Guides ›

How to price gutter cleaning (per foot, by story, with a minimum)

Gutter cleaning looks simple to price until a long ranch house and a tall colonial with the same footprint take very different amounts of time. Here's a structure that handles that: a rate per linear foot, a multiplier for height, a few flat add-ons and a minimum ticket, all based on your own jobs.

About the numbers here: every figure in the examples is hypothetical and only shows the method. They are not market rates. Check your local market and your own costs.

Why per linear foot (and not per house)

Flat "per house" pricing is easy to say on the phone but unfair in both directions: small homes overpay and big ones underpay. Linear feet of gutter tracks the work closely. Customers can't measure their gutters, but they don't need to. The calculator can ask for a rough number with a helper like "about the distance around your house", and you confirm on arrival.

Quick ways to estimate footage before a visit: trace the eaves in a satellite map tool, or use the home's footprint. A rectangular home's perimeter is a reasonable upper bound, because gables usually have no gutter.

Step 1: Log your next 10 jobs

For each job, note the linear feet, stories, debris level (light / packed / plants growing) and minutes on site, including ladder moves and cleanup. A simple log looks like this:

Hypothetical log for illustration.
Job	Linear ft	Stories	Debris	Minutes	Ft per hour
A	140	1	Light	58	145
B	180	1	Packed	95	114
C	160	2	Light	100	96
D	210	2	Packed	165	76
E	120	1	Light	48	150

From a log like this: one-story jobs run about 110–150 ft/hour, and two-story jobs about 75–100 ft/hour. Debris level drives the low-vs-high spread within each height.

Step 2: Turn the log into a per-foot range

Divide your hourly target (what a billable hour must earn; see the general method) by your one-story pace. Use one-story as the base, because height becomes a multiplier in step 3.

Hypothetical example. Hourly target $85. $85 ÷ 150 ft/h = $0.57/ft (fast, light debris). $85 ÷ 110 ft/h = $0.77/ft (slow, packed). Bagging and disposal add about $0.05/ft, so the base is $0.62–$0.82 per linear foot.

Step 3: Height is a multiplier, not a surcharge

A second story doesn't add a fixed amount. It slows every foot: taller ladder sets, more moves, sometimes a harness or roof work. So it should multiply the per-foot rate. Compare your averages: if one-story averaged about 130 ft/h and two-story about 88 ft/h, the factor is 130 ÷ 88 ≈ 1.5. Steep or three-story roofs get their own higher factor, or an "inspect first" note if you don't do them often.

Step 4: Flat add-ons for fixed-time tasks

Downspout flush / unclog: the time depends more on the number of downspouts than on gutter length. Price it as a flat add-on, or per downspout.
Gutter guards: a separate service line with its own per-foot rate, because it's an installation job with material costs, not a cleaning job.
Minor repairs (re-sealing a seam, re-hanging a section): list as "quoted on site" rather than guessing in the calculator.

Step 5: The minimum ticket

Unloading ladders, walking the property, protecting the landscaping and cleanup take roughly the same time on a 60 ft garage as on a 200 ft house. Set the minimum at your shortest realistic visit × hourly target.

Hypothetical example. Shortest realistic visit 1.25 hours × $85 = $106, so a $110 minimum. A 120 ft one-story job at $0.62–$0.82/ft works out to $74–$98, so the customer sees $110 and up. That's correct: you'd lose money below it.

Step 6: Check it against reality

Run three past jobs through the calculator. If the ranges would have covered what you charged, publish. If the results are far below what established local companies charge, don't celebrate. Your billable-hours assumption is probably too rosy (rain days, drive time and the off-season add up), or you're simply underpriced. Fix the inputs rather than the output.

The result, as a customer sees it

This is the gutter-cleaning template with sample numbers (not the hypothetical ones above). Open it in the builder to enter your per-foot range, story factors and minimum.