Quick answer: An end of tenancy clean in Edinburgh starts at £149 for a studio and £219 for a two bedroom flat. Most flats land between £204 and £379 once the oven and fridge are added. Our fixed prices are £149 studio, £179 one bedroom, £219 two bedroom, £259 three bedroom, £299 four bedroom, and from £349 for five bedrooms and up. Carpet shampooing is £35 a room, or £25 for a hall, stairs and landing. Across the market, local independents advertise from about £150, the national brands from about £235, and the Checkatrade cost guide puts the UK average at £260. You get one figure before we book, and it does not move unless you add something.
How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in Edinburgh?
The table below is our whole price list. The starting price is the flat itself: every room, every cupboard, the bathroom, the skirtings, the internal glass. The typical final price is what most Edinburgh flats pay, because most need the oven doing and have a fridge left behind.
| Property size | Starting price | Typical final price | Per sharer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | £149 | £204 | n/a |
| 1 bedroom | £179 | £259 | n/a |
| 2 bedrooms | £219 | £299 | about £110 |
| 3 bedrooms | £259 | £339 | about £86 |
| 4 bedrooms | £299 | £379 | about £75 |
| 5 bedrooms and up | from £349 | from £429 | about £70 |
From one bedroom up, the typical final column adds an oven deep clean at £55 and a fridge or freezer at £25, so £80 on top. Studios usually take the oven alone, the fridge being built into the kitchenette. If your oven is spotless and the fridge went out with the van, you pay the starting price and nothing else.
The number you are given is the number you pay. We quote per property and per size, not per hour and not per cleaner. If the job runs four hours longer than we thought, that is our problem, not a line on your bill.
What do the add-ons cost?
Add-ons are priced separately because not every flat needs them. Charging everybody for an oven clean is how prices in this trade got so high.
| Add-on | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Oven deep clean | £55 | Dismantled, racks and door glass soaked, roof and element |
| Fridge or freezer | £25 | Defrosted, shelves out, seals and drip tray |
| White goods | £19 | Washing machine or dishwasher: drawer, filter, seal |
| Pet surcharge | £20 | Hair off carpets, skirtings and upholstered fittings |
| Carpet shampoo, per room | £35 | Any carpeted room, machine shampooed |
| Carpet shampoo, hall, stairs and landing | £25 | All three, charged once |
Carpets surprise people, so here is the arithmetic in the open. A three bedroom flat with carpet in all three bedrooms plus a carpeted hall, stairs and landing is three rooms at £35, so £105, plus £25 for the stair run. That is £130 on top of the £259 base, £389 in total. If the bedrooms are floorboards, common in older tenement stock, the carpet line disappears.
What is the difference between an end of tenancy clean, a deep clean and a regular clean?
These three get compared on price alone. They are not the same job. The end of tenancy clean is the only one written against a checkout inventory.
| End of tenancy clean | Deep clean | Regular clean | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Releasing a deposit | Resetting a home you live in | Keeping a flat on top |
| Who books it | Tenants, landlords, agents | Owners, long term tenants | Owners, tenants |
| Empty property | Yes, floors clear | No, worked around furniture | No |
| Ovens and appliances | Add-ons, to inventory standard | On request | Not included |
| How it is priced | Fixed, by bedroom count | Quoted on condition | Hourly or weekly |
| How often | Once, at the move out | Once or twice a year | Weekly or fortnightly |
The practical difference is the standard being worked to. A regular clean is judged by how the flat feels. An end of tenancy clean is judged by somebody with a clipboard and the check-in report from the day you moved in. Our checkout inspection guide covers what they look at.
Is £219 for a two bedroom flat cheap or dear for Edinburgh?
It sits in the middle, deliberately. Local independents in Edinburgh advertise from about £150, the national brands start from about £235, and the Checkatrade cost guide puts the UK average at £260. So a £219 two bedroom is under the national brands, under the UK average, and above the cheapest local floor.
We are not chasing that floor, and here is why. The advertised £150 end of this market is a starting figure on a list, not a transacted price, and the oven is almost never in it. Add an oven clean to a £150 headline and you are at our price anyway, without the fixed quote.
Advertised prices are not paid prices. Every "from" figure in this market, ours included, is a floor. The number worth comparing is the one on your quote, with your add-ons, for your actual flat.
If budget is the whole question, the affordable cleaning page sets out where the price can genuinely come down.
What moves the price in Edinburgh specifically?
Four things, and three are peculiar to this city's housing stock.
Tenement flats with three to five bedrooms and one hard-worked kitchen. Edinburgh's rental stock is dominated by nineteenth century tenements, many let as three, four and five bedroom shares for decades. The bedroom count drives the price, but the kitchen drives the work. Five sharers cook in one galley kitchen with one oven, one extractor and one run of worktops, and that kitchen takes as long as the five bedrooms together. Hence a ladder that climbs to £349 and up rather than flattening out.
