How Much Does Gutter Cleaning Cost in Chicago? 4 Typical Jobs, Priced Line by Line

Ask most gutter companies what gutter cleaning costs and you will get “it depends,” followed by very little about what it depends on. We think that is a poor answer to a fair question, so here is ours in plain numbers: at our published rates, most Chicagoland homes pay between $120 and $250 per visit for professional gutter cleaning, and almost everything that moves a house up or down that range can be seen from the driveway. Below are the rates we publish, the five things that change them, and four typical jobs priced line by line — the kinds of houses we see every week between the North Shore and the Fox Valley.

A quick note on the examples: the four jobs further down are typical examples built from our published price list, not specific customers’ invoices. The numbers are exactly what those houses would be quoted.

The Short Answer: Gutter Cleaning Prices in Chicagoland

We publish our pricing instead of making it up on the doorstep. Every price below is per visit and covers the whole house: all gutters cleared by hand or blower, every downspout inspected and unclogged, and the debris bagged and taken away with us.

House size (sq ft)	1 Story	2 Story	3 Story
up to 2,000	$120	$150	$200
2,001 – 3,000	$130	$170	$225
3,001 – 4,000	$150	$200	$250
4,001 – 5,000	$200	$225	$300
5,001 – 6,000	$200	$250	$350
With guards	add $30	add $50	add $80

Downspout caps, if a downspout is missing one, are $15 each installed, including labor and materials. Estimates are free, and the price we quote is the price you pay.

If you only read one line of the table, read the middle column. The typical suburban two-story between 2,000 and 4,000 square feet costs $150 to $200 per cleaning, or $200 to $250 if it has guards.

Five Things That Move the Price

1. Number of stories. This is the biggest single factor, and you can see it in the table: the jump from one column to the next is larger than the jump between most rows. Height changes everything about the job — longer ladders, a standoff so the ladder rests on the roof and not on the gutter, more setups per side, and on the tallest houses a harness. A three-story house is not three times the work of a ranch, but it is a genuinely different job.

2. House size. Square footage is a stand-in for what actually takes time: linear feet of gutter, the number of corners and the number of downspouts. A sprawling 5,000 square foot ranch can have more gutter than a compact three-story.

3. Gutter guards. This one surprises people, because guards are usually sold as the end of maintenance. They are not. Guards stop big leaves, but fine grit, seed pods and shingle granules still build up on top of the mesh and underneath it, and a proper guarded gutter cleaning means clearing both — often lifting sections and refitting them correctly. That extra work is the $30, $50 or $80 in the bottom row. We do not install guards, so we have no reason to talk you into or out of them.

4. The trees over your roof. Trees do not change the price of a visit, but they decide how many visits you need, and that is what sets your yearly cost. An open lot might need one cleaning a year. A house under mature oaks usually needs two in the fall alone.

5. Downspout caps and small extras. A missing downspout cap lets leaves drop straight into the downspout, where a blockage is harder to find and harder to clear. Adding the cap is $15, once, and it saves time on every visit after that.

Four Typical Gutter Cleaning Jobs, Priced Line by Line

Here is how those five factors play out on real kinds of houses. Each one is the sort of job our crews see every week of the season.

Example 1: The One-Story Ranch on an Open Lot

The house: a one-story ranch of about 1,800 square feet, the kind found on streets all through the older neighborhoods of Northbrook and the surrounding suburbs. Young trees in the yard, nothing tall hanging over the roof, no guards.

What we typically find: not much in the way of leaves. Mostly roof grit, shingle granules, a few maple “helicopters” blown in from down the street, and one downspout with no cap on top.

The bill:

• Gutter cleaning, 1 story, up to 2,000 sq ft: $120
• One downspout cap installed: $15
• Total: $135. Every visit after that is $120.

The takeaway: this house needs one cleaning a year, and we would say so. This is the cheapest gutter cleaning there is, and the homeowner should not be paying for a second fall visit.

Example 2: The Two-Story Under Mature Oaks

The house: a two-story colonial of about 2,600 square feet on a wooded lot, with two big oaks within 30 feet of the roof. No guards.

What we typically find: the homeowner booked in mid-October, when the maples were done. The gutters were cleaned properly — and by early December they were half full again. That is not a bad job. Oaks hold their dead leaves for weeks, sometimes all winter, and drop them a handful at a time on every windy day. Anyone who times a cleaning by the calendar and not by the trees ends up paying for the same work twice anyway.

The bill:

• Gutter cleaning, 2 story, 2,001–3,000 sq ft: $170 per visit
• Two fall visits (early November and after the oaks let go): $340
• Optional spring visit for catkins and whatever the oaks held all winter: $170
• Yearly budget: $340–$510.

The takeaway: this house cannot get down to one visit, but it can avoid wasting one. Our guide to when to clean gutters in fall explains how to time the first visit so it actually holds. For a week-by-week look at which trees have turned in the region, The Morton Arboretum’s fall color report is a surprisingly useful booking tool — peak color means the leaves are still on the tree.

Example 3: The Colonial With “Maintenance-Free” Guards

The house: a two-story of about 3,400 square feet with micro-mesh guards installed a few years ago. The homeowner has not had the gutters touched since, because the guards were sold as maintenance-free.

What we typically find: a mat of seed pods, pine needles and fine debris lying on top of the mesh, stopping water from getting through at all in a heavy rain, so it runs straight over the front edge. Underneath, a layer of black sludge from shingle granules and grit that slipped through. One downspout partly packed.

The bill:

• Gutter cleaning, 2 story, 3,001–4,000 sq ft: $200
• Guarded gutters, 2 story: +$50
• Total: $250.

