Am I charging enough for a full valet?
Time one job. We price the whole menu and show what each one pays you an hour. Free, no sign-up required.
These ratios are our starting points, not market rates. Change any of them.
| Job | Maintenance Wash | Mini Valet | Full Valet | Enhancement Detail | Paint Correction | Protection |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outside | ||||||
| Snow foam pre-wash | ||||||
| Two-bucket contact wash | ||||||
| Wheels and arches cleaned | ||||||
| Tyres dressed | ||||||
| Exhaust tips polished | ||||||
| Door shuts and sills wiped | ||||||
| Outside glass cleaned | ||||||
| Hand dried and buffed off | ||||||
| Outside trim dressed | ||||||
| Paint | ||||||
| Tar and fallout removed | ||||||
| Clay bar decontamination | ||||||
| Hand polish | ||||||
| Single-stage machine polish | ||||||
| Multi-stage paint correction | ||||||
| Carnauba wax | ||||||
| Paint sealant | ||||||
| Ceramic coating applied | ||||||
| Engine bay cleaned | ||||||
| Inside | ||||||
| Inside vacuumed | ||||||
| Boot vacuumed | ||||||
| Floor mats cleaned | ||||||
| Dashboard and trim wiped | ||||||
| Air vents detailed | ||||||
| Inside glass cleaned | ||||||
| Deep clean | ||||||
| Carpets and seats shampooed | ||||||
| Hot water extraction | ||||||
| Steam clean | ||||||
| Leather cleaned and fed | ||||||
| Headlining cleaned | ||||||
| Odour treatment | ||||||
Condition charges
Add-ons
The menu
We do not know how fast you are.
Time one job and we will price the rest.
Start with a full valet on a medium car.
Pressing this sends only your package and task choices to the model; not your business name, contact details, prices or times. Those choices are not stored after the descriptions come back.
This tool needs JavaScript to work out your prices. Everything below explains how it does it.
Everything on this page comes out of two numbers you typed. You time one job you already know: a full valet on a medium car, door to door. You say what an hour of your work has to earn. That is the whole input.
From there the grid fills itself. Each package is a ratio of that one job, and each ratio is on screen where you can change it. Then the tool divides back: the price it just worked out over the real time the job takes you, including the set-up and the pack-down.
How the prices are worked out
Everything on this page comes out of two numbers you typed.
Why one measured job fills the whole grid
You time one job you already know: a full valet on a medium car, door to door. Then you say what an hour of your work has to earn. That's the whole input.
From there the grid fills itself. Each package is a ratio of that one job. A mini valet sits at 0.45, a maintenance wash at 0.25, and every ratio is on screen where you can change it.
Why a wash grows less than a valet does
Each vehicle size is a ratio too, but it doesn't land on every row the same way. A seven-seater interior is a different job. Its exterior wash is barely different.
So every package carries its own size sensitivity, and the wash grows less than the valet does.
What the back-check divides
Then we divide back. Take the price we just worked out, take the real time the job takes you including the set-up and the pack-down, and put one over the other.
That is what the cell actually pays you an hour. Nobody does that division for themselves, which is why the answer is so often a surprise.
Two things we deliberately do not do. We do not know what anyone else charges, so we will never tell you that you are cheap or dear compared with the town. And we will not price a thing until you have given us a real time and a real rate, because a price list built from numbers we invented would just be somebody else's price list with your name on it.
How much to charge for car valeting: the questions traders ask
What should I charge for car valeting?
Whatever your own time and your own target rate come to. That sounds like a dodge and it isn't: it's the only answer that survives contact with your van, your area and your speed. Time a full valet on a medium car, decide what an hour has to earn you, and the arithmetic does the rest. What you should not do is copy the cheapest advert in your local Facebook group, which is how a whole town's prices ratchet down. We won't quote you a figure here, because we have no data on what UK valeters charge and we're not going to pretend otherwise.
What goes in a mini valet, and what goes in a full valet?
There is no standard. That's the honest answer, and it's exactly why the "what's included?" conversation eats your afternoon. In practice a mini valet is the outside wash plus a vacuum and a wipe round, roughly half a full valet's time. A full valet adds the boot, the mats, the vents, the glass inside, and usually a shampoo of the carpets and seats. Tick the jobs yourself under Advanced. Whatever you tick is what prints on the menu, and the time you set is what the price comes from.
