Car detailing does not price by area or by the hour. It prices from a grid: what package, on what size of vehicle. The calculator above uses published grids, and it takes the hours from the one study that measured price and time on the same vehicle rather than from cost guides that describe a different tier of work.
How the calculator works
- Package and size pick the cell. Three tiers by three sizes. The tiers are named for where they sit on a ladder rather than for a service, because no two shops name their packages alike.
- Mobile adds about 22%, and brings a travel cost with it. A shop that collects and returns the car charges for that too.
- Condition moves the quote up the range. Every source names it and only pet hair is priced separately anywhere, so it is a position in the band rather than an invented line.
- Your state. Prices are adjusted by a state labor-cost index.
- Your economics. “Your costs and margin” uses the measured hours for the cell, scales your chemicals by tier and shows what the grid price leaves you.
Typical US detailing prices in 2026
| Package | Sedan or coupe | SUV or crossover | Truck, van or 7-seater | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry — wash and vacuum | $50–$90 | $57–$108 | $65–$130 | 0.75 |
| Standard — full detail | $180–$350 | $203–$418 | $230–$500 | 2.8 |
| Premium — paint correction | $250–$450 | $296–$520 | $350–$600 | 3.7 |
The middle column is the geometric mean of the source’s own two columns, so no outside multiplier enters it. Crews bill $40–$125 an hour, with the grid implying near $95. Minimum booking $100. Prices exclude sales tax.
The number most price guides get wrong
Hours. A rate is a price divided by hours, so an hour too many pushes the rate down by exactly as much. Four cost guides put a full detail at 3–8 hours, and taking their median gives 5. The 89-operator study, measuring the same vehicle at every shop, gives 2.8 for a standard detail and 4.3 for premium. Those guides are describing premium work.
Get the hours wrong and everything downstream follows: at 5 hours a $265 detail looks like $53 an hour and you will price yourself against a number the market does not use.
Where the American grid is thin, said plainly
No US operator publishes three size columns. The reference grid prints a sedan column and one combined SUV-truck column, so the middle is interpolated between the source’s own two ends rather than lifted from anywhere. A separate study of 89 operators measured only the middle column and interpolated its own ends.
The size multiplier is measured in Canada, not here. Twenty-nine cells across seven Canadian operators give 1.13 and 1.26. An Australian grid gives 1.35 and 1.52. Both are direct measurements and they disagree, so this page shows the American source’s own columns rather than picking one.
Paint correction covers two different jobs. Single-stage runs $250–$450 over 4–8 hours; two-stage runs $700–$1,200 over 8–16. The premium tier here is single-stage. Quote two-stage separately.
Worked example
A truck, premium tier, mobile, heavily soiled with pet hair. The grid cell is $350–$600, the mobile visit adds 22% and the soiling pushes the quote up the band, landing at $610 (range $520–$700) for about five hours. At a technician’s $20 an hour plus the correction tier’s chemical cost your outlay is near $216, which leaves $394, a 65% margin. That is high, and it is what this trade reports: a point-of-sale vendor publishes net margins of 60–70% for mobile operators. The “Fill with sample data” button loads this exact job.
What this calculator does not price
Ceramic coating, because “one to two days” is not an hours figure and the price spans $500 to $2,000. Interior-only and exterior-only packages, because their published hours contradict the measured full-detail hours: two sources put each at 2.5 hours, which would make either half-job longer than the whole. Quote those from your own records.
The calculator gives you the number. For typical rates and how to build a quote, read our car detailing pricing guide.