Hire a private cleaner for fewer than four days a week and Dutch law says you are not their formal employer: no payroll registration, no tax to withhold, no employer premiums — that is the Regeling dienstverlening aan huis in one sentence. Expect to pay that private cleaner €17–€25 an hour, or €25–€35 an hour for a registered cleaning company, according to Trustoo's price guide (checked July 2026).
What the scheme does not do is make the arrangement obligation-free. Minimum wage, holiday pay and up to six weeks of sick pay all survive — and most expats hear about them for the first time when something has already gone wrong. What follows is practical guidance, not legal advice; for anything binding, the Belastingdienst and Rijksoverheid pages we cite are the sources to check.
The short answer: under four days a week, no payroll tax
The Regeling dienstverlening aan huis — the home services scheme, in rough translation — exists so that ordinary households can pay for help without running a payroll. It covers household work in and around your home: cleaning, ironing, gardening, babysitting. Three conditions, per the Belastingdienst: you are a private individual, the person you hire is a private individual, and they work for your household fewer than four days a week.
Meet all three and the formal-employer machinery falls away. You do not register with the Belastingdienst, you do not withhold wage tax or social premiums, you do not pay the employer healthcare contribution. Declaring the income is your cleaner's own duty, through their annual income tax return — the money is taxable, just not at your end.
Source: Belastingdienst; Rijksoverheid.
Two details in that threshold catch people out. First, days count, not hours: two hours on a Tuesday is one day, so three full days are fine where four short mornings are not. Second, the count is per household — your cleaner can perfectly legally clean five different homes on five different days, and every one of those households still sits inside the scheme.
Cross the line to four or more days and you become a real employer, with payroll administration, withholding and employer premiums to run. And if you book through a company or agency, the scheme is simply irrelevant: the cleaner is their employee, and your only paperwork is the invoice.
What you still owe a private cleaner
Here is the part the borrel conversations skip. The scheme removes the tax administration, not the worker protections — Rijksoverheid spells out four obligations that apply to every private cleaning arrangement, however informal it feels.
| What you owe | What the rules say |
|---|---|
| At least the statutory minimum wage | The statutory national rate — check the current figure on Rijksoverheid before agreeing a price |
| 8% holiday allowance | The Dutch vakantiegeld, on top of the agreed wage |
| Paid holiday hours | Four times the weekly working hours per year, at full pay |
| Up to six weeks of sick pay | You keep paying the wage while your cleaner is ill, for a maximum of six weeks |
Cash in hand changes none of this. Cash is a payment method, not a legal category: the obligations attach to the arrangement, not to the receipt, and the cleaner still has to declare what you pay. What cash does remove is proof. When a cleaner off sick asks for the pay the law grants them, or a broken heirloom needs settling, an arrangement that exists nowhere on paper protects nobody — on either side. Rijksoverheid publishes a model contract for exactly this situation; ACCESS NL, the expat information service, adds the practical minimum of two referral checks before handing over your keys.
One more thing worth knowing before you negotiate hard on the rate: the scheme is thin on the cleaner's side. This work gives them no unemployment or disability cover unless they arrange and pay for it themselves — part of why private rates undercut company rates is that nobody in the deal is funding a safety net.
Private hire vs platform vs cleaning company in the Netherlands
Three routes to the same clean kitchen, three very different sets of small print. The price bands below are Trustoo's; the obligations are the ones we just walked through.
| Route | Hourly rate (checked Jul 2026) | Who carries the employer duties | When something goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private hire | €17–€25 (Trustoo) | You — wage floor, holiday pay, up to six weeks of sick pay | Your problem: no replacement cleaner, damage on your own insurance |
| Platform (e.g. Helpling) | No public price list — Helpling's former price page no longer exists | Check the platform's terms for who they say the employer is | Check the terms for replacements and damage cover before you book |
| Registered company | €25–€35 (Trustoo) | The company — its staff, its payroll, its sick cover | Insured damage, a replacement crew, an invoice trail |
No price band for the platform row because none can be evidenced: Helpling, for example, no longer publishes a public price list. For a sanity check on the company band, ACCESS NL puts professional cleaners at roughly €25 per hour — the bottom of Trustoo's company range.