Do I have to charge VAT if I'm not registered?
No. You must register for VAT before you start charging it. Finance Act 2008 Schedule 41 paragraph 2 specifically makes an unauthorised invoice showing VAT a penalty matter, with the penalty based on the amount shown. Leave the VAT switch on Not registered and we keep VAT wording off your menu entirely, so none of it can be copied into an invoice by mistake.
When do I have to register for VAT?
If your business is based in the UK, you must register if your taxable turnover for the last twelve months goes over £90,000, or if you expect your taxable supplies in the next thirty days alone to exceed £90,000. That figure has applied since 1 April 2024. Below it, you can register voluntarily. Different rules apply if you and your business are based outside the UK and supply goods or services here. Check GOV.UK's "Register for VAT" pages before you act, because thresholds can change at a Budget.
Can I advertise a "from" price?
A "from" price can be used, but only if it includes every applicable mandatory charge and does not mislead about what the starting price covers. Since 6 April 2025, section 230 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 says that where the total price genuinely can't be worked out in advance, you have to say how it will be calculated, and say it with as much prominence as the price itself. For a valeting menu that means the size columns and the condition charges are part of the price, not small print at the bottom. We print them that way because of that section, not as a style choice.
Should mobile valeting cost more than a unit?
There is no single answer, because your costs and your market differ. A mobile job carries set-up and pack-down that a unit job does not: hoses out, hoses in, kit up, kit down. Those minutes are easy to leave out of the price. Put the real figure in the set-up field and every price on your menu carries it. Whether you also want a call-out fee is a separate decision, with its own field.
How do I price a machine polish or a ceramic coating?
You can price long correction and coating work by the day if that matches how you sell it. Switch those rows to "Priced by the day" and they use your day rate instead of your hourly rate, round up to the next quarter day, and leave the per-visit set-up out of the price. The back-check still counts that set-up time against you.
What do I do about pet hair and heavily soiled cars?
Put them on the menu with a number beside them. One live UK menu we checked leaves these charges to a discussion before work starts. That can put the awkward conversation on the driveway after a starting price is already in view. Name the charge in advance instead: pet hair, heavy soiling, smoker's vehicle, sand and mud. The amounts are yours; we ship none, because there is no reliable evidence for any particular figure and we're not going to invent one.
A valeting price list template that decides the prices for you
Search for a car valeting price list template and you get grids. Word files, Canva layouts, a PDF with four empty columns. Every one of them asks the question you have already answered wrongly: what do you charge? Fill in the boxes and you've reformatted your own guess.
Ours asks two different questions. How long does the job actually take you, and what does an hour have to earn? Answer those and the grid fills itself across every package and every vehicle size, from a maintenance wash on a Corsa to a full valet on a Discovery, or a van if you do van valeting for the trade.
Then we do the thing no template can. We divide each price back by the real time, including the set-up and pack-down minutes you entered, and tell you what that cell pays you an hour against the rate you asked for. If one line pays worse than a smaller job, the back-check shows it. Package discounts and extra hours can make the big package on the big cars the one to inspect first.
What comes out is three artefacts from one set of numbers: an A4 sheet for the unit window or the van, a square image for the Facebook page, and plain text for the Services section, the WhatsApp catalogue and the reply you send when the next message asks how much for a full valet on a Qashqai. They cannot disagree with each other, because they are the same list.
Free, no sign-up required, and not one price on this page is ours.
Tools and listings from us
Related tools from us
- Write MOT and service reminders your customers actually read The other side of a full diary: the message that brings last year's customer back.
- Build a pre-MOT checklist for the vehicles you take in If you take MOT work alongside the valeting, this is the check sheet before the test.
Where your customers are looking
You have worked out what your valeting menu needs to charge, and you have a printed version ready to use. If you want drivers to find your business, claim your listing.
- Claim your listing It is free, and using this tool gives you no standing, endorsement or ranking of any kind.
- Join as a Pro Join the trade side of our directory.
Where your work fits in our directory
Bookmark this page before the next message lands, or press Save my settings and keep the file on your own machine. We store nothing at our end, so when your times or your target rate move, you change the number and print the sheet again.