Booking a cleaner online takes a few minutes if you know what you want before you start. Decide the type of clean, work out roughly how many hours you need, check what the price includes, pick a date, then confirm and pay. The rest of this guide covers each step, the mistakes that cost people money, and the special cases: tenants, landlords, post-building jobs and offices.
We are Cleanny, a home cleaning service covering Greater London, Reading, Oxford and Cambridge. Everything below applies to any reputable online booking, and we say where our own service works.
TL;DR
- Choose the right type of clean first: regular domestic, a one-off deep clean, or a specialist job such as end of tenancy or after builders.
- Look for an upfront price, supplies included, insured and vetted staff, and a clear re-clean policy before you pay.
- Recurring weekly or fortnightly bookings are typically 15 to 25% cheaper per hour than one-off jobs.
- Tenants do not have to pay for a professional clean at checkout, but they do have to hand the home back in the condition it was in at the start.
- After the first visit, ask to keep the same cleaner so the standard stays consistent.
Table of Contents
- Decide what kind of clean you need
- How to book a cleaner online, step by step
- How many hours should you book?
- Reading the price properly
- One-off or regular: which is better value?
- Booking an end of tenancy clean
- After builders and deep cleans
- Booking for an office
- What we think about booking a cleaner online
- Book online with Cleanny
- What to check before you confirm
- Making the first visit go well
- FAQ
- Sources
Decide what kind of clean you need
Most booking mistakes happen before anyone opens a booking page. People pick "a cleaner" when they need something quite different, then feel let down when the visit does not match.
There are four common situations:
- Keeping a lived-in home tidy. This is regular domestic cleaning: floors, kitchen, bathrooms, dusting, surfaces. It is booked by the hour, weekly, fortnightly or occasionally.
- Catching up after a long gap. If the home has not been properly cleaned for months, or you are preparing for guests, a one-off deep clean is a better first step than a standard visit.
- Moving out or moving in. End of tenancy and pre-tenancy cleans work to a checklist and are usually booked as a fixed job rather than by the hour.
- After building work. Dust from plastering, sanding and fitting gets into everything. An after builders clean is a different task from a routine one.
Specialist extras such as carpets, upholstery and ovens are sold separately, or added to a main clean. If your only problem is a greasy oven or a stained sofa, book that job rather than paying for hours of general cleaning.
Our services page lists everything we offer: domestic cleaning, end of tenancy cleaning, deep cleaning, carpet cleaning, oven cleaning, upholstery cleaning, after builders cleaning and office cleaning.
How to book a cleaner online, step by step
- Enter your location. Cleaners work within set areas. Check that the company covers your postcode before you spend time choosing options. We cover Greater London, Reading, Oxford and Cambridge, and our locations page shows the areas.
- Choose the service. Pick the type of clean from the list above. If you are unsure between a standard clean and a deep clean, think about when the home was last properly cleaned. More than a few months ago, start with the deep clean.
- Set the size of the job. For hourly work, choose the number of hours. For fixed-price jobs such as a deep clean, the size of the property usually sets the price.
- Add extras. Inside the oven, inside the fridge, windows, ironing, carpets. Add only what you want done in this visit, and check whether each one is priced separately.
- Pick a date and time. A good online service shows real availability, including evenings and weekends. We work seven days a week, so a Saturday morning or a weekday evening is a normal request, not a special one.
- Leave access instructions. Tell the cleaner how to get in: key safe, concierge, you at home. Mention pets, alarms and anything fragile or off limits.
- Review the total and pay. The final screen should show the full price before you commit. If a fee appears only at payment, stop and read it.
- Keep the confirmation. Save the booking email. It is your record of what was agreed, the date and the price.
The whole process should take minutes. If a company asks you to phone for a basic quote on an ordinary home clean, you are not using an online booking in any meaningful sense.
How many hours should you book?
The questions people type most are about hours and cost: what can a cleaner do in two hours, and how much is three hours? The honest answer is that it depends on the home, but you can plan sensibly.