These bands are national averages; for street-level numbers, our city guides cover Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
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Calculate my price or call +31 615 098864What changes when you hire a company
Full disclosure: we are a cleaning company, so read this section knowing where we stand. The numbers, at least, are not ours.
The legal change is total. Every obligation in the table above — the wage floor, the 8% holiday allowance, the six-week sick-pay exposure — moves off your plate and onto the company's, because the cleaner is their employee, not yours. The four-day rule stops mattering; you could book a crew daily and still never touch payroll. What you hold instead is a proper VAT invoice: a real paper trail for insurance claims, expense records and deposit disputes.
The practical changes are the ones people actually feel. Damage is insured rather than negotiated in the hallway. Staff are screened before they ever hold your keys — at Gleaming, every cleaner is insured and background-checked before joining a crew, and any company worth booking will answer that question on the spot. And continuity stops depending on one person's health: when a crew member is ill, the visit still happens, which under private hire is precisely the week you are paying sick leave and cleaning the bathroom yourself.
The premium for all that, at the midpoints of Trustoo's two bands, is roughly €8–€10 an hour. For a weekly rhythm, our recurring plans price the visit as maintenance; for the heavy one-offs where damage and proof matter most — a deep clean, a move-in/move-out clean or an end-of-tenancy clean your landlord will inspect — the invoice alone can earn its keep.
Red flags when booking
Whichever route you choose, the same few checks separate a safe booking from an expensive lesson. None of them takes more than five minutes.
- No KvK number. Ask for a KvK number and look the company up in the KvK business register. A "company" that cannot produce one is a private hire wearing a logo — with you, not it, carrying the obligations.
- No invoice, or cash only. A business that will not invoice is charging company rates on private-hire paperwork: the worst of both routes. With a genuine private hire, informal payment is normal — but write the basics down.
- No proof of insurance. Ask directly whether liability insurance covers damage in your home. Flinching is an answer.
- A rate below the floor. Well below €17 an hour — the bottom of Trustoo's private band — ask how the price is possible before booking.
- Keys without references. ACCESS NL's advice stands for every route: at least two referral checks before anyone holds your keys.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to pay tax when I hire a cleaner in the Netherlands?
Not payroll tax, as long as they clean your home fewer than four days a week — the Regeling dienstverlening aan huis exempts you from registering as an employer or withholding anything. Declaring the income is the cleaner's own duty, through their annual return. Book through a registered company instead and tax stops being your topic entirely: you simply pay a VAT invoice.
What is the Regeling dienstverlening aan huis in English?
Roughly, the home services scheme. A private individual doing household work — cleaning, ironing, gardening, babysitting — for another private individual on fewer than four days a week is not in formal employment. The hirer skips payroll registration and withholding, but still owes at least the minimum wage, 8% holiday allowance, paid holiday hours and up to six weeks of sick pay, per Rijksoverheid.
Is paying a cleaner cash in hand legal?
Cash itself is legal — the scheme was built for informal arrangements. What cash does not do is switch off the rules: minimum wage, holiday pay and sick pay apply regardless, and the cleaner still has to declare the income. It also leaves neither side with proof of what was agreed, which is exactly what you will want when something breaks or someone falls ill.
How much does a cleaner cost in the Netherlands in 2026?
Around €17–€25 per hour for a privately hired cleaner and €25–€35 per hour for a registered company, according to Trustoo's price guide (checked July 2026). ACCESS NL, the expat information service, puts professional cleaners at roughly €25 per hour — right at the seam between those two bands.
What happens if my private cleaner gets sick?
Under the scheme you keep paying their wage for up to six weeks, and you find your own cover in the meantime, because nobody sends a replacement. That sick-pay exposure is the single biggest cost difference between private hire and a company, where staffing is the company's problem.
The law, in the end, asks one question: who carries the employer duties — you, or a company? Answer it before you compare prices and the prices start making sense. If a move is what is driving your search, our guide to getting your full deposit back at the end of a Dutch tenancy covers the inspection standard your clean will actually be judged against; if it is simply the going rate you are after, the Amsterdam and Rotterdam guides have the numbers.
