Cleaner Pay Rate 2026-27
Contract and commercial cleaning is covered by the Cleaning Services Award, which sets three levels. All three are published below, with the casual rate and what each level leaves after tax.
The short answer
A cleaner is paid $27.08 an hour at Level 1, or $1,028.90 a week full-time. The award has three levels and tops out at $29.45 an hour. A casual at Level 1 is paid $33.85 an hour, including the 25% loading, before any shift or weekend penalty. Those casual figures are printed in the award rather than worked out here.
Award floor
$27.08
Level 1, an hour
Top cleaning level
$29.45
Level 3, an hour
Casual, at the floor
$33.85
Includes the 25% loading
Take-home a year
$45,862
$1,764 a fortnight, at the floor
These are legal minimums set by a modern award, not a market average. This site does not publish average or advertised salaries, because the number that matters on a payslip is the floor an employer cannot go below. Many employers pay more, and an enterprise agreement can set a higher rate again.
Cleaner rates, level by level.
Adult rates for all three cleaning levels. Every figure below was cross-checked against the award’s own rates schedule, so none of them is derived.
Minimum rates
1 July 2026 · PR799303
Read from the minimum rates table and cross-checked against schedule B, which publishes the hourly and casual columns as the award's own figures.
| Classification | Weekly | Hourly | Casual hourly | Take-home a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | $1,028.90 | $27.08 | $33.85 | $45,862 |
| Level 2 | $1,062.90 | $27.97 | $34.96 | $47,064 |
| Level 3 | $1,119.10 | $29.45 | $36.81 | $49,051 |
Hourly figures are the weekly rate over 38 ordinary hours. Take-home is an estimate for a single Australian resident for tax purposes with no study loan debt and no Medicare levy surcharge, worked out with the same Wage Calculator used across this site. Superannuation is paid by your employer on top of these rates and is never deducted from them.
Which award covers a cleaner, and when it does not.
The Cleaning Services Award 2020 (MA000022) covers the contract cleaning services industry: businesses whose work is cleaning premises for someone else, and the employees who do that cleaning. Office cleaning, school and hospital cleaning, shopping centre cleaning and the crews sent out by a cleaning contractor all sit here. The award carries three levels and no more.
What decides which of the three levels applies is the award’s classification definitions. If your payslip names a level, read the rate off the table above; if it does not name one, that is worth asking about in writing.
Two situations fall outside this award, and both are common. Cleaning done by an employee of the business being cleaned, rather than by a cleaning contractor, is usually covered by whichever award covers that business, so a cleaner directly employed by a hotel or a hospital may sit under a different instrument entirely. And where a householder engages someone directly to clean a home, whether this award applies at all is a coverage question that turns on the facts of the arrangement, which Fair Work is the right place to settle rather than a rate page.
Award rates are also only the floor. Large cleaning contractors, and most cleaning done under a government or facilities management contract, operate under enterprise agreements that set their own rates and shift rules, and where one applies it is that agreement, not the award, that governs the payslip.
Every classification in this award, including the ones this page leaves out, is listed on the Cleaning Services Award Pay Rates page.
Where these figures come from.
Provenance
Verified- Award
- Cleaning Services Award 2020 (MA000022)
- Effective from
- 1 July 2026
- Consolidated to
- 1 July 2026
- Determinations
- PR799280, PR799303, PR799460
- Retrieved
- 9 September 2026
- Ordinary hours
- 38 a week
Every rate above was read from the award text at the Fair Work award library and nothing on this page is copied from another pay site. Rates change from the first full pay period on or after the effective date, so a payslip covering the changeover can lawfully carry the older figure for part of the period.
What this page does not cover.
Listed as plainly as what it does, because a rate page that hides its gaps is how the wrong number ends up on a payslip.
Junior rates
This page publishes adult rates. Where an award sets a junior percentage of the adult rate, this site does not publish it, so do not read a figure here as the minimum for an employee under 21.
Penalty rates and shift loadings
Early morning, night, weekend, public holiday and overtime loadings are set separately in the award and are not in this table. Cleaning is rostered outside ordinary hours more often than most work, so this gap matters here.
Allowances
Broken shift, toilet cleaning, height, first aid, vehicle and other allowances are additional to the rates above and are not included.
Domestic and private cleaning
What a householder pays a cleaner or a cleaning business directly is a price, not a wage, and it is not set by this award. This page does not publish it.
Enterprise agreements
Large contractors and most facilities management contracts run registered agreements that displace the award rate, and those are not published here.
Market or advertised pay
This page publishes the award floor only. It is not an average, a median, or what a given contractor actually offers.
Cleaner Pay Rate questions, answered.
What should I pay a cleaner per hour?
It depends on whether you are employing someone or buying a service, and the two are quoted side by side online as though they were the same number. If you employ a cleaner under the Cleaning Services Award 2020, the floor is $27.08 an hour at Level 1 and $33.85 an hour for a casual at that level, plus superannuation, plus any penalty or shift loading for the hours actually worked. If you are paying a cleaning business or a self-employed contractor, that figure is a price rather than a wage, and no award sets it. Comparing an award rate against a quoted hourly price tells you nothing.
What is the minimum salary for a cleaner?
The award sets a weekly rate rather than an annual salary. The lowest is $1,028.90 a week at Level 1 for 38 ordinary hours, which is $27.08 an hour. The highest of the three levels is $1,119.10 a week, or $29.45 an hour. The table above shows what each of those leaves after tax over a year. Those are minimums an employer cannot go below, not averages, and they carry no allowance or penalty rate.
Is $50 per hour a good wage in Australia?
That is a judgement about the labour market, and this page does not publish market pay, so it will not pretend to answer it. What it can tell you is where a figure like that sits against the law. The highest rate in this award is $29.45 an hour for a permanent employee at Level 3, and $36.81 an hour for a casual at the same level, both before any penalty rate is added. An hourly figure above those is above the cleaning award floor, which is not the same as being above the going rate, and it says nothing about whether the hours are secure or whether superannuation and leave are being paid on top.
What is the hourly rate for a casual cleaner?
A casual is paid $33.85 an hour at Level 1, rising to $36.81 an hour at Level 3. That is the permanent hourly rate plus a loading of 25 per cent, paid in place of annual leave, paid personal leave and notice of termination. The award prints these casual figures in its rates schedule rather than leaving them to be worked out, so they are quoted here rather than derived. Weekend, public holiday, shift and overtime loadings apply on top and are not included.
Are cleaner pay rates different in each state?
No. The Cleaning Services Award is a national instrument, so the same minimum rates apply in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and both territories. Searches for a state cleaning rate return the same national figures. What genuinely differs from one job to the next is the enterprise agreement, which is negotiated employer by employer, and the shift pattern, because early morning, night and weekend work attract loadings that this page does not publish.
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