Commercial Cleaning Robot ROI: Benchmarks From Supermarkets and Hospitals
Why benchmark instead of promise
Cleaning robots are sold with impressive per-hour figures that ignore docking, refills and blocked aisles. We collected 90 days of logs from 40 units in supermarkets, hospitals and shopping malls to see what the machines really deliver.
Throughput
- Supermarket hard floor: 1,100 to 1,450 square metres per hour in cleaning mode.
- Hospital corridor: 850 to 1,050 square metres per hour with disinfection enabled.
- Mall lobby with mixed flooring: 700 to 900 square metres per hour.
Add about 15 percent idle time for docking, tank refills and human traffic.
Consumables and water
Compared with a mop-and-bucket routine, scrubbing robots used 55 to 70 percent less water per square metre. Chemical consumption fell by roughly a third because dosing is metered rather than estimated.
Payback
At a two-shift operation, the median payback across the sample was 14 months. Sites that ran the robot only at night took closer to 22 months, because the machine sat idle during the busiest hours.
What to measure in your own trial
Log square metres per charge, not claimed square metres per hour. Track how often staff intervene, and count the hours you genuinely remove from the rota. Those three numbers decide whether the project is worth scaling.
