Free Auto Detailing Estimate Calculator

Add up your true direct costs — labor including burden, materials with markup, and job extras like equipment or disposal. Add a contingency for surprises if the job has any. That's your break-even, the floor you never quote below. Then add your profit on top: price = break-even × (1 + profit%). This calculator runs exactly that math as you type, and shows the result both ways — what you added on to your costs, and what share of the final price that leaves you — because the two numbers are easy to confuse and quoting on the wrong one is how a job loses money.

Burden is everything an hour of labor costs beyond the paycheck: payroll taxes (typically 8–10% of wages), workers' compensation (a few percent for low-risk trades, well over 15% for high-risk ones like roofing or concrete), liability insurance, and paid time off. All-in burden commonly lands between 15% and 40% on top of base pay — and forgetting it is one of the most common ways a profitable-looking job loses money. If you're solo and paying yourself, you can leave it at 0%.

Markup is a percentage added on top of your cost; margin is your share of the final price. Adding 100% on top — charging double your costs — is the same thing as a 50% margin. Quoting a markup when you mean a margin is one of the most common ways contractors underprice a job, so this calculator keeps it simple: you enter what you add on top — no cap — and it always shows what share of the final price that leaves you.

Work backward from your own numbers instead of copying competitors: add up what you want to earn in a year plus every cost of being in business, then divide by your realistic billable hours — most detailers bill far fewer hours than they work. That result is your floor. Local demand, licensing, and skill decide how far above it you can go.

Somewhere between 15% and 50% is common practice across the trades, and it isn't padding: the markup pays for sourcing time, supply runs, returns, warranty callbacks, and the money you float between buying materials and getting paid. If the customer supplies materials, price the labor accordingly — you still carry the workmanship risk.

The estimate gets made over the phone from a description, and the vehicle you open is worse. Sand down in the seat tracks, a dog that rides in the back every day, a drink that went through the carpet and into the padding.

Outside, the time goes to decontamination before a pad ever touches the paint, and you do not find the tar, the iron fallout or the industrial overspray until the car is clean. Then the finish argues with you. A test spot tells you the clear is harder than the last car, or that a previous shop left holograms under the shine, or that one panel is a respray that will not take the same cut.

Weather runs the rest. Coating flash times move with temperature and humidity, you cannot level a panel in direct sun, and extracted carpet will not dry in a cold damp bay, so the car cannot go home. On mobile work the site decides the day: no shade, no power, no water, a neighbour's parking, and an owner who needs the car back two hours before it will be ready.

Detailing is mostly labor, and the material it does carry is consumable rather than installed. Chemicals come as concentrate and get diluted at the bench, so one jug covers many cars and nobody records the ounces, which is exactly how the cost disappears.

Pads and towels are the honest number. A heavy cut loads and finishes foam, and any towel that touches tar, overspray or engine grease is done, not laundry. Count them per car rather than per case, because that is how they are actually spent.

Coatings are the exception that behaves like real material. They sell by the bottle in millilitres, a bottle that covers a sedan will not cover a three-row SUV or a lifted truck, and an opened bottle keeps curing whether you use it or not, so the leftover you saved for the next car can be gel by the time that car books in. Film comes by the roll and the plotter leaves offcuts nothing else fits. Water and power are materials too on a mobile rig — deionised resin, generator fuel and tank refills are all bought before the day starts and never appear on a line.

Free and unlimited, no account needed. The math runs in your browser and your pricing setup saves only on your own device — we never see your numbers. Printing or sending the estimate it makes counts as a document: your first 2 are free, with no account.