May 13, 2026· Updated May 14, 2026
By the HalfKey team
Why Tokyo midterm cleaning fees vary 3x on the same unit
Tokyo midterm operators charge anywhere from ¥25,000 to ¥79,000 to turn over the same one-bedroom. The fee isn't a statement about how dirty the unit gets. It's a statement about which customer the operator priced for.
Pick a one-bedroom around 30 to 40 square meters in central Tokyo. Look at it across the operators (the companies that run furnished rentals) in the midterm-furnished segment. The departure cleaning fee runs anywhere from ¥25,000 to ¥79,000.
Same floor plan. Same rooms to clean. Same labor at the door. A 3x spread on a fee that's supposed to cover that labor.
The room count isn't what sets the fee. Who the operator is selling to is.
The actual cleaning labor runs about ¥18,000 in any of these cases. The 30m² studio takes about three hours of two-person work. The contractor charges the same regardless of whose name is on the lease. (We walked the labor math in the parent piece on cleaning fees.)
Everything above ¥18,000 is something else. The size of that something-else is the question.
The two ends of the distribution are easy to read.
At the bottom (~¥25,000 to ¥45,000), the operator is selling to individuals booking the apartment themselves on the website. That customer sees the cleaning fee right there on the booking page. If it looks too high next to the rent, they close the tab. So the fee has to stay low. They're competing on that single field on the booking screen.
At the top (~¥75,000 and up), the operator is selling to people on corporate relocation. Most bookings come through an HR department or a relocation company. The person paying the bill isn't the person living there. They don't care as much about the fee. A number that would scare off an individual booker doesn't scare off a corporate one.
The top tier also tends to price the fee by bedroom count. Around ¥80,000 on every studio and one-bedroom. ¥115,000 on every two-bedroom. ¥140,000 on every three-bedroom. A studio and a one-bedroom pay the same number because they have the same room count.
In between (~¥50,000 to ¥70,000), operators do versions of those two patterns. Some bundle the damage deposit into the cleaning fee — no separate refundable deposit, just one bigger number at the end. Some target customers paying low monthly rent (around ¥120,000 a month) where a higher cleaning fee makes sense next to lower rent. The middle isn't one type. It's everything between selling to individuals and selling to corporate.
Same unit, different operators, different fees. The fee tells you who the operator priced for, not what cleaning actually costs.
The per-night math makes the difference easiest to see.
On a 30-night stay at the top end ¥80,000 fee, the departure cleaning adds about ¥2,700 per night on top of rent. On a 30-night stay at the bottom end ¥27,000 fee, it's ¥900 per night. Triple the per-night turnover cost on the same room count.
On a 60-night stay the gap closes to ¥1,330 vs ¥450 per night. Still 3x.
On a 90-night stay, ¥890 vs ¥300. The ratio holds because the fee is fixed and only the stay length divides it.
At 90 nights, the top-end stay costs ¥890 per night in cleaning. The 30-night bottom-end stay sits at ¥900. Same band. The fee pushes the top-end customer toward longer stays. That's the whole strategy from the parent piece. The fee isn't designed to recover cleaning cost. It's designed to push the booking length up.
Each operator's fee differs because each one is pushing a different kind of customer to stay longer.
What the fee tells you works both ways.
A ¥79,000 cleaning fee on a one-bedroom listing tells you the operator built their pricing for a customer who isn't paying personally. The unit isn't more expensive to clean. The customer they expected to walk in was more willing to pay than you are.
A ¥27,000 cleaning fee on the same floor plan tells you the operator pays close attention to that fee field. They priced for the shopper who looks at it.
The same unit doesn't appear under multiple operators. So when you book, you're shopping at one operator's prices. The fee is what they want their target customer to see, not what the cleaning costs.
A one-bedroom that turns over in three hours of two-person labor pays the contractor ¥18,000. The same one-bedroom carries ¥7,000 to ¥61,000 of operator markup on top, depending on whose name is on the front door. The cleaning is the same. The customer the operator priced for isn't.
— HalfKey runs furnished Tokyo apartments for stays of 30 days to 12 months. Browse listings for your dates.