For a small cleaning business doing recurring home cleans, the safer choice is ZenMaid Starter at $19 a month, or FieldVibe Solo at $0 if you can live with manual reminders. Jobber and Housecall Pro are good tools built for crews, at crew prices. If you keep second homes and cabins on a schedule for owners who want a report after every visit, a fourth kind of tool fits better; it is covered near the end. Every price here was read from the vendor’s own page on September 9, 2026.

What one cleaner needs, and what one cleaner pays for

You need a calendar of recurring cleans, a checklist on your phone, a way to send the bill, and a reminder text the night before. Almost every cleaning app is priced for the owner who sends other cleaners out, so what you pay for and never open is the dispatch: GPS, payroll, roles, crew maps. Read the price for two cleaners as carefully as the price for one.

The ranked table for one cleaner, read September 9, 2026

The order is for a small business doing recurring residential cleaning; prices are before card fees and text bundles.

Rank	Tool	Price for one cleaner	Built for	Honest fit for a small business
1	ZenMaid Starter	$19/mo, 40 appointments a month, texts extra	Maid services with a crew	Best cleaning-specific pick; a full book outgrows Starter into Pro at $39
2	FieldVibe Solo	$0 (Solo Pro $20/mo)	Solo field pros	Cheapest real tool; invoices cost $20
3	Jobber Core	$29/mo yearly, $49/mo month to month	Home-service crews	Strong and generic; the cleaning pieces sit in higher tiers
4	Square Appointments Free	$0, plus 2.6% + 15¢ per card tap	Salons, appointment shops	Booking page and calendar; no checklists or job notes
5	House Matters	$0 up to 3 client homes, $19/mo after	Cleaners keeping second homes on a schedule	Owner report and turnovers on a route; no booking form, no dispatch, no Airbnb pull
6	Housecall Pro Basic	$59/mo yearly, $79/mo month to month	Trades crews	Checklists and photo reports locked behind the $149 plan
7	Booksy Biz	$29.99/mo plus tax	Salons and barbers	A booking page at ZenMaid Pro prices, with a 30% new-client fee
8	Turno (cleaner side)	$0, plus a yearly background badge in the United States	Airbnb hosts	You bid for turnovers inside the host’s system
9	Properly	$0 to you; the host pays from $12.99 per property	Hosts and managers	The host’s checklist app; you get invited
10	Breezeway	$0 to you; the manager pays from $19 per unit, most plans by quote	Property managers	A manager’s tool; cleaning companies report workarounds

$4–$29per extra cleaner, per month—what the crew dispatchers add the day you hire a helper (ZenMaid Starter $4, Jobber $29, read September 9, 2026)

Crew dispatchers priced per cleaner: ZenMaid, Jobber and Housecall Pro

These three are built for the owner who sends other people out, and each charges by the person; that is fine at one seat and becomes the bill the day you hire.

ZenMaid: $19 for one cleaner, $23 for two

ZenMaid does recurring residential cleaning well because that is all it does: calendar and map views, automated text and email templates, payments through Stripe or Square, invoicing. Starter is $19 a month, capped at 40 appointments a month; Pro is $39 with unlimited appointments, digital checklists and booking forms; Pro Max is $49. Only the owner profile is included: each extra user is $4 a month on Starter, $14 on Pro, $24 on Pro Max, and text bundles start at $14 for 125 messages. Forty appointments a month is two cleans a day on weekdays; a full solo book crosses that line and lands on Pro, where the checklists are.

The complaint that repeats is the add-ons. On Capterra (4.7 of 5, 205 reviews) one owner wrote “Having to pay for extra SMS messages. A flat rate would be lovely,” and another that “the same price per employee regardless of hours worked, makes the paid version too expensive.” The iPhone app sits at 3.3 of 5 from 77 ratings.

Jobber: $29 to $49 for one cleaner, $58 to $78 for two

Jobber is the best-built general tool here: quotes with photos, a client hub where people book and pay themselves, invoicing, a QuickBooks sync. Core includes one user at $29 a month billed yearly, $39 on a one-year commitment, or $49 month to month; every extra user is $29. The 14-day trial runs on the $149 Grow plan, so you try one plan and pay for another.

