How to Start a Cleaning Business in Florida

You’re looking at Florida forms, cleaning supplies, and a blank calendar, trying to turn all three into a real business. If you get the tax part wrong or price your first jobs too low, you can stay busy and still end the month wondering where the money went.

That’s the hard part about starting a cleaning business in Florida. The work itself is simple. The setup around it is where people trip.

What Florida actually asks from you

If you want to clean houses in Florida, the good news is this: basic residential cleaning usually does not need a Florida state professional license.

That means normal work like:

Dusting
Bathrooms
Kitchens
Floors
Move-out cleaning
Recurring house cleaning

You do need to slow down when the job turns into something regulated.

If you start offering mold remediation, Florida has separate licensing rules through the state. The Florida Department of Health points people to the state’s mold licensing laws and DBPR for that work. If you add pesticide application, that is a different license problem too. So keep your offer simple at first. Clean homes. Clean apartments. Clean vacation rentals. Get paid.

For most new cleaners in Florida, the real setup steps are not about a state cleaning license. They are about:

Picking a business name
Forming the business the right way
Getting insured
Understanding sales tax
Charging enough to make the work worth it

That’s what moves you from “I clean for cash” to a business that can last past summer.

Form your LLC before you start taking jobs

If you want the cleanest setup, form an LLC.

You can file online through Sunbiz, Florida’s official business filing site. The filing fee for a Florida LLC is $125. Sunbiz also says online filings generally get processed in about 2 to 3 days after payment confirmation, though mail takes longer. You can see the filing flow and timing notes on the state’s LLC filing page and online filing help page.

Why does the LLC matter?

Because cleaning work is hands-on. You are inside other people’s homes. You are carrying chemicals, vacuums, ladders, and wet mops. You are touching expensive counters, floors, and fixtures. If something goes wrong, you want a real business between you and the problem.

The simple version looks like this:

Pick a name you can use on invoices, your website, and Stripe.
File the LLC on Sunbiz for $125.
Get an EIN from the IRS.
Open a business bank account.
Run all income and expenses through that account.

Do not skip the bank account step. If clients pay your personal Cash App, Venmo, Zelle, and checking account all mixed together, your books get ugly fast. You will hate yourself at tax time.

Understand Florida sales tax before you send invoice one

This is the part too many new cleaners miss.

In Florida, residential cleaning and commercial cleaning are not treated the same way.

The Florida Department of Revenue’s cleaning services brochure says nonresidential cleaning services are taxable. That means office cleaning, janitorial work, restaurant interiors, warehouses, and similar commercial interiors are generally subject to Florida sales tax.

Residential cleaning is different. In a Department of Revenue advisement tied to Rule 12A-1.0091, the state says charges for cleaning residential living spaces are not subject to tax. You can read that in this Florida DOR advisement.

What that means in plain English:

Clean a house every two weeks: usually no Florida sales tax
Clean an apartment used as someone’s home: usually no Florida sales tax
Clean an office every Friday night: taxable
Clean a storefront or commercial unit: usually taxable

If you plan to do any commercial cleaning at all, read the DOR brochure and get clear on registration. The state says sellers of taxable nonresidential cleaning services must register to collect and remit tax.

This matters because tax mistakes come out of your pocket later if you never charged it.

One more Florida wrinkle: vacation rentals can get messy from a tax-reading point of view. The Department has said residential units used as living accommodations can still count as residential cleaning under this rule, even when some units are used for transient rentals, as shown in that same DOR advisement. If you plan to clean short-term rentals only, that is worth reading before you build your pricing.

Get insurance before the first client asks for it

You can start cleaning without insurance. You just should not.

One broken lamp, scratched floor, or slip on a wet tile floor can wipe out a lot of small jobs.

For a solo cleaner in Florida, general liability insurance often lands around $400 to $600 per year as a real starting ballpark. Current public pricing from Insurance Canopy starts around $435/year, and NEXT shows janitorial insurance can start around $41.67/month for some policies.

If you want one extra trust signal for higher-end homes or property managers, add a janitorial bond. A small bond often runs around $100 to $200 per year. Insurance Canopy’s public janitorial bond pricing starts at $131/year on its bond page.

The fast online options most new operators can quote in one sitting are:

Do not overcomplicate this. For a solo or one-helper cleaning business, the first goal is simple:

Get general liability
Add a bond if you want better trust with clients
Add workers’ comp later if you hire where required

What it costs to start with real equipment

You do not need a wrapped van and $8,000 in gear to start. You do need reliable tools that do not make every job take an extra hour.

A realistic Florida startup range for a solo cleaner is $500 to $1,500.

That usually covers:

Vacuum: $150 to $400
Mop system and bucket: $40 to $100
Microfiber cloths and scrub pads: $50 to $120
Basic chemicals: $75 to $200
Caddy or tote: $25 to $60
Gloves, trash bags, spray bottles, brushes: $50 to $120
Extra add-ons: extension duster, squeegee, small step stool, grout brush

If you are starting lean, buy for the jobs you already have. Do not buy carpet machines, steamers, ladders, and specialty products “just in case.” That is how a $700 startup turns into a $2,500 credit card bill before you even have regular clients.

