How Many Houses Can a Window Cleaner Do in a Day?

The short answer

Nobody publishes an industry survey on this, so the best numbers come from window cleaners themselves. In a long-running WindowCleaner.com forum thread, solo cleaners doing full inside-and-out residential jobs reported 2 to 3 houses a day, and two-person crews reported 2 to 5. A couple running an exterior-only monthly route reported 10 to 12 houses a day, and a three-person exterior crew about 10 accounts.

Those posts date from 2009 and 2010, but the job itself hasn't changed much: ladders, squeegees, screens and a drive to the next house. Use them as a starting range, not a target.

What sets your number

• Window count and type. Housecall Pro's pricing examples use 12 windows for a small home and 22 for a medium two-story. French panes, storm windows and second-story ladder work all add time.
• Inside and out, or exterior only. Interior work means screens, sills, tracks and moving furniture, and the customer has to be home, so those jobs also need a time window.
• Crew size. A second person speeds up each job but doesn't double the day. One owner on the forum reported 2 to 4 houses with one employee and 3 to 5 with two.
• Drive time between jobs. Every minute in the truck comes out of the same workday.
• Setup and pack-up. Ladders, drop cloths or a water-fed pole: each stop costs time before the first pane is touched.

Work out your own number

Time your next ten jobs from arrival to departure, note the drive between them, and you can calculate a realistic number instead of guessing:

Example numbers for illustration. Put your own timed averages in their place.

On long inside-and-out jobs, cutting the drive in half barely changes the count. On short exterior jobs it's the difference between 7 and 8 or more houses a day. Tight routing pays off most on exterior and maintenance routes.

How to fit more houses into a day

1. Work one area per day. Give each part of your territory its own days, and when a customer calls, offer the next day you're already nearby.
2. Sell exterior-only visits between full cleans. They're short, repeatable stops that fill a route well.
3. Put interior jobs in time windows. Book them for when the customer is home and plan the exterior stops around them.
4. Do storefronts first. Commercial glass usually has to be done before opening, so start there and move on to homes.
5. Have a rain plan. When weather cancels a day, move those jobs to the next days you're working in the same areas instead of squeezing them in anywhere.
6. Track real job times. Your quotes get more accurate, and so does every day you plan.

Where Prophet fits

Prophet is scheduling and routing software for service crews. You enter each job with its length and the days and times the customer is available, and Prophet builds each crew's day: which houses, in what order, inside the windows you promised. If a job runs long, it re-plans the rest of the day. See Prophet for window cleaning or pricing.