End of tenancy cleaning prices UK: what you should actually pay

A professional end of tenancy clean costs £120–£400 for most UK properties, priced as a fixed figure for the whole home rather than by the hour. The number moves with bedrooms and bathrooms, not floor area, because bathrooms and kitchens carry the labour.

Cleaning has been the single most common cause of tenancy deposit disputes in the UK for over a decade, which is why the clean is worth treating as a deposit-protection cost rather than a chore. Spending £190 to protect a £1,000 deposit is a straightforward trade. Every Hello Services end of tenancy clean is quoted as one fixed price and backed by a 24-hour re-clean guarantee.

The ranges below are what UK tenants and landlords typically pay in 2026 for a full check-out clean including kitchen appliance interiors. London and the South East sit at the top of each band; the North East, Wales and Northern Ireland sit at the bottom.

An end of tenancy clean is not a bigger version of a weekly clean. It is a specification: every surface, inside and out, top to bottom, measured against the check-in inventory. If a quote does not list the kitchen appliance interiors, it is not a check-out clean.

Kitchen — where deposits are won and lost

• Oven interior, racks, door glass between panes, grill and oven trays degreased
• Extractor hood, filters and the wall behind the hob
• Fridge and freezer emptied, defrosted, cleaned inside and behind
• Washing machine drawer, rubber seal and filter
• Inside every cupboard and drawer, plus the tops of units
• Splashbacks, sink, taps and waste descaled

Bathrooms

• Limescale removed from screens, tiles, taps, shower heads and toilet
• Grout treated, mould spotted and cleaned where surface-level
• Extractor fan cover cleaned, mirrors polished streak-free
• Behind and beneath the toilet, cistern and pedestal

Every room

• Skirting boards, door frames, handles and light switches wiped
• Inside windows, frames, sills and tracks
• Inside wardrobes, cupboards and drawers
• Radiators, including behind, and visible pipework
• Carpets vacuumed, hard floors mopped, cobwebs removed from ceilings and corners

If the property was recently renovated, plaster dust keeps resettling for weeks and needs the heavier after builders cleaning specification instead — a standard check-out clean will not hold up.

Most quotes separate carpets and external windows because they need different equipment. Treat these as deliberate decisions rather than upsells: if the inventory records professionally cleaned carpets at check-in, you will be measured against that at check-out.

Carpets are booked through carpet cleaning, ovens through oven and appliance cleaning, and outdoor surfaces through jet washing. Booked on the same visit they cost less than three separate callouts.

Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019 (England; equivalent rules apply in Wales and Scotland), a landlord or agent cannot require you to pay for a professional clean as a condition of the tenancy, and cannot charge a fixed cleaning fee at the end. What they can do is deduct from your protected deposit where the property is returned in a materially worse condition than at check-in, allowing for fair wear and tear, and they must evidence that with the inventory.

• Your deposit must be in a government-approved protection scheme within 30 days of payment.
• A deduction must be evidenced — check-in and check-out reports, dated photographs, invoices.
• Fair wear and tear is not cleaning: faded paint and worn carpet pile are not your bill.
• You can dispute a deduction free of charge through the scheme's adjudication service.
• Betterment is not allowed — a landlord cannot charge you for an improvement on check-in condition.

The practical takeaway: you are free to clean the property yourself. You are simply liable for the standard, and a paid invoice plus a re-clean guarantee is the cheapest evidence you can hold if the adjudicator ever has to weigh two sets of photographs.

DIY is genuinely viable in a small, well-kept flat you have lived in for under a year. It stops being viable when there is a greasy oven, hard-water limescale, a long tenancy, or a check-out date that lands the same day as the move.

Inventory clerks work to a repeatable route and photograph the same places in every property. These are the failures that come back, in the order they are usually found.

• Oven glass, racks and the grill pan — the single most cited item in deposit disputes.
• Extractor filters clogged with grease, and the wall tiles behind the hob.
• Limescale on shower screens, taps and shower heads in hard-water areas.
• Skirting boards, door tops and light switches — high-touch, routinely skipped.
• Window tracks, frames and sills, especially in flats with UPVC windows.
• Inside kitchen cupboards, plus crumbs and spills under the removed fridge.
• The washing machine drawer and rubber door seal.
• Marks left behind removed furniture and hooks left in walls.

The last one is a moving problem, not a cleaning problem. Hooks, brackets and wall anchors should come out and be made good before the clean — that is a short handyman visit, priced by the hour, not a cleaner's job.

The order matters more than the effort. A perfect clean carried out before the sofa leaves is wasted money, and a clean booked after the check-out appointment protects nothing.

If step two is a van's worth of furniture, sequence it with the move rather than paying moving-day rates to transport things you are discarding — our house clearance cost guide explains how the volume pricing works.

• Book mid-week and mid-month — the last three working days of the month carry a premium everywhere.
• Bundle carpets, oven and the clean into one visit rather than three separate callouts.
• Do the low-skill work yourself: empty cupboards, take down curtains, remove all rubbish.
• Descale the shower over the final fortnight so the team is not fighting months of build-up.
• Send the check-in inventory to your cleaner — it tells them precisely what standard to hit.
• Confirm the re-clean guarantee in writing and check the window it runs for.
• Never book by the hour for a check-out; a fixed price puts the overrun risk on the company.

If you are between tenants as a landlord rather than moving out as a tenant, a one-off deep clean on a void-period schedule usually costs less than a same-day check-out slot, and regular housekeeping during a long tenancy keeps the final bill down.