The honest answer is under $500 if you start solo, keep it residential, and use the vacuum you already own.
Most "how to start a cleaning business" articles quote $5,000 to $15,000 because they assume you're buying into a franchise (Molly Maid, MaidPro, Merry Maids — all charge $25,000+ in fees alone). You're not. You're starting a one-person cleaning business that pays you in the first two weeks.
The cost most articles bury is liability and bonding insurance — $300 to $500 a year. Not because it's the biggest line item, but because it's the trust signal that actually wins jobs. Clients are handing you their house key. Insurance is what makes that feel okay to them. Uninsured cleaners lose bids to insured ones constantly and never find out why.
The hiring mistake that kills the margin: most new cleaners hire a second person the moment they feel busy. Don't. Wait until you have 8 to 10 recurring biweekly clients locked in. Hiring before that means you're paying $18 to $25 an hour to train someone on a schedule that isn't consistent yet — margin disappears before the business is stable enough to support it.
The route problem nobody mentions: if your three morning cleans are spread across the city, you're burning 90 minutes of drive time and $12 in gas for $360 in revenue. The cleaners who actually make money cluster clients in the same neighborhood, ideally the same street. That's not a marketing tip, it's a math requirement.
The rest — exact supply list, how to price your first clean by city, the script for the first call, and the four red-flag clients to turn down — is in the full plan:
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