HMO shares and joint deposits. Edinburgh holds 6,797 licensed HMOs, 44% of Scotland's total (gov.scot Housing Statistics 2025), the biggest licensing pool in the country. In a licensed HMO the deposit is usually joint, so the clean is a joint decision and a joint bill. Hence the split column above. Agents running large HMO books, Cullen Property and Clan Gordon and Grant Property among them, expect the flat back at check-in standard, not student-tidy standard.
Condition at checkout. The one thing genuinely in your control. A flat kept on top of, with the oven wiped after use and the extractor filter washed once a term, cleans at the ladder price. Where the oven has not been touched since the tenancy started, the £55 stops being optional. Reading our end of tenancy checklist a fortnight before the move is the cheapest thing on this page.
Add-ons, which are yours to choose. Carpets, pets and white goods are the swing factor, and also the items most likely to appear on a deduction letter. Declining one to save £35 is often a false economy.
One thing that does not move the price here: limescale. Edinburgh's supply from Scottish Water's Glencorse works is soft, 30 to 31 mg per litre as calcium carbonate, so screens, taps and kettles do not carry the mineral crust of hard water areas. There is no descaling surcharge on our list and there should not be one on anybody else's.
Why do we quote one fixed price instead of an hourly rate?
Because an hourly rate moves the risk from us to you, and you cannot price that risk before the work starts.
An hourly quote asks the tenant to guess how long their own flat will take, on the day they are also moving out of it. Guess wrong and the bill grows while you watch. The incentive runs backwards too: a cleaner on the clock is paid more for working slower.
A fixed price also gives you a figure you can put in front of a flatmate, a parent or a letting agent before anybody commits. That matters most in shares, where four people have to agree on a number by text first. Our cost calculator produces that figure in about a minute, and the full list sits on the pricing page.
We requote only when a flat is materially different from the one described: a four bedroom booked in as a two, or a property left full. You hear it before we start, in writing.
How does the price compare with the deposit at stake?
This is the comparison that matters, and it is not close.
| Figure | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average 2 bedroom rent, Lothian | £1,356 a month | gov.scot Private Sector Rent Statistics, to end Sept 2025 |
| Deposit cap in Scotland | 2 months' rent | Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 |
| A 2 bedroom deposit at that cap | about £2,712 | The two rows above, multiplied |
| Our 2 bedroom clean | £219 | Our price list |
| The clean against that deposit | about a twelfth | £219 against £2,712 |
Lothian has the highest average two bedroom rent in Scotland at £1,356 a month, and under the 2016 Act a deposit is capped at two months' rent. A two bedroom deposit here can therefore be more than £2,700 sitting in a scheme. Our clean on that flat is £219.
The maths is one sided. A cleaning deduction does not have to take the whole deposit to cost more than the clean would have. On a £2,712 deposit, a deduction of a tenth wipes out the price of the clean and most of the oven.
When is the clean worth paying for under a PRT?
Almost every Edinburgh let signed since 1 December 2017 is a Private Residential Tenancy under the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016. It is open ended, and you end it with 28 days' written notice under section 49(3). mygov.scot advises allowing two extra days for post or email.
Your deposit sits with one of three approved schemes, SafeDeposits Scotland, Letting Protection Service Scotland or MyDeposits Scotland, lodged within 30 working days of the tenancy starting. If it was never lodged, that is a matter for the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber), which can order a sanction of up to three times the deposit.
Cleaning is consistently reported as one of the leading causes of deposit deductions in Scotland. When a deduction is disputed the adjudicator decides on evidence, not on who sounds more reasonable: dated photographs, the check-in report, and a receipt showing what was done.
Evidence is the product. Every job we finish leaves a timestamped photo record and an itemised receipt, backed by a 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If a landlord or agent raises a cleaning point inside that window, we come back and put it right, and you have the paperwork either way.
Our DIY versus professional comparison puts real hours and hire costs against the ladder price, and the deposit guide covers the rest.
Does the price change by area?
No. The ladder is the same across every part of Edinburgh we cover. What changes by area is which sizes and add-ons come up most.
In the student belt the three, four and five bedroom rows do the heavy lifting, and the summer changeover concentrates the year into a few weeks. That is Marchmont, where rooms let at around £600 a month and Warrender Park Road and Thirlestane Road are wall to wall tenements, and Newington, which mixes students with professional sharers and runs more evenly. Bruntsfield shares Marchmont's stock next door and prices identically.
The west corridor is the HMO belt around Napier's Merchiston campus. Polwarth and Fountainbridge run three, four and five bedroom furnished shares, rooms around £450 to £550, cheaper than the Marchmont belt. Gorgie and Dalry sit at the affordable end, one bedroom flats around £950 to £1,150 in Victorian tenements off Gorgie Road and Dalry Road, less tied to the academic year.
