Best apps for a cleaning business in 2026

A cleaning business is built on recurring visits. A weekly clean for one family, every other Thursday for another, a move-out deep clean squeezed in on Saturday. Once you have thirty regular homes, the hard part is not the cleaning; it is keeping the calendar straight when a client skips a week, remembering who left a key under which mat, and making sure every visit is billed.

Residential and commercial cleaning need different tools. House cleaners want online booking, recurring appointments and an easy way to take payment after each visit. Janitorial companies cleaning offices at night care more about shift scheduling, proof the work was done, and inspections they can show the client.

We compare six apps: three made for cleaning businesses, two general tools, and Workeey, the app we make. Where another app is the better choice, we say so.

ZenMaid

Best fit: a residential maid service that wants scheduling made for cleaners at a low starting price.

ZenMaid is software for maid services. Starter includes scheduling with calendar, dispatch and map views, some automated text and email templates for cleaners and customers, a mobile app for cleaners with an SOS alert, and invoicing with online payments through Stripe or Square. It is capped at 40 appointments a month and support is by chat.

Pro removes the cap and adds digital checklists for each appointment, cleaner GPS tracking in the app, booking forms for your website, reports, payroll and a tool for finding open slots for new recurring clients. Pro Max adds paid-time-off tracking for cleaners, every message template, data export, Mailchimp and Zapier, and booking forms with your own branding.

Pricing: Starter is $19 a month, Pro $39, and the Pro Max plan is $49, before SMS charges, on a month-to-month basis. The pricing page has a calculator that asks how many cleaners and office managers you have, so confirm the figure for your team. There is a 14-day free trial.

Who should look elsewhere: a business that writes custom quotes for every job, since estimates are not listed on its pricing page.

Source: ZenMaid pricing.

BookingKoala

Best fit: a cleaning company that wants customers to book and pay through its own branded website.

BookingKoala combines a website builder with booking. Customers choose their services and see your prices and availability on a booking form you customize, and smart scheduling places the job. It includes a theme builder, your own domain, lead capture forms, and access from a phone, tablet or computer for you, your providers and your customers. An invoicing module sends invoices by email or text and can collect tips, and a separate form lets customers ask for a quote.

The price grows with your business. BookingKoala raises the tier based on the number of providers, meaning each cleaner, and on storage or contacts.

Pricing: Starter starts at $27 a month, Growing at $57, and Premium at $197, with higher tiers for larger businesses. A free trial is offered.

Who should look elsewhere: a cleaner who already has a website and only needs a calendar and invoices.

Source: BookingKoala pricing.

Swept

Best fit: a commercial or janitorial cleaning company with staff across many client sites.

Swept is built for janitorial work. Optimize covers scheduling and shift management, mobile clock in and out, inspections with photo proof, GPS site verification, cleaning checklists per location, messaging, and it works in more than 150 languages. Scale adds a client portal, profit and loss by location, supply requests, work orders and one-time cleanings, and QuickBooks Online payroll integration.

It is aimed at running crews and keeping commercial clients happy, not at billing homeowners; invoicing your own customers is not listed on its plans page.

Pricing: Optimize starts at $150 a month and Scale at $225 a month, each for up to 15 locations, billed monthly and cancelable any time, with savings on annual billing. Accelerate, for 50 or more locations, is custom.

Who should look elsewhere: a residential house cleaner, or anyone working alone.

Source: Swept plans.

Jobber

Best fit: a residential cleaning business that wants online booking, recurring visits and a client hub in a general field-service app.

Jobber's Core plan includes online booking and scheduling, quotes, invoices with online payments, and a client hub where customers see their visits and pay. Connect adds automated client reminders, automatic payments and QuickBooks Online sync, useful once you have dozens of recurring homes.

Pricing: Core is $29 a month billed annually, $39 with a one-year commitment, or $49 with no commitment; Connect starts at $99 a month billed annually. Each extra user on Core is $29 a month. A 14-day trial needs no card.

