All three units are real, and the unit tracks the building. Per-square-foot rates price large janitorial footprints, hourly rates price work nobody has measured yet, and flat per-visit rates price offices and suites — which is how JAS prices them in Miami-Dade, starting at $185 per weekly visit for spaces up to 1,000 sq ft.
The unit a vendor quotes in is information. A per-square-foot number offered before anyone has seen your space is a national average wearing your address. An hourly number is an estimate of effort, not a commitment to a result. A per-visit number attached to a written task list is the only one of the three that promises an outcome at a price.
That’s the standard a building should be held to. If you’d rather have it in writing, tell us about the space — we walk it and come back with a scope of work and a price, usually within one business day.
Per square foot: the unit of big footprints
Square footage is the language of janitorial work in large buildings. The ranges that circulate for that work run roughly $0.08 to $0.20 per square foot per visit — an industry band, not a JAS rate. The model exists because at 20,000 sq ft the fixed cost of sending a crew — the drive, the setup, the supervision — spreads across so much footage that the per-foot number becomes meaningful. RFPs for towers and campuses are written in this unit for the same reason leases are.
The model breaks exactly where most small businesses actually live — in our Miami market as much as anywhere: small and mid-size suites. A 600 sq ft office still needs a crew, a drive, and a full restroom disinfected, and none of that shrinks with the footage — so below a few thousand square feet the honest per-foot number climbs steeply, and a low one means the visit is being given away or quietly shortened. That arithmetic, run on our own rates, is already in the office cleaning cost guide, so this article will not repeat it.
Per hour: the unit of unmeasured work
Hourly is the honest unit when nobody knows the scope yet: the rescue visit after a vendor stopped showing up, the cleanup after an event, project work with no pattern to it. If the work cannot be predicted, a flat number would just be an hourly guess with the risk hidden inside it.
For recurring office cleaning it is the wrong unit, and the reason is comparison. Two hourly bids cannot be compared without the task list behind them: the cheaper rate with the slower crew costs you more every month, and the page will not show it. An hourly contract also moves the estimating risk onto you — when the visit runs long, so does the bill. After a walkthrough, a recurring scope is a known quantity: a vendor who has actually measured your space can commit to a flat per-visit price, and one who still wants to bill the same weekly visit by the hour is telling you they have not.
Per visit: the unit for offices — and the one we use
JAS prices office work per visit — in Miami-Dade, office cleaning starts at $185 per weekly visit for spaces up to 1,000 sq ft, and the size bands run through 8,000 sq ft and beyond, with “Custom” where the footage genuinely needs its own scope — more on the office cleaning in Miami page. Those are starting estimates per weekly visit, based on square footage; as the page itself says, biweekly, monthly, and one-time visits start from a different base, because every skipped week adds accumulated work to the next visit. In this model frequency becomes a real decision instead of a multiplier: weekly keeps each visit light, monthly carries more work per visit.
One thing that does move a per-visit price at JAS: the hour the visit starts. Evening slots (6pm–10pm) are our default for offices, and a start before 7pm is the standard rate — but from 7pm to 7am a late-hours rate of +50% applies, itemized on its own line rather than folded into the rate.
“Square feet measure the building. Hours measure the effort. The visit is the only unit that measures what you bought: an outcome, at a price, with a signed list.”
Why two quotes for the same space land far apart
Because a quote prices assumptions, and the assumptions differ. Layout: an open floor with two restrooms cleans faster than the same footage split into private offices, conference rooms, and a kitchenette, and restrooms take the most disinfecting time per square foot in the building — two 3,000 sq ft suites are not the same job. Condition: a first visit that rescues a neglected space is its own line, and one bid may have buried it in the monthly rate while another shows it. Inclusions: one bid carries products, equipment, and consumables restocking; another quotes bare labor. The document that forces all of that into the open is the written scope — what belongs in it is its own article: what a commercial cleaning contract should include.
A dense coastal market adds multipliers of its own — Miami, where we operate, is the extreme case. Access: in a Brickell tower or a board-run condo there is a freight elevator to book and a vendor file to clear before anyone cleans anything — JAS carries $2M general liability and sends a certificate of insurance within 2 business hours (how to verify that is on the transparency page) — and a bid that never asked about your building’s access rules has not priced your building. The calendar: from June through November a named storm can close a building mid-month. The Terms say it plainly: “We may need to reschedule for weather, safety, or staffing reasons” and “you never pay a fee for a reschedule we initiate”. On a model billed after each completed visit, the lost week costs zero; on a prepaid month it costs exactly what the fine print says.
How to compare bids across models
Convert everything to one number: the monthly cost of the same written scope at the same frequency. A per-foot bid multiplies by your footage and the visits per month; an hourly bid by the promised hours; a per-visit bid by four or five visits. If a vendor cannot give you the task list and the frequency of each task in writing, there is nothing to multiply — and nothing to hold them to in month six.
That paper trail is the whole JAS flow. The commercial page puts it in one sentence: “You get a scope of work and a price in writing — the task list, the frequency of each task, and what it costs. Nothing starts until you approve it, and the price you approve is the price you pay.” And the Terms put the order just as plainly: “You request a quote, see it, and then request a time.” There is no payment at booking, and after each completed visit we issue an invoice for the quoted amount — a pricing model you can audit, whichever unit it started in.
The short version
Per square foot for big footprints, per hour for unmeasured work, per visit for offices — and the unit a vendor picks tells you how well they know your space. JAS prices Miami-Dade offices per visit, from $185 per weekly visit up to 1,000 sq ft, and the office cost guide runs the full monthly math. The only thing left to put on the table is your floor.
Part of the JAS operating playbook: the three units this industry quotes in, and why ours is a per-visit price in writing.