Mobile Detailing Pricing Guide: What to Charge in 2026

As of 2026, most mobile detailers in the US price in three broad bands: $60 to $100 for a basic wash-and-vacuum, $150 to $250 for a full interior and exterior detail on a sedan, and $250 to $450+ for a full detail with ceramic coating or paint correction added. SUVs and trucks typically run 20 to 30% above sedan pricing at every tier because of the extra surface area and seating rows. These are ranges, not fixed prices — your real number depends on local cost of living, drive time, and how you structure packages — but if you're currently pricing below the bottom of these bands, you're likely underpriced relative to your actual costs, not just your competitors down the street.

The Real Cost Inputs Behind Any Detail

Most detailers price off gut feel or "what the last guy charged," which is how margins quietly disappear. Every job has five real cost inputs, and if you can't name a number for each one, you're guessing rather than pricing.

The one detailers underestimate most is drive time. If you're spending 30 minutes each way to reach a client, that's an hour of your day that isn't billable unless you've built it into the price — do that math across a full week and it's often the difference between a profitable schedule and one that just feels busy.

Product cost is the second-most underestimated input, mostly because it's easy to eyeball a bottle of soap and call it "a few dollars" without tracking what a full job actually consumes. Ceramic sealant, in particular, is expensive enough per ounce that skipping the math on a $280 ceramic add-on can quietly turn a good-looking ticket into a break-even job once you account for what actually went into the bottle. Track real product cost per job type for a month, even roughly, and price off that number instead of a guess — it's usually higher than detailers expect, and the correction is almost always upward.

A Pricing Formula You Can Run in 5 Minutes

You don't need a spreadsheet to price a job correctly — you need one formula you run the same way every time:

Price = (labor hours × target hourly rate) + product cost + drive-time cost + margin buffer

Here's what that looks like on a real job. Say you're detailing a sedan, it'll take you 2 hours, your target hourly rate is $45, product cost is $15, drive time adds $10, and you want a 15% margin buffer on top of true costs:

• Labor: 2 hours × $45 = $90
• Product cost: $15
• Drive-time cost: $10
• Subtotal: $115
• 15% margin buffer: $17.25
• Total price: ~$132

Run every job through the same four steps and your prices stay consistent even as your schedule gets busier and your gut instinct gets less reliable under time pressure. The target hourly rate is the one number worth protecting — if you find yourself discounting below what that rate implies more than once or twice a month, the fix is raising prices, not lowering your rate.

Package Structure That Increases Average Ticket

Flat, single-price detailing leaves money on the table because it forces every client into the same decision: yes or no. A tiered package structure turns that into "which one," which consistently raises average ticket size because most clients pick the middle option when given three.

Price the middle tier as the one you genuinely want most clients to book — it should feel like the obvious "worth it" choice next to Basic, not a stretch. Add optional line-item add-ons (pet hair removal, headlight restoration, odor treatment) at $15-40 each rather than folding them into every package — clients who don't need them shouldn't have to pay for them, and clients who do will happily add them once they see the option.

Regional and Vehicle-Size Adjustments

The price bands above are national averages, not what you should charge in every zip code. Two adjustments matter more than anything else once your base pricing is set.

Cost of living is the first: detailers in higher cost-of-living metro areas can and should price 15-30% above the national bands, while rural or lower-cost markets may sit 10-15% below them. Check what 3-4 established competitors in your actual service area charge for a comparable package before assuming the national number is your number.

Vehicle size is the second, and it should be a simple multiplier on your base sedan price rather than a separate menu:

• Sedan/coupe: 1.0x (base)
• Midsize SUV/minivan: 1.15-1.2x
• Full-size SUV/truck: 1.25-1.35x
• Oversized (3-row SUV, extended van, RV): 1.5x or a custom quote

Publishing this as a simple multiplier — rather than negotiating vehicle size case by case — keeps pricing consistent and removes an awkward haggling moment when a client's truck turns out to be bigger than you expected.

Combine both adjustments before you finalize a price list, not after. A detailer in a high-cost metro pricing a full-size SUV, for example, might take a $180 national-average Premium price, apply a 20% cost-of-living adjustment ($216), then apply a 1.3x vehicle multiplier (~$281) — a very different number from the $180 they started with, and one that actually reflects the real time and product a bigger vehicle in an expensive market requires. Write the adjusted numbers down as your actual price list rather than doing this math in your head on every new booking; consistency is what keeps clients from comparing notes and noticing you charged two people different prices for the same job.

Charging for Travel Without Scaring Off Bookings

Travel time is a real cost, but a visible "$25 travel fee" line item at checkout is one of the most common reasons a client abandons a booking they were otherwise ready to complete — it reads as a surprise charge even when it isn't one.

Two structures avoid that problem. The first is a flat service-area radius: anything within, say, 15 miles of your base location is included in the posted price, and anything beyond it adds a small, clearly-stated per-mile rate shown before the client confirms — not after. The second is building an average travel cost directly into your base pricing across your whole service area, so every client sees one number with nothing added later. Most solo detailers do best with the radius model because it rewards booking density in their core area without punishing every single client for the outliers who live 40 minutes out. Whichever you choose, show the number before booking, not at the door — that's the difference between a travel fee and a travel surprise.