Ask three detailers in your city what they charge for a full detail and you will get three different numbers. None of the three knows for certain whether they make money at that price.
The problem is not the number — it is the order. Price is not decided first and justified later. It is calculated from the real cost of the service and from the margin your business needs to survive a slow month, replace a polisher, and pay you.
Every formula you will see here is the one running inside SAFFI’s free calculator — the same pricing engine, covered by 195 automated tests. The example we use from start to finish is a 3-hour full detail with travel included. The amounts are illustrative: the point is for you to swap each one for your own.
The mistake that eats your margin: copying your neighbour’s price
Looking at what the competition charges feels prudent. And it is good for exactly one thing: knowing what the market is willing to pay. It says nothing about whether you make money at that price.
The detailer charging $90 across town may have a paid-off van, a helper who is their brother, and zero ad spend. Their $90 is not your $90. Copying their price means inheriting a cost structure that is not yours.
"Your competitor’s price tells you what the market pays. It does not tell you whether you make money at that price. Those are two different questions, and only one of them has a calculator for an answer."
The right order is the reverse: first you work out what the service costs you, then you decide the margin, and only at the end do you compare against the market to see whether your number fits. If it does not fit, the problem is in your costs or in your offer — not in the calculator.
The six costs that go into one service
A mobile detailing service does not cost what the products cost. That is the visible part, and almost always the smallest one. These are the six blocks you have to add up:
1. Products & supplies
The cost is not what you paid for the gallon: it is what you spend on ONE service. Purchase price ÷ yield × quantity used.
2. Vehicle operating cost
Wages, insurance, maintenance and the unit’s payment, spread across the hours you actually bill each month.
3. Asset depreciation
The pressure washer, the polisher and the generator wear out. Value ÷ useful life in years ÷ 12 = what owning them costs each month.
4. Travel
Fuel per kilometre driven — and the travel time, which you do not bill but do live through.
5. Variable costs
What only exists if you do the job: payment processing fees, tolls, purchased water, disposables.
6. Fixed costs
Software, advertising, insurance, rent. You pay them whether you do 10 jobs or 40, so they are spread across the month’s services.
With this guide’s example — a 3-hour full detail, 18 km from base, in a unit carrying $2,400 of monthly costs — the six blocks come out like this:
| Item | How it is calculated | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Products & supplies | Shampoo, wax, sealant, microfibres | $9.00 |
| Generator | 0.5 gal/h × $3.80 × 2 h of use | $3.80 |
| Vehicle operating cost | 3 h × $17.86 per billable hour | $53.57 |
| Asset depreciation | 3 h × $0.38 per billable hour | $1.15 |
| Travel | 18 km × $0.095 per km | $1.71 |
| Variable costs | Processing fees, tolls | $2.00 |
| Allocated fixed costs | $279 per month ÷ 40 services | $6.98 |
| Real service cost | The base your price is calculated from | $78.21 |
Look at the weight of each block. Products — the only thing most people add up — are $9.00 of a $78.21 cost. Eleven percent. Anyone quoting from supplies alone is skipping 89% of what it costs them to work.
The utilization trap: your hour costs more than you think
This is where almost every homemade calculation breaks. Your vehicle does not bill 192 hours a month, even if you work 24 days of 8 hours. Between travel, gaps in the schedule, cancellations and slow days, a healthy unit bills around 70% of its available time.
Utilization divides, it does not multiply. Idle hours do not disappear from the month: they are paid for by the hours you do bill. With $2,400 of monthly costs on the unit, spreading over 192 hours gives $12.50 an hour; spreading over 134.4 gives $17.86. That is 43% more.
If you spread your costs across the hours the vehicle COULD work instead of the hours it actually bills, every service you quote is born with an invisible discount of nearly 30%. You will not see it anywhere until you close the month and the bank does not match the schedule.
Margin is not markup: the sector’s most expensive confusion
Almost everyone who says "I work on 40%" is multiplying cost by 1.40. That is markup, not margin. And they do not produce the same number.
Margin is measured against the price, not against the cost. That is why the correct formula divides: price = cost ÷ (1 − margin). On the same $78.21 of cost, the difference looks like this:
| 40% markup (wrong) | 40% margin (right) | |
|---|---|---|
| Formula | cost × 1.40 | cost ÷ (1 − 0.40) |
| Selling price | $109.49 | $130.35 |
| Profit per service | $31.28 | $52.14 |
| Real margin achieved | 28.6% | 40.0% |
| Profit per hour (3.5 h) | $8.94 | $14.90 |
| Break-even point | 30 services/mo | 24 services/mo |
| Profit at 40 services | $988.68 | $1,822.91 |
Same work, same costs, same month. The entire difference is dividing instead of multiplying: $834 a month, $10,011 a year. Plus six extra services every month just to reach the same break-even point.
