Which trade do you need as a cleaner?
For cleaning in private households, you need the unregulated "house care" trade — officially: "house care, consisting of carrying out simple cleaning activities".[1] This means:
- No exam, no proof of qualification — anyone can register it.
- Free registration — online via the Unternehmensserviceportal or at the trade authority.
- You can work from day one — with unregulated trades, you may work legally from the day you register.
This covers: cleaning apartments and houses, cleaning stairwells and cellars, cleaning windows from the ground, simple household helper services. Not covered are specialist jobs like facade cleaning or cleaning with special machinery — for those, there is the regulated trade for monument, facade, and building cleaning.[2][3] How registration works exactly: Registering a business in Austria.
Why go self-employed instead of undeclared or employed?
Many cleaners work for years "just like that" — without registering. That backfires in two ways: no pension, no sick pay, no accident insurance, and fines if there is an inspection. Working registered, on the other hand, means: every year counts toward your pension, you are covered at the doctor, and you can advertise openly instead of hiding. You will find the full breakdown under Working legally as a cleaner.
- Typical hourly rate (Vienna)
- 24–30 €
- self-employed, private households, as of 2026
- Registration
- 0 €
- unregulated trade, no exam
- SVS at the start
- approx. 175 €/month
- including accident insurance
- VAT
- none
- up to 55,000 € turnover (small business rule)
How do you set your hourly rate correctly?
Calculate backwards, not forwards. From your hourly rate, the following come off:
- around 27% SVS contributions[4] (how SVS works) and later income tax,
- travel time and travel costs between households,
- materials, phone, unpaid office time — and weeks without work (vacation, sickness).
That is why: below 20 € per hour, you are working below your value. Professional cleaners in Vienna charge 24–30 € — and good customers are happy to pay that for reliability. bop shows you what is standard in your field, so you can price with confidence.
How do you find your own customers?
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Start with the people around you
Tell everyone that you are now officially self-employed. Your first customers almost always come through people you know — and every clean home leads to the next recommendation. -
Become visible
Your own website with prices and contact details, a Google Business profile, neighborhood groups. Anyone who finds you asks you directly — no agency, no commission. -
Turn first jobs into regular customers
Right after the first appointment, offer a fixed recurring schedule — regular customers mean predictable income, and they belong to you, not to a booking platform. Why this pays off: Platform or your own business? -
Work professionally
Fixed appointments, clear agreements, a clean invoice after every month. This is exactly what sets you apart from the "cleaner from next door" — and justifies your price.
Contracts and agreements
And who handles the paperwork?
bop does. The app guides you through business registration and SVS, schedules your appointments with regular customers, automatically writes the invoice after every month, shows you how much to set aside for taxes — and explains every letter from an authority. In German, Turkish, Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, or English.