Jobber vs CleaningMetrics
Built for trades and adapted for cleaning, vs built for cleaning.
Jobber is a great field-service platform — for the trades it was designed for. Recurring residential cleaning is a different business, with different numbers: true profit after cleaner labor, churn, retention, lifetime value, instant payouts. This is an honest look at where a purpose-built platform pulls ahead.
Why does “adapted for cleaning” eventually show?
Jobber was built so a one-person trades business could quote a job, schedule a visit, and invoice for it. That model is excellent for a plumber. But a recurring cleaning business is not a stream of one-time jobs — it is a roster of clients who repeat every week, every two weeks, every month, each with their own cleaner, their own price, and their own risk of quietly churning.
When the data model treats every visit as a fresh job, the numbers a cleaning owner actually needs — true profit after labor and fees, churn, retention, lifetime value, per-cleaner performance — have to be reconstructed by hand from reports and exports. CleaningMetrics treats the recurring client as the unit of the business, so those numbers are live instead of assembled.
Jobber vs CleaningMetrics, line by line.
| What you are tracking | Jobber | CleaningMetrics |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Trades (landscaping, HVAC, plumbing), then extended to cleaning | Recurring residential cleaning, from the ground up |
| Core data model | Every visit is a one-time job; recurring is bolted on | The recurring client is a first-class object |
| True profit (after labor AND processing fees) | Job costing on higher tiers — labor only, not net of Stripe fees, and not on recurring jobs | Live on every booking, net of cleaner labor AND Stripe fees |
| Paying your cleaners | Payroll via the Gusto integration (hourly employees); no automatic per-job payout | Stripe Connect — per-job payout calculated and sent to each cleaner |
| Churn + retention | No built-in churn or retention reporting | Tracked monthly with at-risk client alerts |
| Client lifetime value | Per-client revenue in reports; no live lifetime-value metric | Live LTV per client, on the customer profile |
| Hiring pipeline | Not included | One 6-step pipeline from application to hired |
| Built-in AI | Jobber Copilot — a general business assistant | AI analyst trained on your cleaning numbers — profit, churn, LTV, per-cleaner |
| Online booking | Online booking widget with owner-set pricing | Address lookup auto-fills beds/baths/sqft + shows an instant price |
| Customer app / portal | Client Hub — a branded web portal (not a native app) | Installable, branded customer app (PWA) |
| Pricing model | Per-user tiers; features gated behind higher plans + add-ons | Flat $79 / $179, every cleaning feature included |
| Migration | — | Direct CSV import from Jobber — running in under an hour |
Frequently asked questions
What is Jobber, and who is it actually built for?
So can't I just use Jobber for my cleaning business?
Is CleaningMetrics cheaper than Jobber?
Can I move my data from Jobber to CleaningMetrics?
Does CleaningMetrics replace my accountant or QuickBooks?
Comparing other tools? See Housecall Pro vs CleaningMetrics or Spreadsheets vs CleaningMetrics.
A platform that speaks recurring cleaning.
Booking, scheduling, instant cleaner payouts, true profit, retention, hiring, and an AI analyst — all from the same data, all built for cleaning. Join the waitlist and we will let you know the moment your founding member spot is ready.