The metric that rules is not margin: it is profit per hour
Two services can carry the same margin and still not be worth the same. What separates them is how much each leaves you for every hour you put in — travel included.
Full detail
Premium wash
The full detail bills far more. The premium wash returns more per hour. Which one suits you depends on whether your schedule is full or empty — and that call can only be made with both numbers in front of you.
Travel counts even when you do not charge for it. Half an hour on the road is not billed, but it is paid: it comes out of the same pocket of hours your services come from. That is why profit per hour is calculated on total time — service plus travel — and not just on the hours with the machine running.
How many services you need: break-even and revenue goal
With the price settled, the next question is volume. And it is answered with a single number: each service’s contribution, which is the price minus what that service costs you in variables.
The unit’s monthly costs — operating, depreciation and business fixed costs — add up to $2,730.67. Divided by that contribution, they give the break-even point: 24 services a month. With 134.4 billable hours and 3 hours per service, your capacity is around 44. In other words, you start making money at a little over half your schedule.
Now turn it around. If your goal is to make $2,500 a month, you need to cover $2,730.67 of costs plus that $2,500: 46 services. They do not fit in the month. You only have three real ways out, and it helps to see them written down:
- Raise the price to $147.28 and do the same 40 services as always.
- Add a second unit, with the monthly costs that drags along.
- Lower the goal — which is also a decision, but at least one made with the number in sight.
The margin traffic light: when your price is asking for help
Once you have the real margin, it helps to know how to read it. These are the three bands the calculator works with:
Low margin
There is no cushion. A spilled product, a job that has to be redone or a client who cancels eats the day’s profit.
Moderate margin
The business walks, but it does not generate enough cash to replace equipment or to grow. You live month to month with more work than it looks.
Healthy margin
It covers surprises, pays for asset replacement and leaves real profit. This is the band where the business can take a bad month without drama.
They are a starting point, not a law. A business with high volume and low investment can live healthily on less; one with expensive equipment and an irregular schedule needs more. What is not negotiable is dropping below 10%: under that you are not selling a service, you are financing your client’s car.
How to apply this to your business in 10 minutes
Doing these sums by hand once is useful. Redoing them every time fuel goes up, a supply changes or a new technician joins is what nobody keeps up. That is why we built the calculator: it is the same calculation from this guide, in six steps.
- 1. Service — how long it takes and what margin you want.
- 2. Vehicle operating cost — wages, insurance, maintenance, utilization.
- 3. Products & supplies — purchase price, yield and quantity used.
- 4. Travel — kilometres, price per gallon and time on the road.
- 5. Fixed & variable costs — the monthly ones and the per-job ones.
- 6. Asset depreciation — value and useful life of your equipment.
It is free and asks for no sign-up. Everything is calculated in your browser and never travels to a server: it is stored only on your device so you do not lose it on reload. In a hurry, quick mode gives you the price from the minimum fields. Detailed mode adds break-even, sensitivity analysis, a six-month projection, service mix and membership plans — and exports it all to PDF.
Frequently asked questions about detailing pricing
How much should I charge for a full detail?
There is no universal number, and be wary of anyone who hands you one. This guide’s example produces $130.35 for a 3-hour service, but with different wages, different utilization or in another city that same service can cost $60 or $180. The right question is not what others charge, but what it costs you.
What profit margin is healthy in mobile detailing?
Above 35% is considered healthy: it covers surprises and equipment replacement. Between 20% and 35% the business walks but does not generate cash to grow. Below 20% there is no cushion for a mistake. And never below 10%, which is the technical floor before the price stops making sense.
Should I charge the client for travel?
Charge it or not, but always count it. Fuel is a direct cost and time on the road comes out of your billable hours. If you decide not to charge it separately as a selling point, it has to live inside the service price. What cannot happen is for it to be nowhere at all.
Do I include my own wage in the costs?
Yes, always. If you wash the cars, your time is an operating cost just like any technician’s. A business that is only profitable because the owner does not pay themselves is not a profitable business: it is a badly paid job with company expenses.
Does sales tax or VAT go into the margin calculation?
No. That money is not yours: you collect it and hand it over. It is added on top of the final price, never inside the cost or margin calculation. Putting it in the margin inflates your profit with money you will have to give back.
Want to see these numbers with your own costs?
The calculator is free, asks for no sign-up and runs in your browser. In ten minutes you will know what each service really costs you.
The formulas and margin bands in this guide correspond to the pricing engine behind SAFFI’s calculator, covered by 195 automated tests (September 2026). The example amounts are illustrative: labour, fuel and supply costs vary widely by country and by city. Replace them with your own before setting prices.