Free guide
Mobile detailing prices: what to charge in 2026
Most pricing advice for detailers is a range: “$150–$300 for an interior.” That is not a price. Below is a full rate card you can copy, the multipliers that adjust it, and the one check that tells you whether a quote is actually worth taking.
Start with your floor, not the market
Your floor is the lowest amount you will accept per working hour — every hour from the moment you leave until the moment you are packed up. Not the hour you spend with a brush in your hand. The drive, the setup, the walk-around and the pack-down all count, because you cannot bill anyone else for them.
A solo mobile detailer in the US with their own van and gear usually needs a floor of $65–$90 an hour to make a real living after fuel, product, insurance and downtime. The rate card below assumes $75. If your floor is higher, scale every price up.
Base prices by vehicle
Hours are working time at average condition. Prices are the base hours plus 25 minutes of setup and pack-down, at a $75 floor, rounded up to the next $5.
| Vehicle | Exterior | Interior | Full detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sedan or coupe | 1.25 h · $125 | 2.5 h · $220 | 3.5 h · $295 |
| Mid-size SUV or crossover | 1.5 h · $145 | 3 h · $260 | 4.25 h · $350 |
| Full-size SUV or minivan | 1.75 h · $165 | 4 h · $335 | 5.5 h · $445 |
| Pickup truck | 1.75 h · $165 | 3.5 h · $295 | 5 h · $410 |
| Van or oversize | 2 h · $185 | 4.5 h · $370 | 6 h · $485 |
Condition multipliers
Condition changes both the time and the price. A “heavy” interior is not 10% more work; it is a third more. Say the multiplier out loud when you quote — “this one is in heavy condition, so it is $340 instead of $260” — and customers accept it, because it is a rule, not a mood.
Add-ons
Every add-on is minutes first, dollars second. If you only track the dollars you will underprice the slow ones — pet hair is the classic — and take on jobs that pay less than your floor.
| Add-on | Minutes | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Pet hair removal | 40 | $50 |
| Odor treatment | 30 | $40 |
| Engine bay | 30 | $40 |
| Headlight restoration | 40 | $50 |
| Clay bar and sealant | 60 | $75 |
| Carpet shampoo extraction | 45 | $60 |
| Leather conditioning | 20 | $25 |
Travel
Include the first 5 round-trip miles. Beyond that, charge per mile — $3 is fair in most metros — and count the drive as working time at your average speed (32 mph is realistic once you include traffic and parking). A 24-mile round trip is 45 minutes you cannot sell to anyone else.
The check most detailers skip
Before you send a quote, divide the price by the total working hours: work × condition, plus add-on minutes, plus setup, plus the drive. If the result is under your floor, the job is a loss — even if the price sounded fine.
Worked example
Full-size SUV, interior, average condition, pet hair, 24 miles round trip. You quote $278 because that is what it usually goes for.
$278 ÷ 5.84 h = $47.60 an hour. At a $75 floor that job needed to go out at $438, or not at all. The rate card would have said $442.
Do this for every quote
You can run this by hand. It takes about two minutes per quote and you will stop doing it by the second week. Jobkit is the same rate card and the same check as a spreadsheet: pick the vehicle, condition, add-ons and miles from dropdowns, and it shows the price and the real hourly rate before you send. Works in Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets and LibreOffice, on your phone, offline.
$37 once · Instant download · 30-day refund