The complaint that repeats is the tiers. On Capterra (4.6 of 5, 1,480 reviews) an electrical-business owner wrote that “some of the best features are locked behind higher tiers,” and on the pricing page an owner: “Right now I can have 5, but to add another, the cost goes up significantly.” For one cleaner at ten houses a week, Core is a calendar and an invoice; the cleaning pieces are a tier up.

Housecall Pro: $59 to $79 for one cleaner, $149 and up for two

Basic has online booking, invoices, scheduling, quotes and review requests. Basic is $59 a month billed yearly or $79 month to month, with one user; checklists, photo reports and routes are on Essentials at $149 yearly or $189 monthly, which bundles five users. The complaint that repeats is the phone. On Capterra (4.7 of 5, 2,745 reviews) a construction owner wrote “They keep calling even after they assure me that I will no longer be on their call list,” and another flagged “how much you pay additionally for extra functionality.” For one cleaner, $59 without checklists is the priciest calendar on this page.

The host’s tools, handed down to the cleaner: Turno, Properly and Breezeway

The host or property manager buys these, and you use them because a client told you to. The calendar pulls from Airbnb or VRBO, the turnover shows up on your phone, and the host owns the client, the checklist and the rate.

Turno: $0 for cleaners, plus a background badge to sell on the marketplace

Cleaners pay no subscription; payment starts when a project is marked complete. Marketplace work is won by bidding: “Hosts post jobs, cleaners bid, and hosts select,” and since May 1, 2023, the United States marketplace requires buying and renewing a background-check badge every year. The complaint that repeats is whose side the app is on. The Turno Cleaners app is 3.8 of 5 from about 1,000 ratings; an April 2024 reviewer who still gets work through it wrote “This app is set up to support hosts only. You can tell cleaners are not valued,” and that “hosts can go in and get refunds even if you have proof the job was done correctly.” For Airbnb turnovers, Turno is the right place to be found. It is not the place to run a business from.

Properly: $0 to you; the host pays from $12.99 per property

Properly is the host’s visual checklist: photo instructions, completion photos, damage reports, cleanings scheduled off the Airbnb or HomeAway calendar. Standard starts at $12.99 per property a month and Pro at $14.99; the page lists no price for cleaners. The repeated complaint is the phone app: the App Store listing is 3.8 of 5 from 93 ratings, with a reviewer writing “the app crashes and doesn’t save your photos.” Same shape as Turno, with a better checklist: you get invited.

Breezeway: $0 to you; the manager pays from $19 a unit, most plans by quote

Breezeway is a property manager’s operations tool, billed per property. The only published number is “Host Essentials starts at $19 / month”; the other plans say “Get quote.” On Capterra (4.6 of 5, 195 reviews) the repeated complaint is price (“Cost is really high for what is being offered to the customer”), and a hospitality owner running a cleaning company says it is missing pieces and needs workarounds. Nobody buys Breezeway for a one-person cleaning business; you end up in it because a manager runs it.

Free or cheap booking calendars: FieldVibe, Square Appointments and Booksy

These cost nothing or close to it at one user because they sell something else: an upgrade, card processing, or a marketplace fee.

FieldVibe: $0 for one cleaner, $50 for two

The free Solo plan has unlimited jobs and clients, manual reminders, a business website and a price book, on one device. Solo Pro at $20 a month adds automatic reminders, quotes, invoices and time tracking; Crews is $50 a month for unlimited users, so a second cleaner costs $50, not $20 more. There is little complaint record to read: Capterra shows two reviews, both vendor-referred, one noting “There were some bugs, but they fixed them quicly.” It is the best free start here; you pay the $20 the day you want to send an invoice.

Square Appointments: $0 for one cleaner, $0 for two, plus card fees

The Free plan has a booking site, reminders and unlimited staff calendars at $0 a month. Square earns on the card: 2.6% + 15¢ in person and 3.3% + 30¢ online, about $80 on $3,000 a month of card payments. On Capterra (4.5 of 5, 262 reviews) the repeated complaints are a scheduler that is “challenging to set the appointments up to vary from day to day” and that “It would go down often.” It is a booking page for one-off cleans: no checklist, no job note, no photo.

