For almost any home, a flat rate by home size is the better way to pay — the total is fixed before anyone starts, so slow work can’t grow the bill. That’s how JAS prices: a flat table from $189 to $319+ by bedrooms and baths. Hourly only wins when nobody can define the scope.
That’s how the number gets built. If you’d rather just see yours, tell us about the place — bedrooms, bathrooms, and the ZIP — and we’ll write back with a price.
What each model actually bills you for
An hourly quote is a multiplication: rate × people × hours. When you book, you know two of those three numbers. The third is decided by the house, the day, and the crew’s pace — and it becomes known only after the work is done. One piece of arithmetic surprises people: when the rate is quoted per cleaner, a two-person crew runs the meter at double the number you were told. None of that is deception; it’s simply that an hourly rate isn’t a price — it’s the formula for computing one later.
A flat rate bills a scope. The company takes the two numbers that predict cleaning labor better than anything else — bedrooms and bathrooms — and commits to a price for a defined checklist before anyone starts. If the visit runs long, that’s the company’s problem, not yours. The whole comparison fits in one sentence: the flat model moves the overrun risk onto the party that controls the pace of the work.
The incentive problem with the clock
None of this requires a dishonest cleaner. It’s structural: under hourly billing, every extra hour is revenue, so the model rewards exactly what you don’t want — the work going slowly. The “should be about three hours” that made the quote sound reasonable is a forecast with no price attached; the bill gets written afterward, by the clock. And you inherit a job you didn’t ask for: supervising the pace of strangers in your own home, because you’re the only person in the room with an interest in the visit ending.
Under a flat rate, the incentive flips into alignment with yours. The company earns the same $243 for a 2 BR · 2 bath whether the visit runs short or long, so its interest is finishing the published checklist efficiently — and “done” is defined by the checklist, not the clock. At JAS, the standard visit is a list of 28 items verified by photo, which is what turns “efficient” into something auditable instead of a promise.
An hourly overrun isn’t technically a hidden fee — the rate was disclosed up front — but it lands on the bill with the same surprise. The fees that actually hide are a different species: they ride along with prices nobody put in writing, one of the red flags we’ve catalogued to check before hiring a cleaning service.
What a flat rate looks like in practice
Here is the JAS standard-clean table for Miami-Dade — including the estimated visit length our residential cleaning page gives for each size, so you can see the time without paying by it. Every visit is a 2-person team:
- Studio — 2 hr — $189
- 1 BR · 1 bath — 2–3 hr — $189
- 2 BR · 2 bath — 2–3 hr — $243
- 3 BR · 2 bath — 3–4 hr — $265
- 4 BR+ · 3 bath — 4–5 hr — $319+
Read the durations as planning information — when the crew arrives and roughly when your home is yours again — and the prices as the actual commitment. You pay the row, not the clock. What a single visit ends up costing in practice, and when it should be a deep clean instead of a standard one, is its own question — we’ve answered it in how much a one-time house cleaning costs. And notice that even condition is handled the flat way: a home with months of build-up isn’t billed as “more hours on the meter” but as a different flat table — the deep clean, starting at $349.
If you want the full factor-by-factor math — what moves the price inside those tables, ZIP code included — it lives in our guide to how much house cleaning costs in Miami.
The honest case for hourly
Flat pricing needs a definable scope, and some jobs genuinely don’t have one. A house mid-declutter, where the useful instruction is “work until 2 pm and we’ll see how far we get.” An extreme-accumulation situation no form can size. An organizing session where “finished” is decided by you, as you go. For those, hourly is the honest tool: the buyer is choosing open-endedness on purpose.
The test is simple: if you can say how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have and what a finished visit should include, your job is definable — and a definable job priced by the hour just hands the overrun risk to you, with nothing given back in return.
How size turns into your quote
The booking wizard asks for the service, then your bedroom and bathroom counts; add-ons — appliance interiors, windows — are itemized line by line instead of being absorbed as hours. Then we call you about your quote. Our terms set the buying order: you request a quote first and only then request a time. Contrast that with hourly, where the number that matters only comes into existence after the work is over.
FAQ
Isn’t hourly cheaper for a small apartment?
Small homes are where flat tables are tightest, because the scope is most predictable — the JAS studio row is $189 with 2 hours listed beside it. An hourly quote for the same visit can sound cheaper per hour, but you only learn the total after the clock stops. Cheap-per-hour and cheap are not the same claim.
What if the crew finishes faster than the listed time?
You pay the row, not the clock — in both directions. The listed durations are planning estimates; the visit is done when the 28-item photo-verified checklist is done. A fast visit doesn’t earn a refund, and a slow one doesn’t grow the bill. That symmetry is the product.
What if my home takes longer than the estimate?
Under a flat rate, that risk belongs to the company — the price you accepted doesn’t move because the visit ran long. The honest boundary is the largest row: it’s listed as $319+, and the plus is real. The difference from hourly is when you find out: we call you with your figure before you commit, not on an invoice afterward.