Treat these as rough planning guides, not promises:
| Home and situation | Sensible starting point |
|---|---|
| Small flat, already kept tidy | Two to three hours |
| Two-bedroom home with a family | Three to four hours |
| Larger house, or no clean for months | Book a deep clean first, then move to regular hours |
In two hours a cleaner will normally manage the essentials in a small home: kitchen surfaces and hob, bathroom, floors, dusting. They will not also do the oven, the inside of cupboards and the windows. If you want those, say so when booking and add time.
Our domestic cleaning starts from £18 per hour. At that starting rate, two hours is £36 and three hours is £54. Your exact total is shown before you pay, so check it at the last step rather than relying on any rule of thumb.
The most common false economy is booking too few hours and then being disappointed by the result. A written list of what you want done, set against the hours you have booked, settles this. One price guide recommends a room-by-room checklist for the same reason: it stops arguments about scope.
Reading the price properly
Two cleaners advertising similar hourly rates can cost very different amounts by the end of the booking. Check these points before you compare.
- Are supplies and equipment included? Some services charge extra for products or a vacuum, or expect you to supply them. Ours are included, and we use eco-friendly products.
- Is there a minimum number of hours? A low rate with a four-hour minimum may cost more than a higher rate with a two-hour minimum.
- Are there booking, travel or admin fees? A trustworthy page shows the total before payment. Our approach is upfront pricing with no hidden fees.
- What does "from" mean? A starting price is the lowest rate, not the one everyone pays. Look for the real total for your own home.
- Is the price per cleaner or per visit? Two cleaners for two hours is four labour hours.
If you want to compare offers, get at least three written quotes and check that they cover the same scope. A cheaper quote for a smaller job is not a cheaper quote.
One-off or regular: which is better value?
If your home needs regular upkeep, a recurring booking is nearly always the better deal. Recurring weekly or fortnightly cleans are typically 15 to 25% cheaper per hour than ad-hoc jobs, according to the same price guide, because cleaners value guaranteed income. Homes are also quicker to maintain once the baseline is right, so you may need fewer hours as time goes on.
A workable pattern for a first-time customer:
- Book one deep clean to reset the home.
- Move to a fortnightly domestic clean.
- After a month or two, review the hours. Increase if tasks are being left, reduce if the cleaner is finishing early.
Weekly suits busy households with children or pets. Fortnightly suits most couples and professionals. If you only need help before guests arrive or after a busy season, one-off visits are fine and you lose nothing but the discount.
The detail of a regular booking matters too. You should be able to move or skip a visit with reasonable notice, and change the hours without starting again. Ask what the notice period is before you commit.
Booking an end of tenancy clean
This is where people most often spend more than they need to, or get caught out.
What tenants need to know
Guidance on the Tenant Fees Act says a landlord or agent cannot require a tenant to pay for a professional clean at check-out. A council tenancy relations fact sheet makes the same point from the tenant's side: you are responsible for returning the home in the same state of cleanliness as when the tenancy began, allowing for reasonable wear and tear.
In practice, this means two things:
- You are not legally obliged to hire a company, and your landlord cannot insist on a specific one.
- You are obliged to leave the home clean to the standard you received it in. If you did not keep the place to that standard, hiring a professional is often the quickest way to meet it.
The same fact sheet advises documenting the property at the start with an inventory and dated photos. Do the same on the way out. A dated invoice from a cleaning company, plus checkout photos, is useful evidence if a deduction is disputed. Our end of tenancy checklist walks through the deposit evidence, and our guide to end of tenancy carpet cleaning covers the item tenants most often forget.
What landlords need to know
A landlord cannot treat a "professional cleaning" clause as an automatic right to deduct. A claim against the deposit has to rest on the property being left in a condition worse than the one recorded at the start, once fair wear and tear is taken into account. That makes a proper inventory at move-in your best protection too.
Between tenants, landlords usually want a reliable clean that can be booked at short notice. Our end of tenancy cleaning is a bookable service, and a reset between lets often involves ovens, carpets and upholstery, which are all on our list.
Timing
Book the clean for after your belongings are out and before the final inspection. Cleaning around boxes is slow and the result is poor. Book early, because the last days of the month are busy, and leave a buffer in case something needs a second look. If it does, a re-clean guarantee means you are not paying twice.
After builders and deep cleans
Building dust is fine and it travels. A routine clean will move it around rather than remove it, so say that the job follows building work when you book. If the work is still in progress, wait: cleaning before the last tradesperson leaves means doing it twice.