Booksy Biz: $29.99 for one cleaner, $49.99 for two

Booksy is $29.99 a month plus tax, extra staff $20 each, with card processing at 2.69% + $0.30 keyed in. Boost, its marketplace, takes a one-time 30% of a new client’s first visit, and on Capterra (4.4 of 5, 482 reviews) that fee is the complaint: a barber wrote “Every new client they took 50% of the haircut for the first booking.” Booksy is built for salons; for a cleaner it is a booking page at the price of ZenMaid Pro.

Where the fourth kind fits, and where it does not

House Matters fits one narrow cleaner: the one keeping second homes, cabins and family rentals on a schedule, for owners who want to see what was done. Each client home has a cadence and its own checklist with a photo on every item. When you tap done, the owner reads the report as a link, with no account to make. The bill or Venmo request goes out on your own Stripe, Wave or Venmo, with no cut and no lead fees. The owner keeps a free record of the home (keys, stays, supplies, upkeep), and when the family books a stay in it, the turnover lands on your route. It is $0 forever up to 3 active client homes, everything included, then $19 a month or $190 a year from the fourth home, with no per-user fee. Pausing an off-season home drops the count.

The limits, plainly. No booking form, so it will not bring you work. No crew dispatch, so it is not the tool for the day you hire. No Airbnb or VRBO calendar pull; the family books the stay in the home’s record, which suits family cabins, not a host with twelve listings. No offline mode, no GPS proof of arrival. Your data comes back as a spreadsheet on request, within a week. No Android app; it runs in any phone’s browser, and the iPhone app is still in review. It is the newest tool here and has not earned the review record the others have.

That is why it sits fifth: above the host tools, because the account and the client are yours; below ZenMaid, FieldVibe and Jobber for a cleaner whose week is ordinary residential cleans.

How to choose in ten minutes

Recurring homes, under 40 cleans a month: ZenMaid Starter, $19
A full book and you want a checklist: ZenMaid Pro, $39
Starting this month with nothing to spend: FieldVibe Solo, $0, then $20 when the invoices start
You quote bigger jobs and want clients booking themselves: Jobber Core, $29 yearly
Airbnb turnovers for marketplace hosts: Turno, and keep your own client list elsewhere
Second homes and cabins on a schedule for owners who want the report: the fourth kind above

Whatever you pick, put a written checklist and a one-page contract in place first; the software holds them, it does not write them. The start-up guide covers the rest.

Questions people ask

What is the cheapest cleaning business software for a small business?

FieldVibe Solo is $0, Square Appointments is $0 plus card fees, and the cheapest cleaning-specific tool is ZenMaid Starter at $19 a month, all read September 9, 2026. Free plans charge in what they leave out: FieldVibe wants $20 for invoices; Square takes 2.6% + 15¢ per tap.

Is ZenMaid worth it for a small cleaning business?

Yes, at $19 a month, as long as you stay under 40 appointments a month and can do without a phone checklist. Past that you are on Pro at $39 plus text bundles from $14, still less than one extra clean.

What is a good ZenMaid alternative for one cleaner?

FieldVibe if you want free, Jobber Core at $29 a month yearly if you want quotes and a client portal, and the fourth kind above if your homes are second homes with owners who want a report. Housecall Pro is not a cheaper alternative; Basic is $59 and checklists are on the $149 plan.

Should a small cleaning business use Turno?

Only for Airbnb turnovers, and only as a place to be found. Cleaners pay no subscription, but marketplace work is won by bidding, the United States marketplace needs a paid yearly background badge, and the host owns the calendar and the rate.

What does the second cleaner cost?

ZenMaid $4 to $24 a month more depending on plan, Jobber $29 more, Housecall Pro a jump to the $149 Essentials plan, FieldVibe a jump to $50, Booksy $20 more, Square $0.

Sources, read September 9, 2026

Run your first three homes free

House Matters is cleaning business software for small businesses: a list per house, photos from the camera, the owner’s report as a link, your invoice or Venmo request when you lock up. Your first three client homes are free, then $19 a month. No per-cleaner fee.

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The best cleaning business software for a one-person business