Short answer: a routine gutter cleaning on a typical two-story Chicagoland home cost $170–$225 in 2026. A clogged, overdue one can cost two to three times that. Our September 28 job in Antioch shows why: a 4,500 sq ft house, gutters stopped solid on both structures, every downspout elbow packed into a plug, and a $600 invoice.

We write up and publish every job we run, with the real price attached. Across the 63 priced residential gutter cleanings we published in 2026, the median invoice was $180, 50 of the 63 landed between $150 and $250, and only five reached $300 or more. The Antioch house is the most expensive gutter job we have published all year.

So if you are pricing professional gutter cleaning this fall, the useful question is not “what does it cost?” but “what turns a $180 visit into a $600 one?” Below is the Antioch job in full, a line-by-line look at where that money went, what our 63 jobs show about pricing, and how to keep your own house in the cheap column.

The Antioch Job: Four Hours, Nine Bags, Every Elbow Plugged

On September 28, 2026, our technician Paul from the Round Lake team arrived at a two-story house on Anita Avenue at eight in the morning. It is the kind of street where our crews do a lot of gutter cleaning in Antioch: mature maples leaning over the eaves, pines along the road, and a locust over the back deck already dropping its first yellow leaflets. Canopy like that fills a gutter fast, and this one had been filling for a long time.

These gutters were not slow-draining. They were stopped. Leaves had sat in the troughs long enough to break down into a dark, wet mat that held water instead of passing it, and the scale of the buildup made it clear the system had not been cleared in some time. Scooping the troughs was the easy part. The time went into the downspouts: every elbow had compacted into a solid plug that had to be broken apart by hand and flushed before water would move through at all. Paul worked both structures section by section, then ran water through each downspout to confirm flow before calling it done.

By the end of the four hours we had filled nine bags, and we hauled every one of them away at no extra charge. Wet gutter debris is heavy, and that matters if you ever do this job yourself: in Antioch, the village hauler only takes landscape waste in paper yard-waste bags of 50 pounds or less, and Antioch’s curbside leaf vacuuming runs only during the first four full weeks of November. Nine bags of packed, soaked leaf mat is not something you want to be figuring out on a Sunday afternoon.

The on-site video, all seven photos and the crew details are on the full Antioch project page.

Where the $600 Went

Our published base rate for a two-story home between 4,001 and 5,000 sq ft is $225. The only other two-story house in that size band we published this year, a 4,438 sq ft home in Deerfield, invoiced $250. Antioch came in at roughly 2.7 times the base rate for its size. Three things did that:

• Time. Base rates are built around a maintenance-level load. Four hours of hand work on one house is not a maintenance-level load.
• The elbows. A trough can be scooped in a steady rhythm. A compacted elbow has to be worked loose, flushed, and re-tested one downspout at a time, and there is no shortcut for it.
• Volume. Nine bags of debris means nine bags of material lifted out by hand, carried down and bagged.

Just as telling is what did not drive the price. The house had no gutter guards to lift and re-secure, and it is two stories, not three. The entire premium came from condition. A well-kept house of the same size, on the same street, would have been priced near $225.

Flushing every downspout is not extra credit, either. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Building America Solution Center recommends downspouts every 20 to 50 feet of gutter and discharge that drains at least 5 feet from the foundation. The whole system is designed around every outlet working. One plugged elbow sends that corner’s roof water over the gutter lip and straight down beside the house, no matter how clean the rest of the trough is.

What 63 Real Jobs Say About Gutter Cleaning Cost

Here is how our 2026 invoices break down for two-story homes, which were 51 of the 63 jobs, set against the published base rate for each size band:

One-story homes (11 jobs) ran a median of $135, from $120 to $195. The single three-story job invoiced $475. Of the 62 jobs that fall inside our published size bands, 40 invoiced above the base rate, 15 landed exactly on it and 7 came in under it. That is the honest way to read a price list: the base rate is the starting point for a normal load, and the on-site estimate is what adjusts it.

The adjustments are predictable. Height adds staging time. Guards add labor too, because cleaning around gutter guards means lifting and re-securing panels on every run of the roofline, and guards do not stop the downspout from clogging. When we looked at what we found under the guards on seven homes earlier this month, six had a downspout or elbow blocked. The biggest adjustment, though, is condition, and the top of the price list shows it:

All five of the most expensive jobs this year had at least one downspout or elbow blocked. In the two most expensive jobs without guards or a third story, Antioch and Highland Park, the only real driver was how long the gutters had gone without service.

From Our Side: What We’d Tell Every Homeowner After This Job

A $600 gutter cleaning is not us charging more for the same job. It is a different job. On a house that gets regular service, most of the visit goes into the troughs and the downspouts run clear with a quick flush. On an overdue house, the troughs are the warm-up and the real work is in the elbows, one at a time.

