How Much Can You Make Cleaning Gutters?

Gutter cleaning is priced two ways and both describe the same job. Per linear foot, the national range is $0.95 to $2.25. Per job, the US average is about $168, with most jobs landing between $119 and $234. A typical house carries 125 to 200 linear feet of gutter, which is what makes those two numbers agree.

Height is the dominant driver. One-story work runs about $0.95 to $1.25 per linear foot. Two-story runs $1.00 to $1.85. Three-story reaches $1.25 to $2.25. That escalation is not greed. A second story changes the ladder, the setup time, the number of ladder moves, and the consequence of a mistake.

After height, what moves a quote is footage and the number of downspouts, roof pitch and whether the roof is walkable (Angi's 2026 data puts a steeper slope at roughly a 15% increase), debris load, access, and gutter guards. Removing and reseating guard panels is real labor and gets billed as such.

Regional variation is large. National averages are a sanity check on your pricing, not a rate card. Call three established companies in your own market and ask what a 150-foot two-story house costs before you set your number.

Daily gross is jobs per day times ticket, and only one of those two numbers is published. If you clean four two-story houses of 150 feet at $1.20 a foot, that is $180 a job and $720 for the day. If you clean two, it is $360. The multiplier is yours to find.

Be skeptical of anyone quoting jobs per day as a fact, including yourself in month one. Drive time between houses, setup and takedown at every ladder position, guard removal, downspout clogs, and a first clean on a property nobody has touched in four years all eat the day. Route density, meaning several houses within the same few streets, moves your daily number more than working faster does, and it is the thing recurring customers actually buy you.

Then there is the calendar. The baseline service interval is twice a year, spring and fall, and houses under pines go quarterly because needles shed continuously. Demand concentrates hard in late fall. That is the shape of this business: a peak you have to be staffed and equipped for, and stretches where the phone does not ring. Annual income is the peak minus the quiet months, not the peak times twelve.

Gross revenue is not income. Work down from the day's number.

Self-employment tax comes off first at 15.3%, which is 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare, before any income tax at all. Vehicle cost is next and it is bigger than fuel. The IRS standard business mileage rate for the second half of 2026 is 76 cents a mile, up from 72.5 cents for the first half, and that rate is a reasonable proxy for what driving a loaded truck around a route really costs you once you count depreciation, tires and maintenance. General liability insurance is priced on the fact that you work at height, so get a real quote from a broker before you build a budget around a guess. Then ladders, vacuums, gloves, tarps, disposal, phone, website, and the unpaid hours you spend quoting and invoicing.

Subtract the dead months last, because that is the subtraction people skip. A strong October does not fund February by itself.

The cost nobody puts in a spreadsheet is the fall. A ladder injury does not just cost you a claim, it stops the revenue completely, because in a solo operation you are the equipment. Working safely at height is a financial decision here as much as a moral one.