How to price a driveway cleaning job

Pricing a driveway cleaning job looks simple from the curb — measure the concrete, apply a rate, send the number. In practice it isn’t. The same driveway can be priced two, three, even four different ways depending on what’s growing on it, how it was poured, whether oil has leached into the slab, and what the homeowner believes a “clean” driveway should look like. This guide walks through the pricing checklist a working pressure-washing contractor can run on every driveway job to land on a number the homeowner will accept and the contractor won’t lose money on. If you’re quoting multiple lanes, add-ons like gutters or walkways, or want a faster way to assemble the line items, the same structure is built into SprayQuote’s pressure washing quote software — but the rules below are the rules either way.

1. Measure the actual surface — not the lot

The single biggest pricing mistake on a driveway job is pricing off the lot size instead of the cleaning surface. A two-car driveway on a 0.25-acre lot is a fraction of the sqft of the lot; if you read the wrong number on the listing you’ll either underquote by hundreds or scare the homeowner off with a five-figure price for what is in fact a six-figure-lot with a small paved strip.

Walk the perimeter with a tape measure or a phone-based measuring tool and capture three numbers: the total paved sqft, the sqft of any separate parking pad, and the linear feet of any curbing or apron you’ll need to edge. Round each of those up to the nearest 50 sqft / 10 lf before pricing — most jobs come in a hair larger than the on-paper estimate, and rounding up protects the margin without overcharging the homeowner.

2. Pick a base rate per sqft — then qualify it

Base rates for driveway cleaning in 2026 tend to land somewhere between $0.15 and $0.40 per sqft for standard broom-finished concrete, with sealed or stamped concrete closer to the high end. That number is not a quote — it’s a starting point. The qualifiers below add or subtract from it:

• Surface type — broom-finished concrete, stamped, exposed aggregate, pavers, and asphalt each price differently. Pavers run higher because of the sand joint; asphalt runs lower because of the soft surface and the runoff constraints.
• Condition — light dust and pollen is your lowest band; organic staining (leaves, mildew, moss) is the middle band; oil, rust, and leaf-tannin stains from years of buildup sit at the top.
• Access — water spigot within 50 ft of the work area is the easy path. A 200 ft hose run from the spigot to the driveway, or no spigot at all, eats ten to fifteen minutes each way; price it in.
• Runoff risk — driveways draining to a storm sewer or a sensitive lawn sometimes need containment or a down-stream filter. Bill it as a flat add-on rather than burying it in the base rate; the homeowner will see and approve it.

3. Apply the minimum-fee rule

Every contractor needs a minimum fee — the floor below which the math stops working. Truck, trailer, chemical mix, drive time, and setup are a roughly fixed cost whether the driveway is 200 sqft or 2,000. A reasonable minimum sits between $150 and $250 for most markets; what you choose depends on your cost of operation, not what the homeowner wants.

Apply it as a true floor: if the per-sqft calculation lands below the minimum, send the minimum as the price and add a one-line note explaining it. Most homeowners will accept it; the few who don’t were going to be a bad job anyway. Sending a job below minimum to “just get something on the books” almost always costs more than it returns.

4. Write the quote so the deposit closes

Pricing is half the work. The other half is the write-up that turns the price into a closed job. Three rules hold across every market:

• Itemize, don’t summary-price. “Driveway cleaning, 1,250 sqft @ $0.22 — $275” is harder to argue with than a single $275 line. The itemization also lets you explain surcharges (rust removal, oil spot treatment, edge work) without re-quoting the whole job.
• State what “done” looks like. Tight, specific scopes (“concrete surface free of organic staining and visible oil spots; no rust removal on the south apron unless quoted separately”) prevent the “it doesn’t look clean enough” argument and protect your scope on re-visits.
• Deposit + balance, both on the quote. A split payment (“25% deposit to schedule, balance on completion”) makes the homeowner commit and makes cashflow predictable. The pair of numbers goes on the same line as the total — never as a separate footnote.

The combo of itemization + scope language + deposit-and-balance is the same shape that SprayQuote’s pressure washing pricing calculator builds into every quote by default — and it’s the shape that converts at the highest rate across the hundreds of driveway jobs SprayQuote contractors have sent.

5. Reconcile the price with the result, every time

The pricing rule you set this month is only as good as the last three jobs you ran on it. Set a recurring habit: after every driveway job, log the sqft, base rate, qualifiers, total price, and how the job actually went — on time, on materials, easy or hard. Two or three months in, you’ll see one of three signals: you’re consistently under-pricing (every job runs over the target time), you’re consistently over-pricing (homeowners are price-shopping and you’re losing easy jobs), or you’re close (you win most jobs at this rate without overrunning the work).

That logging step is also the input the AI estimator in SprayQuote’s exterior cleaning contractor software is calibrated against. Upload your past jobs at signup — date, service, sqft, what you actually charged — and the AI matches your pricing history on the first new estimate, not the fiftieth.