The math favors regular visits. Two routine cleanings on the Antioch house at the $225 base rate come to $450, which is less than the one overdue visit it needed, and the gutters would have been draining all year instead of dumping water beside the foundation through a season of storms. We would much rather see a house twice a year at the base rate than once every few years at this price, and most homeowners would rather pay that way too once they see both numbers side by side.

None of this means the homeowner did anything unusual. Heavy canopy simply compounds. A lot with maples, pines and a locust overhead is filling the gutters from spring seed season through the last leaf drop, and a year skipped on a lot like that is not a year’s worth of debris, it is a packed system. If your house looks like the photos above, assume it needs more than one visit a year.

What Skipping a Cleaning Actually Costs in 2026

A gutter that cannot drain does its damage slowly and then all at once. Water that overflows the front lip soaks the fascia board behind the gutter, stains siding, and lands in a line right along the foundation, where it finds its way into window wells and basement walls. Every one of those repairs costs more than a cleaning, and none of them shows up until the damage is done.

This year has been an especially bad one to let a system go. The Illinois State Climatologist’s office reports a record-setting 2026 storm season: 210 tornadoes statewide by September 1, against a previous full-year record of 142, and more than 1,300 severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, roughly one every four and a half hours. Each of those storms is a test of every downspout on your house.

Winter raises the stakes again. A gutter full of wet debris freezes solid, gives meltwater nowhere to go, and makes the ice building along the eave worse. If you have dealt with ice dams before, a clear, draining gutter going into freeze-up is one of the cheapest things you can do about it.

When to Book Fall Gutter Cleaning in Northern Illinois

Book for after the bulk of the leaves are down and before the first hard freeze. In most of northern Illinois that is late October into mid-November, with maple-heavy lots usually ready a little earlier than lots with late-dropping trees. Book early rather than waiting for the last cold week: everyone calls at once when the leaves finish falling, and the final two weeks before freeze-up are the tightest of the year for every crew in the trade.

If your lot has oaks, one fall visit may not be the end of it. University of Illinois Extension explains that oaks hang onto their dead leaves through much of the winter, often dropping them in late winter or early spring. Those leaves land in the gutters after your fall cleaning, which is why oak-heavy properties do best with a spring visit as well as a fall one.

Before you book, a five-minute check tells you which column you are in:

• Run a hose into the gutter and watch each downspout. A clear system gushes. A trickle, or a delay of several seconds, means a plug in the pipe or the elbow.
• Knuckle-tap each downspout from the bottom up. An empty pipe rings hollow. Where the sound goes dull, that is the top of the plug.
• Look for plants or seedlings growing out of the gutter line. If something has taken root, the trough has been holding soil and water for a long time.
• Check the ground under each corner. A trench in the mulch or splash marks on the siding mean water has been coming over the edge, not down the downspout.

If two or more of those come up, tell us when you call. It changes the estimate, and we would rather tell you that up front than on the roof.

Every price is confirmed with an on-site estimate you approve before work starts. Call (847) 297-4492 or book online, and check our current coupons before you do.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to clean clogged gutters?

In our 2026 jobs, a routine cleaning on a two-story Chicagoland home cost $170 to $225, with a median of $180 across all 63 jobs we published. Clogged, overdue systems cost more because of the extra labor in the downspouts and elbows: our five most expensive jobs ran $300 to $600, and the highest was $600 for a 4,500 sq ft two-story home in Antioch with every elbow plugged.

Why does gutter cleaning cost more when the gutters are badly clogged?

Three reasons: time, downspouts and volume. Base rates assume a maintenance-level load. A packed system takes hours longer, compacted downspout elbows have to be broken apart and flushed one at a time, and the debris itself has to be removed by hand and bagged. The Antioch job took about four hours and filled nine bags.

How do I know if my downspout elbow is clogged?

Run a hose into the gutter and watch the bottom of the downspout. If water trickles out, arrives after a delay, or backs up and spills over the gutter lip, the pipe or elbow is blocked. Knuckle-tapping the downspout from the bottom up also works: the sound turns dull where the plug starts.

How often should gutters be cleaned in the Chicago area?

Twice a year suits most homes, once in late spring and once in late fall after the leaves are down. Homes under heavy canopy may need a third visit. Properties with oaks often need a spring cleaning because oaks hold many of their dead leaves through winter and drop them in late winter or early spring.

When is the best time for fall gutter cleaning in northern Illinois?

After most of the leaves have fallen and before the first hard freeze, which in northern Illinois is usually late October into mid-November. Booking early in that window is easier than waiting for the final weeks, when demand peaks.

Is it cheaper to clean gutters regularly than to wait?

Usually, yes. On the Antioch house, two routine cleanings at the $225 base rate would have cost $450 in total, compared with $600 for the single overdue visit, and the gutters would have drained properly all year instead of overflowing beside the foundation.