Leith covers the broadest range in the city, studios through to six bedroom HMOs, from Leith Walk and Pilrig down to the Shore and Newhaven, so every row gets used. Tollcross is a dense corridor of one and two bedroom professional lets, and Southside around Clerk Street and Nicolson Street runs long term shares in the university quarter. Stockbridge is dearer Georgian and Victorian stock, two bedroom flats around £1,490 a month, where the deposit at stake is the largest here. Portobello is its own market, seaside lets with sand in the hall carpet, so the carpet line comes up more there.
Does a same-day clean cost more?
Usually not. Book by 12 noon and we can normally fit you in the same day, and where a crew has a free slot there is no surcharge. A charge applies only when booked jobs have to move to make room for yours, and we quote it before you book, never after. The same-day page covers the cut-off and the slots.
Landlords and agents booking between tenancies get the same ladder and the same fixed quote: see the landlord page. Students sorting a summer changeover will find the split-the-bill detail on the student page.
What is not in the price?
Exterior window cleaning is out: tenement sash and case windows are cleaned inside only, to both faces of the sash where it opens safely. Rubbish removal and furniture disposal are out, and a flat left full is a job we quote separately. Mould treatment, post-building dust and hoarding recovery sit on the specialist cleaning page because they need different kit and time. Nothing here is a legal service either: the tenancy and deposit explainer sets out the rules, but a contested deduction is decided by the adjudicator.
Moving in rather than out is priced the same way, on the move-in cleaning page.
How do we give you the exact figure?
Tell us the number of bedrooms, the postcode, the date the keys go back, and whether the oven, fridge and carpets are in. That is enough for a fixed price, and it takes about a minute on the quote form. Monday to Friday, nine to five, we call back within the hour. Weekends are eleven to three by arrangement, and anything outside those hours gets a reply by nine the next working day.
If you would rather work it out first, the printable checklist sets out the standard, and the oven cleaning guide tells you whether the £55 is worth spending.
FAQ
How much is end of tenancy cleaning for a two bedroom flat in Edinburgh? Our fixed price for a two bedroom flat is £219. With the two most common add-ons, an oven deep clean at £55 and a fridge or freezer at £25, the typical final figure is £299. Carpets, pets and white goods are priced separately.
Is the oven included in the price? No, the oven is a £55 add-on, and it is the one we quote most often. Keeping it separate means flats with a clean oven are not paying for work they do not need. The oven is dismantled, the racks and door glass soaked, the roof and element done.
Do you charge extra for carpets? Carpet shampooing is £35 a room, plus £25 for a hall, stairs and landing charged as one area. Plenty of older Edinburgh tenement flats have bare floorboards and never need this line. Where there is a pet, the £20 surcharge covers hair removal from carpets, skirtings and upholstered fittings.
Why is a five bedroom HMO more than twice the price of a studio? Because the kitchen does not scale with the bedroom count. Five people share one oven, one extractor and one run of worktops, and that kitchen alone can take as long as the five bedrooms together. Bathrooms in larger shares take the same hit.
Can we split the bill between flatmates? Yes, and most shares do. A three bedroom at £259 works out at about £86 each, a four bedroom at £299 about £75 each, and a five bedroom at £349 about £70. Deposits in licensed HMOs are usually joint, so splitting the clean the same way keeps it simple.
Do you charge by the hour, and can the price change on the day? No to both. Every job is one fixed price against the bedroom count and the add-ons you pick, and the figure on your quote is the figure on your receipt. We requote only if the property is materially different from the one described.
Does Edinburgh's soft water make the clean cheaper? It does not change the price, but it does change the work. Edinburgh is supplied through Scottish Water's Glencorse works at 30 to 31 mg per litre as calcium carbonate, which is soft, so taps, screens and kettles do not carry the limescale that a harder supply leaves.
What happens if the letting agent is not satisfied? We come back inside 48 hours and put the point right at no charge. Every job also leaves a timestamped photo record and an itemised receipt, the evidence a deposit scheme adjudicator looks at if a cleaning deduction is disputed.
Are sash and case windows cleaned in the price? Internally, yes. We clean the glass inside, and both faces of the sash wherever the window opens safely and can be reached from inside. Exterior window cleaning at height is not part of an end of tenancy clean and is not priced here.
Sources and official bodies
- Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016, creating the Private Residential Tenancy
- Section 49 of the 2016 Act, the tenant notice provision
- mygov.scot: giving notice to end a tenancy
- mygov.scot: tenancy deposits and getting your deposit back
- mygov.scot: check your tenancy type
- SafeDeposits Scotland, one of the three approved schemes
- First-tier Tribunal for Scotland, Housing and Property Chamber
- gov.scot: Private Sector Rent Statistics, source of the Lothian rent figure
- gov.scot: housing statistics, source of the HMO licence count
- gov.scot: private renting policy
- Scotland's Census 2022