What should you charge for auto detailing?

Detailing pricing lives and dies on two things most new operators get wrong: tiering by vehicle size, and surcharging for filthy cars. A clean menu of packages gets the booking; size tiers and a condition surcharge keep a "$199 full detail" from turning into six hours of digging fries out of a third-row SUV at no extra charge. Here's how to build that menu.

Build a clear package menu

Detailing sells best as good / better / best packages, not an à-la-carte list the customer has to assemble. Three or four tiers cover most demand:

• Maintenance / basic wash ($50–$100): exterior wash, wheels, interior vacuum, wipe-down, glass. The repeat-customer tier: fast, in-and-out, the one that fills slow days.
• Full interior detail ($120–$250): deep vacuum, shampoo or extraction of carpet and seats, cleaning and dressing of all surfaces, vents, crevices, glass. This is the time-heavy one. Interiors are where the hours go, and condition swings it hard.
• Full detail, interior + exterior ($150–$350): the core "detail": everything in the interior tier plus a proper exterior wash, clay bar to remove bonded contaminants, and a wax or sealant. This is your bread-and-butter package.
• Premium / correction + coating: paint correction and ceramic coating: the high-skill, high-margin tier (covered below).

Packages make upselling natural: most customers come in for a wash and leave understanding why the full detail is worth it. They also make your pricing legible, which closes bookings faster than a wall of line items.

Price by vehicle size

A two-door coupe and a three-row SUV are not the same job. The SUV is more glass, more carpet, more seats, more time, and more product. Bake that in with size tiers on every package. A clean structure:

• Base: sedan, coupe, small car.
• Step up: mid-size SUV, crossover, standard truck.
• Top tier: large SUV, three-row, full-size van, lifted/oversized truck.

Many detailers add a flat amount per tier, commonly $25–$75, above the base vehicle. Whatever you choose, publish it. A customer with a Suburban shouldn't be surprised it costs more than a Civic, and you shouldn't eat that time because your menu only listed "car."

Paint correction and ceramic coating: where the skill is

This is the most misunderstood pricing in detailing, by customers and by some detailers. The big number on a ceramic coating job is not the coating product, it's the paint correction that has to happen first. Correction is multi-stage machine polishing to remove swirl marks, scratches, and oxidation so the finish is flawless before you lock it under a coating. That's slow, skilled work, and it's most of the cost.

• Paint correction alone runs from the mid hundreds into the high hundreds depending on the number of stages (one-step vs multi-step), the paint's condition, and vehicle size.
• Ceramic coating, commonly a high-hundreds to low-thousands job, bundles the correction plus the coating application, priced by the coating's durability tier (entry coatings vs multi-year professional systems), vehicle size, and how much correction the paint needs.

Price these by the work, not the bottle. And be honest with the customer about what a coating does and doesn't do (it's not scratch-proof) because over-promising here is how you earn a warranty fight later. This tier is your highest margin precisely because it rewards skill; don't undercut it to match someone selling a "ceramic coating" that's really a spray sealant.

Mobile versus shop

Both models work, and each prices to its own economics:

• Mobile can command a convenience premium (you come to them) but you carry the real costs of it: travel time between jobs, fuel, and bringing your own water and power. Your billable hours per day are lower because of the windshield time, so price it in. Route density (clustering jobs) is how mobile stays profitable.
• Shop-based gives you control: consistent lighting (critical for correction), climate, equipment, and the ability to run more vehicles per day with less travel. Correction and coating work in particular benefit from a controlled environment.

Neither is automatically more profitable. Mobile trades higher per-job pricing for lower daily volume; a shop trades overhead for throughput and the ability to do premium work well.

Add-ons and the all-important condition surcharge

A standard detail assumes a normally-used car. The moment it isn't, you need separate pricing or you'll lose hours for free:

• Condition surcharge. The single most important upcharge. An excessively dirty vehicle (caked mud, sand, spilled drinks, heavy grime) should carry a surcharge tied to how bad it is. Quote it after you see the car, or build "extra dirty" pricing into the booking.
• Pet hair removal. Heavy embedded pet hair is brutally time-consuming. Always a separate charge, scaled to severity.
• Biohazard / heavy stains. Vomit, serious spills, mold: priced well above a normal detail, and some you may decline.
• Odor / ozone treatment. Smoke and pet odor removal as an add-on; set expectations honestly on results.
• Engine bay cleaning. A popular, fair upsell with its own time and care.
• Headlight restoration, clay bar (if not in package), wax/sealant upgrades, leather conditioning. Clean, simple upsells.

Detailing is a booking-driven, repeat-and-referral business. The operators who win keep a tight schedule, show up (or get the car in) on time, and make booking and paying frictionless. Claver runs that side: online booking with package selection, scheduling, invoicing, and card or Stripe payment on the spot, so you can stay on the buffer instead of chasing texts and checks.