How Much Does Car Detailing Cost?

Ask ten detailing shops what a detail costs and you get ten answers, because "detailing" covers everything from a two-hour interior clean to a full day of paint correction. The numbers on this page are not our estimates and not one shop's price list - they are read out of the price lists that detailing businesses have published on their own listings in our directory, and they change as more shops publish theirs.

What each service costs

The dot is the median - the price in the middle of the list, which a single unusually cheap or unusually expensive shop cannot drag around. The line is the usual spread, with the extremes at both ends trimmed off for the same reason.

Protection work sits in a different bracket from cleaning work, and for a good reason: most of what you pay for a coating is the hours of paint preparation before it goes on, not the bottle at the end. Coating prices have a page of their own - what the entry package buys, why one quote is triple another, and how the coating compares with wax and film.

What the money actually buys

The names are used loosely across the trade, which is most of why quotes look inconsistent. Here is what each one means where the prices above came from.

Interior Detailing - typically $160. Interior detailing is a deep clean of everything you touch: seats extracted rather than wiped, carpets shampooed, vents and seams cleared, leather cleaned and conditioned.

Exterior Detailing - typically $135. Exterior detailing goes past a car wash: decontamination with clay and iron remover, wheels and wheel wells cleaned properly, trim dressed, and a protective layer of wax or sealant on top.

Ceramic Coating - typically $699. A ceramic coating is a liquid polymer that chemically bonds to your paint and hardens into a sacrificial layer.

Paint Correction - typically $399. Paint correction is machine polishing that removes swirl marks, wash scratches, and oxidation instead of hiding them.

Mobile Detailing - typically $195. Mobile detailers bring the work to your driveway or office parking lot with their own water and power.

Mobile or shop - does it change the price?

The two land closer together than most people expect. A mobile detailer saves the rent on a unit but pays it back in travel, water and power carried to your driveway.

What it costs in your city

City medians move with what local shops actually charge, not with cost of living in the abstract. If your city is not on the list yet, it means fewer than two shops there have published prices - the listings are there, the numbers are not.

Where prices are published

Some cities have enough published price lists to answer a narrower question - what one service costs there, and which shops quote what. Those pages carry the figures and the shops behind them:

• Ceramic coating prices in Houston, TX - typically $795 across 15 shops
• Ceramic coating prices in Dallas, TX - typically $529 across 9 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Houston, TX - typically $155 across 8 shops
• Mobile detailing prices in San Diego, CA - typically $229 across 8 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Denver, CO - typically $249 across 7 shops
• Ceramic coating prices in Jacksonville, FL - typically $650 across 7 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Las Vegas, NV - typically $85 across 7 shops
• Interior detailing prices in San Francisco, CA - typically $179 across 7 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Boston, MA - typically $124 across 6 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Boston, MA - typically $180 across 6 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Los Angeles, CA - typically $124 across 6 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Miami, FL - typically $90 across 6 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Phoenix, AZ - typically $150 across 6 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Phoenix, AZ - typically $175 across 6 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in San Diego, CA - typically $99 across 6 shops
• Interior detailing prices in San Diego, CA - typically $179 across 6 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in San Francisco, CA - typically $150 across 6 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Denver, CO - typically $289 across 5 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Houston, TX - typically $150 across 5 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Los Angeles, CA - typically $130 across 5 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Nashville, TN - typically $159 across 5 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Oklahoma City, OK - typically $150 across 5 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Orlando, FL - typically $179 across 5 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Portland, OR - typically $170 across 5 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Portland, OR - typically $142 across 5 shops
• Exterior detailing prices in Seattle, WA - typically $144 across 5 shops
• Interior detailing prices in Seattle, WA - typically $249 across 5 shops
• Mobile detailing prices in Seattle, WA - typically $349 across 5 shops

What actually drives your quote

Size. The single biggest factor, and the most predictable. A compact sedan is the baseline; a mid-size SUV or a crew cab is usually one bracket up, and a three-row SUV or a long-bed pickup one above that. The reason is hours, not policy - a third row means more seats to extract, more glass to reach, more carpet and more panels to polish. A shop that quotes a single figure without asking what you drive has quoted for a sedan, and the number will move when they see the car.

Condition. Pet hair, smoke, spilled milk, two years of automatic car wash swirl marks - each of these turns a standard job into a longer one. A shop that quotes without seeing the car is quoting for a clean car.

What is included. Two shops quoting "full detail" may differ on whether engine bay, door jambs, headliner or a sealant are in the price. This is the question that explains most surprising quotes.

Where the work happens. Coating and correction need controlled light and a dust-free space to be done properly.

Questions worth asking before you book

Most of the difference between a quote you are happy with and one that annoys you comes down to four questions, and all of them are fair to ask on the phone.

DIY or pay someone?

A wash, a vacuum and a wipe down are worth doing yourself, and the equipment pays for itself in a season.

Everything between those poles is a question of what your Saturday is worth.

Is it worth it?

For a car you are keeping: a detail once or twice a year is maintenance, and protection work bought once saves washing time for years. For a car you are selling: it is one of the few jobs that reliably returns more than it costs, because a clean car photographs better and reads as cared for.

For a car that has never been detailed and is due for it, the honest answer is that the first one costs more than the ones after it. Most of the price of the first detail is undoing accumulated neglect; keeping a car in that state is cheaper.

Where these numbers come from

Every figure on this page is computed from live listings when the page loads. When a shop adds or changes its prices, this page changes with it. We do not average in national estimates and we do not quote a single business as though it spoke for a market.

Based on 737 published prices from 340 detailing shops across 144 cities, read live from our directory on August 27, 2026.