Most pricing questions are really one question: how do I put a number on a menu that a stranger can read without calling me? Price by the vehicle, keep it to three tiers, and take a deposit. The bands below are kept current, so they're worth more than a number a forum remembered from a few years ago.
The tier is the vehicle
A full detail on a pickup takes longer than a full detail on a sedan — more paint, more glass, a bed, a back seat that has met a dog. The package is the same list of steps; what changes is how much car there is. So the price follows the car, not the package: one package, three prices — sedan, SUV, truck. Three is enough. A customer can put their own car in one of three boxes without asking you, and the moment they have to ask, you're back to quoting by text. More tiers than that mostly buys arguments in the driveway about whether a crossover counts as an SUV.
How far apart the tiers sit
The truck price usually lands somewhere between a quarter and a half above the sedan's. The hours scale with the car, but the drive there, the setup and most of the product don't, so the jump is smaller than the size difference suggests. Set the sedan price from your hours and what you need to make in a day, then step the other two up from it. If the truck price makes you wince to say out loud, it's the sedan price that's too low, not the truck's.
What a package goes for
Bands for the packages mobile detailers most often add to a menu — the low end is a sedan, the high end a truck. We keep these current, so what's here is what the work goes for now, not what it went for when this was written. Your town can sit above or below a band; the spread between the tiers is the part to carry over.
- Interior Detail — $149 – $209
- Express Interior — $89 – $119
- Seat & Carpet Shampoo — $89 – $129
- Leather Clean & Condition — $89 – $109
- Headliner Cleaning — $79 – $99
- Mold Remediation — $199 – $259
- Exterior Detail — $129 – $179
- Wash & Wax — $89 – $119
- Clay Bar & Wax — $139 – $179
- Wheel & Caliper Detail — $99 – $119
- Undercarriage Wash — $79 – $99
- Glass Polish — $89 – $119
- Paint Correction — $399 – $499
- Two-Step Correction — $649 – $799
- Ceramic Coating — $899 – $1,199
- Paint Sealant — $199 – $259
- Water Spot Removal — $89 – $129
- Scratch Removal — $99 – $139
- Overspray Removal — $199 – $259
- Trim Restoration — $99 – $139
- Pre-Sale Detail — $249 – $329
- New Car Prep — $299 – $399
- Convertible Top Care — $119 – $159
Add-ons carry one price
Pet hair, an engine bay, headlight restoration: these don't scale with the vehicle much, so they get one price, not three. A dog sheds the same amount in a hatchback. Keep the add-on list short, and keep every add-on something you'd be glad to do on top of a package. If it's really its own morning, it's a package.
The deposit
Take a piece of the price at booking — about a quarter is the usual figure, enough that a booking means something and small enough that a first-time customer doesn't hesitate over it. It counts toward the total, so the customer isn't paying more; they're paying some of it earlier. What to do with it when a job falls through is its own question, and Deposits and no-shows is about that.
Raising your prices
A price is a promise to the customers who have already booked, not to the next one. When you raise a package, anything already on the calendar keeps the price it was booked at, and everyone after sees the new one — so raise it when the calendar is full, not when a slow week has you worried. The tell is a week that fills faster than you'd like. If you'd rather customers read all of this off a page and book a time without texting you first, you can claim one at detailcall.com/claim.