Who should look elsewhere: a cleaning business with several cleaners on a tight budget, since extra users add up.

Source: Jobber pricing. Side by side: Workeey vs Jobber.

Square Invoices

Best fit: a house cleaner with regular clients who wants free recurring invoices.

Square Free includes unlimited invoices, recurring invoices, estimates, deposits and automatic reminders at no monthly cost. A biweekly clean billed the same amount each time fits recurring invoices well. Square Plus adds payment schedules, batch invoices and multi-package estimates.

There is no cleaning schedule on Square's invoices pricing page, so the calendar lives elsewhere.

Pricing: Square Free is $0 a month; Square Plus is $49 a month per location, with card fees set by Square.

Who should look elsewhere: a cleaner who wants booking, the calendar and billing together.

Source: Square invoices pricing. Side by side: Workeey vs Square Invoices.

Workeey

Best fit: a self-employed house cleaner who wants recurring visits, quotes and invoices on the phone without paying to start.

Workeey's free plan has no end date and needs no card. It includes unlimited invoicing, 23 quick estimates a month and 10 payment reminder texts a month that you turn on per invoice. Regular clients become repeating jobs, with the next 12 visits on the calendar in time slots, and the route tool puts the first 11 stops of a busy day in the best order. Price a standard clean, a deep clean and a move-out once as saved lines, and quoting a new home is quick: you send a quote PDF, and when the client says yes, one tap turns it into the invoice.

Invoices are emailed with a pay link for card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or US bank transfer through your own Stripe account, with a small processing fee. Link your bank and matching invoices are marked paid. There is also an assistant you can type or talk to. Pro adds Google Calendar and QuickBooks sync and 30 texts a month; Premium has unlimited texts.

Be aware of the limits. Workeey has no recurring billing, so each clean is its own invoice. There are no team accounts for cleaners, no payroll like ZenMaid's, no inspections like Swept's, and no deposits collected; a deposit percent can print on the quote. Clients cannot accept or sign a quote inside Workeey. Workeey is built for the phone: the Android app is on Google Play, it runs in any phone's browser, and a desktop version is coming soon.

Pricing: free; Pro $5 a month; Premium $19 a month.

Who should look elsewhere: a cleaning company with teams to dispatch, or one that wants clients to book online.

Sources: Workeey features and pricing and availability.

How to choose an app for a cleaning business

First, decide whether you are residential or commercial. House cleaning favors apps with recurring appointments and simple payment after each visit, such as ZenMaid, Jobber or Workeey. Office and janitorial work favors shift scheduling and site proof, which is what Swept is built for.

Second, decide how new clients find you. If you want strangers to book a clean from your website at a price you set, BookingKoala and ZenMaid's higher plans make that their focus. If most work comes by referral and a text, you need fast quotes more than a booking form.

Third, look at caps and per-cleaner pricing. Appointment limits and per-provider tiers are easy to miss when you have two cleaners and painful when you have six.

Finally, set your prices before you set up software. Our guide to how much to charge for house cleaning covers pricing per hour or per room. For other trades, see the best apps for tradespeople.

More for cleaners: pages and free templates

• Cleaning business software — visits and invoices in one app
• Invoicing for cleaning businesses — per visit or per month, add-ons on their own lines
• How much to charge for house cleaning — a guide to setting your prices
• How to start a cleaning business — a step-by-step guide to going out on your own
• House cleaning invoice template — free, with a filled-in sample
• House cleaning estimate template — a free quote sample
• House cleaning receipt template — a free paid-in-full sample
• House cleaning price list template — free, with sample prices
• Free invoice template — every field a trade invoice needs
• Free estimate template — copy it, price it, send it
• Free receipt template — a paid-in-full receipt to copy
• Work order template — the job written down before you bill it
• Late payment reminder templates — texts, emails and a letter to copy and send
• All free templates and tools