For a home that is simply overdue, a one-off deep clean from £135 is the sensible reset before moving to regular visits. Check what the deep clean covers: inside appliances, limescale, skirting boards and door frames are the kind of items that separate it from a routine visit.
Booking for an office
Office cleaning differs from home cleaning in the points that matter to the booker. You will want to agree out-of-hours access, which areas are included, who locks up, and how often. Written scope matters here more than anywhere. If your workplace is small, the cleaning may be a few evenings a week. If it is larger, agree a schedule and a named contact.
Our office cleaning service does not have a published price, so request the details for your premises and compare them against the same written scope.
What we think about booking a cleaner online
We built our service around a simple observation: most people do not hate cleaning, they hate the uncertainty around hiring someone. Will they turn up? Will the price change? What happens if the clean is not good enough?
So we put the answers up front. The price is shown before you pay and carries no hidden fees. Our professionals are vetted, background-checked and insured. Supplies are included, and we use eco-friendly products. If the result is not right, our re-clean guarantee means we come back and fix it.
Our advice to anyone booking any cleaner is to be fussy about the first visit and relaxed after it. Write a short list of what matters most to you, be honest about the state of the home, and tell the cleaner on day one if something was missed. A good cleaner would rather hear it early.
Then keep the same person. Rebooking the same cleaner after a trial builds trust and efficiency over time, because they learn how you like things done. It is also the easiest way to stop re-explaining the same details every fortnight.
— CLEANNY
Book online with Cleanny
If you live in Greater London, Reading, Oxford or Cambridge, you can book with us in minutes. Domestic cleaning starts from £18 per hour, and a deep clean starts from £135 one-off. Supplies are included, evenings and weekends are available, and every clean is backed by our re-clean guarantee. See everything on offer on our services page.
What to check before you confirm
A short checklist to run through at the final screen:
- The total price is shown, with no extra fees to come.
- Supplies and equipment are included, or the cost of bringing them is stated.
- The cleaners are vetted and insured.
- There is a clear policy if you are unhappy with the result, and a time limit for reporting it.
- You know the cancellation or rescheduling notice period.
- The confirmation email lists the date, arrival window, address and the tasks you asked for.
Warning signs: a quote that only arrives after you hand over personal details, pressure to pay in cash, vague answers about insurance, and a price far below everyone else's with no explanation. A very low price usually means fewer hours, extra charges or a big gap in what is included.
Making the first visit go well
You do not need to tidy for the cleaner, but a few minutes of preparation makes a real difference.
- Clear surfaces and floors of loose items, so cleaning time goes on cleaning.
- Put away anything valuable or fragile.
- Note any stubborn areas, such as limescale on a shower screen, and say what products to avoid on delicate surfaces.
- Secure pets in a room or tell the cleaner about them.
- If you are out, confirm how they will access the home and how they will lock up.
Afterwards, check the home against your list the same day. If something was missed, report it promptly in writing, with photos. That is the quickest route to a fix under any guarantee.
FAQ
How much does a cleaner cost for three hours?
It depends on the rate. At our starting rate of £18 per hour for domestic cleaning, three hours comes to £54. Rates vary by company, area and whether supplies are included, so compare the total shown before payment, not the headline hourly figure.
What will a cleaner do in two hours?
In a small, reasonably tidy home, two hours covers the essentials: kitchen surfaces, bathroom, floors and dusting. Tasks such as oven cleaning, windows or inside cupboards need extra time. Tell the company what you want done when you book, so the hours match the list.
Can I book the same cleaner every time?
Yes, and it is worth asking for. After a trial visit, request the same cleaner for regular bookings. They learn your home and your standards, and the result is more consistent over time.
Do I have to pay for professional cleaning when I move out?
No. Government guidance on the Tenant Fees Act says a tenant cannot be required to pay for a professional clean at check-out. You must still return the home in the condition you received it, allowing for fair wear and tear. If you are unsure, check your tenancy agreement and speak to your local council's tenancy relations team or a tenant advice service.
Sources
- House Cleaner Cost in Birmingham, 2026 Price Guide
- Tenancy Relations Fact Sheet 11, Bristol City Council
- Tenant Fees Act: Guidance for landlords and agents