Why you will not find a price list
Search for the price of a commercial cleaning robot and you will mostly find contact forms. That is frustrating, and it is easy to read as a sales tactic. Some of it is. But most of it is that the same machine genuinely costs different amounts depending on what comes with it.
A robot is rarely just a robot. A quote usually bundles the machine, whatever attachments the job needs, a battery or tether arrangement, training for the people who will run it, a support agreement, and shipping something heavy and awkward. Change the job and you change most of those line items. Two businesses buying nominally the same equipment can be several thousand dollars apart for reasons that have nothing to do with negotiation.
We source through a distributor network and quote per deal for exactly that reason. It is not evasion — ask and you get a real number.
What actually moves the number
- Class of machine. An autonomous floor scrubber and a tethered facade-cleaning drone are not in the same bracket, and neither is close to a ride-on unit.
- How it is powered. Battery swaps, charging docks and power tethers each carry different hardware and different operating constraints.
- Training. Some equipment a crew picks up in an afternoon. Some needs certification, and some needs a pilot who holds one already.
- Support and parts. Wear items on equipment that runs daily are an operating cost, not a footnote. Ask what fails first and what it costs.
- Compliance requirements. Procurement rules for government, defense and some utility work restrict which manufacturers are eligible, and compliant variants are priced differently.
The cost you are actually comparing against
The useful question is not what the robot costs. It is what the current method costs, fully loaded, per job.
For exterior work at height that usually means a lift rental, the crew hours to set up and move it, the insurance position, and the jobs you turn down because you cannot reach them. For interior floor work it means the nightly hours and, more painfully, the cost of re-hiring. Turnover across commercial cleaning is commonly cited at 200–400% a year by ISSA, which means a meaningful share of a manager's time goes into replacing people who clean floors to an inconsistent standard.
Once you have a per-job or per-night number for the current method, a machine price becomes a payback period rather than a scary figure.
The honest version of ROI
Be suspicious of payback estimates that assume the robot runs every day at full utilization from week one. Real deployments have a learning period, weather, scheduling gaps and at least one thing nobody predicted.
A defensible estimate uses conservative utilization, includes training time as a cost, and treats consumables as recurring. If the payback still works at two thirds of the utilization you hope for, the case is real. If it only works at 100%, it is not a case, it is a hope.
Where consulting fits
You do not need consulting to buy equipment, and most of what is above you can work out yourself with a spreadsheet and an honest afternoon. What an Assessment buys is someone who has seen the failure modes doing that arithmetic with you before you commit capital — and telling you if the answer is no.
What to ask for in a quote
- The machine price, itemized against attachments and power hardware.
- What training is included, in hours, and what it costs after that.
- Consumables and wear parts, with expected replacement intervals.
- Support terms, and what happens when it breaks in month seven.
- Lead time — often the constraint that actually sets your start date.
A supplier who answers all five plainly is one worth buying from.