Is Everything Above Board in the Cleaning Industry?

According to the market research firm BusinessStat, the market volume of the Russian cleaning industry in 2025 amounted to 711 billion rubles, equivalent to 7.2 billion euros. This represents an increase of 11%. The Russian Association of Cleaning Companies and Facility Operators (ACFO) estimates that its member companies’ revenue grew by about 16% last year. Facility operators are full-service providers that handle the maintenance, cleaning, and security of buildings. According to the Russian market research firm NeoAnalytics, the market is only about 50% saturated and thus still has significant growth potential.

Nevertheless, companies in the cleaning industry are operating in a challenging market environment. According to the ACFO, the business yields no more than a 2% return. The reasons: rising costs for cleaning supplies, taxes, and employee wages. Cleaning chemicals, for example, have become 20–40% more expensive over the past two years, as industry representatives report.

According to experts, the market today consists of three segments. Private cleaning companies with small cleaning crews serve the B2C sector. Small and medium-sized companies typically maintain apartments, offices, and commercial properties. Larger market players with long-term contracts serve large corporations and the public sector.

The B2B segment generates the lion’s share (80%) of the industry’s revenue: this includes business centers, shopping malls, retail stores, warehouses, and property management. However, analysts note that the greatest increase in demand is in the B2C sector, which accounts for one-fifth of the remaining industry revenue. Last year, demand from private customers rose by 21%, according to the classifieds platform Avito. Market observers attribute this increase to the fact that more and more people in major Russian cities are leaving the tedious task of cleaning their apartments to professional cleaners.

The Devil Is in the Details

The share of transparent, open, and honest companies in the cleaning industry’s total revenue amounted to 30–40% last year, explains Yuri Ryabichev, vice president of the Russian Association of Industry Experts NP Opora. In terms of volume, cleaning companies operating in the gray area—accounting for 80%—are clearly in the majority, Yuri Ryabichev continues. These are mostly micro-enterprises and small businesses.

Russian authorities have been taking measures for years to combat the shadow economy in the cleaning industry. This has contributed 100 billion rubles to the state budget over the past nine years, explains Ryabichev—the equivalent of 1.01 billion euros. However, the government still sees a great need for action. Experts point out, however, that the tax measures taken so far are placing an increasing financial burden on transparent and fair market participants. According to the cleaning industry association ACFO, the tax burden on its member companies has risen from 3–4% to 18%–40% of revenue.

Transparent companies have had to raise the prices for their services to keep their businesses afloat, while small and medium-sized cleaning firms are able to attract customers with better prices thanks to tax loopholes and tax evasion, criticizes Tatjana Kofanowa, head of tax and legal affairs at the consulting and financial auditing firm Delowiji Reschenija i Technologii. “The competitive advantage thus lies with companies operating in a gray area, since there are no incentives for most of them to pay their taxes honestly,” the legal expert concludes.

This is precisely where the government could step in. Most recently, the Russian Ministry of Finance considered additional tax measures for cleaning companies at the suggestion of the leading Russian business associations RSSP, TPP, and Opora Rossii. Specifically, this involves a tax regime in which the total tax burden roughly corresponds to the costs that cleaning companies incur through “gray practices” for tax evasion. The business associations’ proposal calls for companies to be exempt from the standard value-added tax (22%) and insurance contributions, and to pay only an 8% sales tax and payroll tax. The authors of the initiative estimate that cleaning companies currently spend 12–15% of their income on tax evasion schemes. The proposed tax regime would align these expenses with tax payments and render such violations unnecessary.

Market Cleanup: Authorities Crack Down

According to the official business registry, approximately 38,600 companies were active in the cleaning industry in November 2024. However, between January and October of the same year, the number of cleaning companies declined by 5,000. At the same time, the number of new registrations fell by 14% to 6,000, the lowest figure in four years, as reported by the Association of Cleaning Companies and Facility Operators (ACFO). Analysts attribute this to a decline in the number of migrant workers linked to the tightening of Russian immigration policy in 2024. According to official figures, the number of foreigners in Russia fell from 6.8 million in April 2025 to 6.1 million in April 2026. This has had a noticeable impact on the industry, which relies heavily on workers from the CIS countries of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. According to ACFO, since 2024, many small cleaning companies with 5–15 clients in particular have gone out of business. Industry experts estimate the current labor shortage at 20%.

Wages for cleaning staff have also risen. According to the Russian statistics agency Rosstat, labor costs for cleaning companies increased by 64% between 2022 and the first quarter of 2025. According to the Russian employee platform Dream Job, where employees rate their employers, a cleaning worker in Russia today earns between 40,000 and 90,000 rubles (405 and 910 euros).

Sources: ACFO, Vedomosti, RBC 1, 2, Dream Job

Source: German-Russian Chamber of Foreign Trade, “Is Everything Clean in the Cleaning Industry?”, August 21, 2026.

This article was prepared for the German-Russian Chamber of Foreign Trade.