As a detailing business owner in San Diego County, one of the biggest challenges you face is determining your prices. The first step to determining your prices is to get in-depth knowledge of what your competition is doing.
San Diego alone has close to 1,000 detailing businesses in its area, which makes it the 3rd biggest city for the number of detailing businesses in the country after Los Angeles and New York City. Between LA and San Diego, these two cities make up almost 70% of California’s detailing businesses.
Competition is tough if you’re a detailer in San Diego County, and setting the right car detailing prices is crucial to increasing revenue and ensuring your success. You need to know what your competition across the street and across town is charging. It also doesn’t hurt to know what detailers in LA or even detailers in San Francisco charge for their services. Once you compare your prices to your competition in your area, you might find they are lower than average. This would give you a great reason to raise prices! (For help on how to raise your detailing prices, check out the Mobile Tech RX detailing app that helps you create perfect estimates.)
In this practical guide, we’ve done the competitive research for you. To do this, we scraped data from Yelp to find the low, average, and high car detailing prices in the San Diego County area. We then compared the price of car detailing services, so that you can see how your pricing stacks up.
Average Detailing Price in San Diego County, California
The average price of detailing services in San Diego County is $163. LA County’s average detailing cost is slightly higher than the national average of $160.12 by about 2%. Compared to the California average of $176.30, we see that average San Diego County prices are about 8% lower than the rest of the state
Most Expensive and Least Expensive Cities
The most expensive cities on average are San Marcos and Santee. The average cost of detailing in these four cities is $217.50.
The least expensive cities on average are Oceanside and Vista. The average cost of detailing in these three cities is $92.50.
Range of Detailing Pricing Across San Diego County
If we wanted the cheapest detail in the city with the lowest price, we would go to Vista, CA. The cheapest cost of a detail in Vista is $45. If we wanted to find the most expensive detail in the city with the highest price, we would go to San Marco, CA. The most expensive detail in San Marcos is $280. If we compare these two cities, we see the range across the lowest price and the highest price in San Diego County is $235.
Now, let’s compare the average price in the cheapest city and the most expensive city. Oceanside, CA, has the lowest average price at $90 while San Marcos has the highest average price in the county at $240. The range across the average prices in San Diego County is $15.
| City | Low | Medium | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carlsbad | $100.00 | $160.00 | $199.00 |
| El Cajon | $118.00 | $175.00 | $225.00 |
| Encinitas | $169.00 | $179.00 | $209.00 |
| Escondido | $120.00 | $180.00 | $250.00 |
| Oceanside | $85.00 | $90.00 | $180.00 |
| San Diego | $105.00 | $179.00 | $250.00 |
| San Marcos | $140.00 | $240.00 | $280.00 |
| Santee | $140.00 | $195.00 | $195.00 |
| Solana Beach | $90.00 | $150.00 | $200.00 |
| Spring Valley | $100.00 | $150.00 | $180.00 |
| Vista | $45.00 | $95.00 | $160.00 |
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Why are we seeing such a large range across cities? It could be due to the range of services offered, and some shops could be more high end than others. However, it could also be that detailing services don’t have a standard price in San Diego County.
Setting Variable-Based Prices to Make More Money
If you find that your prices are lower than the averages listed in this article, I recommend re-thinking your pricing strategy. Ask yourself if the prices you charge really reflect the time and resources you give to each car that comes into your shop. If you charge the same price for two cars in different conditions, you’re definitely leaving money on the table.
A Wider Look: Price of Detailing in California and the United States
Price of Detailing in California
Price of Detailing in the United States
Research Methodology
To pull numbers for this report, we used data from Yelp to find the low, average, and high price for auto detailing in cities of San Diego County, California. We listed over 50 of the most populous cities in San Diego County and compiled pricing data by city where car detailing prices were available. (11 of the 51 cities had enough accurate data on detailing pricing to use them in this report.)