The takeaway: guards are worth having on the right house. They can turn a two-visit year into a one-visit year. But “less often” is not “never,” and a guard covered in debris sends water over the edge just like a clogged gutter.

Example 4: The Three-Story Older Home

The house: a three-story of about 4,600 square feet, the tall older style you find in the inner-ring suburbs, with a steep roof, several downspouts and no caps on three of them.

What we typically find: gutters in reasonable shape, but downspouts that have been slowly packing for years. On houses this tall the downspouts are long, and a blockage halfway down is invisible from the ground until water starts pouring out of a joint.

The bill:

• Gutter cleaning, 3 story, 4,001–5,000 sq ft: $300
• Three downspout caps installed: $45
• Total: $345. Visits after that are $300.

The takeaway: the price here is mostly about height, and height is also why this is the one house on the list where we would strongly steer the owner away from doing it themselves.

The Four Examples Side by Side

House	First visit	Visits a year	Yearly budget
1-story ranch, open lot	$135	1	$120–$135
2-story under oaks	$170	2–3	$340–$510
2-story with guards	$250	1	$250
3-story older home	$345	1–2	$345–$645

Notice that the most expensive visit and the most expensive year are not always the same house. The trees decide the second one.

From Our Side: How We Price, and What We Won’t Do

We have been cleaning gutters across Chicagoland since 2008, and a few rules shape how we price the work.

The price is published, and it is the price. You can work out your own number from the table above before you call. If we find something that changes the job — a loose hanger, a separating seam, soft fascia — you hear about it while we are still there, before anything extra happens, not as a surprise on the invoice.

The downspouts are part of the job, not an add-on. A clean gutter feeding a blocked downspout is still a blocked gutter. We inspect and unclog every downspout as a separate step, and we bag the debris and take it with us instead of leaving wet leaves in your flower beds. If you want the full checklist, we have written up what’s included in a professional gutter cleaning in detail.

We will tell you when one visit is enough. If your lot is open like Example 1, we will not sell you a second fall visit. If it is like Example 2, we will tell you at the first visit roughly when the second one should be, so you are not guessing.

If something is not right, we come back. Every job carries a 100% satisfaction guarantee, with a return visit within 24 hours if we missed something. We are family-owned, based in Buffalo Grove, licensed, insured and bonded, and we cover Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will, McHenry and Kane counties.

What Skipping a Cleaning Actually Costs

A gutter looks like trim, but it works like plumbing, and the volumes are bigger than most people expect. Every square foot of roof sheds about 0.62 gallons of water per inch of rain, so a 1,500 square foot roof sends roughly 900 gallons into the gutters in a single one-inch storm. When the gutters are blocked, that water goes over the edge and lands where you least want it: against the fascia, along the siding and straight down beside the foundation.

That is how a skipped $150 visit turns into a much bigger bill. Water spilling at the same spot for a season rots fascia boards, washes out the soil beside the foundation, and finds its way into basements. For a sense of scale, the Insurance Information Institute puts the average water damage and freezing claim at about $15,400 over 2019–2023, and water and freezing made up 22.6% of all homeowners insurance losses in 2023. Not every one of those claims starts at a gutter, but blocked gutters are one of the most common ways water ends up where it should not be.

Chicago winters add a second problem. Wet debris that freezes in place cannot be cleaned out without damaging the gutter, so the work has to wait for a thaw — and meanwhile meltwater backs up at the roof edge. That is the setup for ice dams, and once water is coming through a ceiling, the job is no longer a cleaning but ice dam removal, which costs several times more and always happens in the worst weather of the year.

DIY vs. Hiring a Pro: An Honest Cost Comparison

On paper, cleaning your own gutters is free. In practice it costs a sturdy extension ladder, a standoff, gloves, a scoop, a free afternoon and some risk. The risk is real: the American Ladder Institute’s ladder safety resources note that work-related ladder falls alone cause about one death and more than 180 nonfatal injuries every two days in America. And a one-story roof edge is plenty high enough to get badly hurt.

Our honest take:

• DIY is reasonable on a one-story house with no guards, if you already own the right ladder and are comfortable on it. This Old House has a solid step-by-step guide to cleaning gutters yourself that covers the tools and safety basics well.
• Hire a pro on anything two stories or taller, on guarded gutters (the guards have to come off and go back on properly), and on steep roofs. At $150 to $250 a visit, it is one of the cheapest ways to take a ladder out of your weekend.

And if you are not sure your gutters need anything yet, start with our list of signs your gutters need cleaning: water spilling over the edge in rain, streaks on the siding, plants growing along the roofline, or puddles by the foundation. If you see two or more, do not wait for the freeze.

How to Keep Your Gutter Cleaning Cost Down

• Time the visit to your trees, not the calendar. One well-timed cleaning beats two badly-timed ones. This alone is the biggest saving for most homes.
• Add downspout caps once. At $15 each they stop the hardest blockages before they start.
• Trim branches that hang over the roof. Less debris in the gutter means fewer visits a year.
• Book before the first hard freeze. Frozen debris cannot be cleaned, and winter water problems cost far more than a fall visit.
• Get the price before work starts. From us or anyone else. A company that will not give you a number up front is telling you something.

The short version: for most Chicagoland homes gutter cleaning costs $120 to $250 a visit, the number of stories sets the price of each visit, and the trees over your roof set how many visits you need. Find your row in the table, count your oaks, and you will know your yearly number before you pick up the phone.

Want an exact price for your house? Call (224) 386-4836 or request a free estimate. Tell us your town, the number of stories and whether you have guards, and we will give you the number — and tell you honestly if one visit a year is all you need.