Merry Maids franchise unit economics

How much does a Merry Maids franchise make?

The average Merry Maids unit reported $439,243 of revenue in the 2026 FDD, and the median reported $339,352. The brand’s disclosure document discloses revenue and not profit, so what an owner keeps depends on the cost structure set out below. Fees come off the top first, at about 9.6% of sales across royalty, brand fund and the rest of the stack. Revenue is not income. Rent, wages, cost of goods and the franchise fees all come out before an owner is paid. The figures for the highest-selling and lowest-selling businesses are below.

Top performers

What separates the top Merry Maids performers

Top performers

How far apart the locations are

Merry Maids reports its locations in performance groups, from the highest-selling to the lowest. The group-by-group figures are in the tables on the Model and Finance tabs.

One owner, many businesses

Revenue by number of franchises owned, 2025

Owner counts, franchise counts, averages and medians are as the brand reported it. The combined royalty column is marked *, applying the published schedule to each group's own per-franchise average.

An owner with one business bills $626,096; an owner with twelve bills $272,595 each. That is a 56% decline, and it falls at every step in between. Whatever the second business adds in total sales, it arrives with a smaller book than the first and pulls the average down.

The medians fall faster than the averages. That is $548,583 down to $202,615, 63% against 56%. So the typical multi-unit business sells less still than its group average suggests. The largest groups are carried by a handful of high-selling territories inside them.

Eleven owners hold 130 franchises between them. That is 11.8 each, averaging $3,250,893 in total. Those eleven groups hold 20% of the system's active franchises, and their per-business figure is the lowest in the table.

The single-business group attains its own average 41.1% of the time. That compares with 32.9% for groups of three to four. Attainment moves within an 8.2-point range across the group sizes, so the shape of the Merry Maids distribution stays similar and only its level changes.

The highest single business in each group size lands between $1,352,116 and $1,838,414. That is a $486,298 spread across the whole table. A business inside a twelve-unit group can reach $1,452,280, so group size sets the average. The constraint is attention.

Highest to lowest, by sales

Revenue for qualified franchises, 2025

Counts, averages, medians, attainment and ranges are as the brand reported it; the fee-load column is marked *.

The top quartile bills seven times the bottom. That is $914,092 against $130,847. Both sit on territories of at least 40,000 qualified households with an office inside them. So the ground and the format are held constant and the whole gap is trade.

The median of $339,352 sits 23% below the average of $439,243. Half the qualified system bills under $339,352, and 36.7% reach the average. A forecast built on the published average overshoots the typical Merry Maids business by $99,891 a year.

Attainment climbs as revenue falls: 37.5%, 44.7%, 49.5%, 50.0%. The bottom quartile is tightly clustered ($35,322 to $194,623) while the top runs to $1,838,414. Upside concentrates in a few territories and downside is broadly shared.

A territory granted under the current standard bills $135,061 more. That is $439,243 against an implied $304,182 for the 230 legacy franchises*, which hold fewer than 40,000 qualified households or run their office elsewhere. The 31% difference is the clearest case in the Merry Maids filing for keeping the office inside the territory it serves.

Legacy franchises are 35.7% of the active system. That is 230 of 644 *. More than a third of the businesses trading today hold terms the brand has stopped offering. That is worth knowing before comparing a resale against a fresh grant.

How the royalty steps down

Franchisor fees at each revenue level

We applied the published rates to the filed revenue.

Splitting revenue across businesses costs the royalty discount. An owner holding $3,250,893 across twelve businesses pays $225,545, where a single business billing the same amount would pay $171,545, a $54,000 difference each year *. Each business stands alone for the threshold test.

Two of the four Merry Maids quartiles pay a flat 7%. Only the top quartile at $914,092 and the second at $443,368 clear $400,000, and the second clears it by $43,368, worth $434 a year *. For most of the system the tiered schedule is a headline.

The discount is worth $27,768 to the largest business in the system. That is $1,838,414 at the tiered rates against a flat 7% *. Crossing $500,000 is where the money starts: every dollar above it has 5% against 7%. So a dollar billed above $500,000 keeps 2.1% more for the owner than a dollar billed below $400,000.

Fees paid to the brand run 7.5% at the top and 15.3% at the bottom*. Two forces work together: the royalty steps down as revenue rises, and the $5,988 technology fee is fixed. At the bottom tenth's $85,036 that fee alone is 7.0% of sales.

The technology fee may double to $1,000 a month on a software change. That is $12,000 a year against $5,988. At the bottom quarter's $130,847 that single line would move from 4.6% to 9.2% of sales *, which is a bigger swing than the entire royalty ladder delivers.

Opening and the system

Franchised territories, 2023 to 2025

As the brand reported it, from the status table; the three-year row is marked *.

One hundred territories ceased operating in 2025 against 23 openings. That is more than four exits for every entry. Terminations and non-renewals together accounted for three of the 103 departures, so the overwhelming majority were owners choosing to stop.

The system fell from 905 territories to 684 in three years. That is a 24.4% contraction. Exits have shifted in character over that period: 2023 lost 41 territories to terminations and non-renewals and 35 to other closures, while 2025 lost 3 and 100.

Transfers fell from 66 to 12 across the same three years. That compares with 113 in total. A thinning resale market alongside rising voluntary closures says owners are increasingly exiting by closing, which is the harder of the two routes.

What it costs to open a territory

As the brand reported it, reordered here by size.

The franchise fee is 43% of the low column. That is $55,000 of $126,875*, and the fees actually collected in 2025 ran $27,500 to $49,500, every one of them below the list price. The discounts are the rule here.

Working capital (cash to run the business day to day) of $38,000 to $43,000 covers three months. It is the largest line after the franchise fee. Against a business at the bottom quarter's $130,847, that is 3.5 to 3.9 months of revenue held in reserve. That is a sensible reading of a system where 100 territories closed in a single year.

A market hub office waives the $5,988 technology fee. It is available to an owner already running a business in an adjacent territory, and it drops the washer, dryer and storage requirement. For a second business at the group averages, that waiver is 1.4% of revenue *. It is the one place in the Merry Maids fee structure where holding several territories pays.

Buying a territory with existing customers costs $250 each. The $250 is paid to the neighboring franchisee who has been serving them. At the system's average revenue per business, a book of 200 customers would cost $50,000 on top of the franchise fee. So the arithmetic on a territory with an inherited book deserves its own line.

Questions we get asked

Questions owners ask.