the hold list above goes. Email follow-ups go out at 1 hour, 1 day and 3 days. You can read how lead capture and qualification works, or how it fits exterior cleaning crews.
If your crew also cleans windows, the same method works there: see how much to charge for window cleaning. If you hang holiday lights once the leaves are down, see how much to charge for Christmas light installation.
Your next step
Pick five numbers this week: the rate per foot, the height multipliers, the minimum, the rate per downspout and the heavy-clog line. Then test them in the gutter cleaning calculator on three houses you've already cleaned, and fix any rule that gives a result you'd hate to quote.
Once you know how much to charge for gutter cleaning as rules, the work left is speed. Workely quotes from your own rules and sends a link to book a time, and email follow-ups go out at 1 hour, 1 day and 3 days. When you're ready, look at Workely plans and pricing.