What to charge in Florida without undercutting yourself

This is where new cleaners lose money.

You hear a friend say she charges $25 an hour. You want the work. You match it. Then you realize you still have to buy supplies, drive across town, pay self-employment tax, replace gear, and handle cancellations.

In Florida, a practical starting range for many cleaners is:

$30 to $50 per hour per cleaner
$0.10 to $0.20 per square foot
$120 to $220 per visit for many standard residential cleanings

Those ranges line up with broader market pricing sources like HomeGuide and Angi, then Florida location, traffic, and home size push the number around.

A few examples make this easier:

A small condo clean in Tampa might be $120
A 2,000-square-foot family home in Orlando might be $160 to $220
A first-time deep clean in Miami could be much higher than the recurring price
A weekly client should cost less per visit than a one-time rescue clean

Do not guess your price from what feels fair. Price from time, travel, supplies, and hassle.

If a 3-hour job pays $90, and you spend 45 minutes driving, 20 minutes texting, and 15 minutes buying supplies that week, you did not charge $30/hour. You charged something much worse.

If you want the short checklist version while you price all this out, use the Florida setup page.

The best Florida cities to start in

Florida is a good cleaning market because demand comes from a few different places at once.

You have:

Snowbirds
Vacation rentals
Busy two-income households
Retirees who want help
Condos and gated communities
Property managers who need repeat work

The four markets that stand out first are Tampa Bay, Orlando, Miami-Dade, and Jacksonville.

Tampa Bay gives you a mix of suburbs, retirees, and short-term rentals. There is steady residential demand, and a lot of homes that fit recurring cleaning well.

Orlando gives you family households plus vacation-rental turnover. If you are organized and can move fast, that market has repeat work all over it.

Miami-Dade gives you dense condos, higher-end homes, and a lot of clients who care about speed and reliability more than rock-bottom price. It can also punish you with traffic, so your route planning matters.

Jacksonville gives you sprawl, but also a big base of families, commuters, and neighborhoods where repeat house cleaning can stack into a stable route.

You do not need the biggest city. You need the city where you can get repeat jobs without driving an hour between them.

That is the real game.

Vacation rental cleaning is one of the best Florida niches

If you want a niche that can pay well fast, look hard at vacation rental turnover cleaning.

Why?

Because the work repeats. The property manager already has the unit. The owner already needs it cleaned. You are not starting from zero each week trying to convince a new homeowner to trust you.

In many Florida markets, a turnover can land around $120 to $180 for the right unit size and scope, especially when laundry, restocking, and same-day speed are part of the job. The margin can be better than standard residential work if you get efficient.

The tradeoff is that vacation rental work is less forgiving.

You need to handle:

Tight same-day windows
Photo-ready results
Linen resets
Missing item reports
Guest damage notes
Property manager communication

If that sounds stressful, it can be. But if you are organized, it can turn into strong recurring revenue faster than regular one-off house cleaning.

This is also where your website starts to matter more than people think. Property managers and owners want to see that you are real, insured, and easy to book.

How to get clients without living on the phone

Most new cleaners do not fail because they cannot clean. They fail because leads come in randomly, payments are messy, and every new client takes six texts and one phone call just to get booked.

That is the part software should fix.

If you are solo or have one helper, you usually do not need a giant field-service platform. You need a simple way for people to:

Find your site
Request or accept an estimate
Book a recurring plan
Save a card
Pay invoices
Update billing without calling you

That is where Ruunly fits.

Ruunly gives you an AI-built website, recurring billing on Stripe, and a client portal in one place starting at $19/mo. For a cleaning business, that can matter more than fancy dispatch tools because a lot of your profit comes from getting good clients onto recurring service and keeping billing off your plate.

If you are selling weekly or biweekly house cleaning, the useful part is simple: someone can find your site, sign up, and get billed without you chasing checks every Friday.

Ruunly is not the right fit for every cleaning company, and that matters. It does not have crew management for bigger teams at launch. It does not do GPS dispatch. If you plan to run multiple crews across South Florida, use heavier software. If you are solo, local, and trying to build a cleaner recurring base without paying for enterprise features, the lighter setup makes more sense.

The simple Florida playbook

If you want the short version, this is the play:

Start with residential cleaning if you want the easiest tax setup.
File your LLC through Sunbiz for $125.
Get general liability insurance before you start pitching.
Learn the line between residential non-taxable and commercial taxable cleaning from the Florida DOR.
Spend $500 to $1,500 on tools you will actually use this month.
Charge enough to protect your time, not just win the job.
Pick one market and one niche instead of trying to clean everything for everybody.
Set up a website and billing flow that does not make every new client feel manual.

You do not need a perfect brand. You need a legal setup, a real price sheet, and a way to get paid without chaos.

Get the complete Florida-specific setup checklist at /start-cleaning-business-florida.