5 Best Gutter Cleaning Companies in Des Moines, Iowa (2026)
Published July 16, 2026 · Updated July 18, 2026 · 9 min read
If you search for gutter cleaning in Des Moines right now, the top organic result is a Reddit thread from three years ago with four comments in it. The next two are a Yelp list and a BBB category page. That is the state of the information available to someone trying to hire somebody to clean their gutters in this city.
So here is a real list. Five companies actually operating in the Des Moines metro in 2026, what each one is genuinely good at, and where each one is the wrong call. No paid placements. Every fact below comes from the company's own website.
The short answer:
- CJ's Window Cleaning Services is the strongest all-around pick if you want one established local company for the whole exterior. It publishes a real Ankeny address and serves 28 metro communities, though gutter cleaning is the fifth of its eight home services.
- Des Moines Gutter Cleaners (us) is the pick if you want a company that does nothing but gutters, with the price quoted over the phone. We rank ourselves second and explain why below.
- Gutters Unlimited Elite and Goliath Gutters are the calls when gutters need repair or replacement, not just clearing.
- Gutter Cleaning Iowa publishes the market's lowest entry price, residential service starting at $99, but covers a wide multi-state territory.
Published prices in this market range from under a hundred dollars to several hundred for the same house, largely because "a cleaning" means different things to different companies. Iowa does not license gutter cleaners, so vetting is on you: ask whether downspouts are included and whether the debris leaves.
How We Ranked These Companies
We did not rank by Google review count or BBB rating. Both can be gamed, and in a trade with no licensing requirement, both get gamed. Star averages also tell you nothing about the one thing you care about, because a company with six hundred reviews across eight services has not told you whether any of those reviews were about gutters.
What we weighted instead:
- A verifiable local presence. A published Des Moines metro address, or at minimum an Iowa base and a real local footprint. Not a toll-free number and a mail drop in another state.
- How central gutters are to the business. Is gutter work the company, or is it the fifth item on a menu of eight?
- Clear scope. Are downspouts included, and does the debris leave with them?
- Pricing stated somewhere before someone is standing in your driveway.
Those first two criteria pull in different directions, which is why this list is ordered the way it is rather than ranked best to worst. The most established local company here is not the most gutter-focused one, and the most gutter-focused ones are not the most established. Which matters more depends on what you actually need, and each entry says so.
One thing worth saying before the list. Iowa has no license for gutter cleaning. No competency standard specific to this work exists in the state, so appearing on any list, including this one, is not a credential. That is not a knock on anyone below, all of whom are real businesses, but it does mean the burden of vetting falls on you in a way it would not if you were hiring an electrician.
We also cut two companies that show up in search results for this term. One is a gutter company in Des Moines, Washington, on Puget Sound between Seattle and Tacoma, that Google keeps confusing for a local result. The other publishes an Iowa phone number next to a Phoenix area code, and names itself after the search term rather than after any company. Neither belongs on a list of Des Moines companies.
Best Gutter Cleaning Companies in Des Moines, Iowa (2026)
1. CJ's Window Cleaning Services
Website: cjswindowscleaning.com
Phone: (515) 689-4508
Based: 917 SW Ordnance Rd, Ankeny, IA 50023
Best for: Homeowners who want one established local company for the whole exterior.
CJ's is the most established exterior cleaning operation in the metro and the one we would send our own family to if they wanted everything handled at once. They publish a real street address in Ankeny, they list the 28 metro communities they serve, and they have the kind of local footprint that takes years to build rather than an ad budget.
Their scope is genuinely wide: window cleaning inside and out, pressure washing, house washing, roof cleaning, gutter cleaning, deck and fence cleaning, solar panel cleaning, and Christmas light installation, plus commercial versions of most of it. They also run maintenance plans, and the discounts are published rather than negotiated: twenty five dollars off per cleaning on a bi-annual plan, fifty off quarterly, one hundred off monthly.
They are the strong default pick, and the reason is straightforward. If your gutters need clearing and your windows are also filthy and the north side of the house has gone green, one call to CJ's solves all three with a company that has been here a long time and has an address you could drive to.
The honest caveat is the same thing that makes them useful. Gutter cleaning is the fifth of the eight services they list for homeowners, and window cleaning is the name on the truck. If gutters are the only thing you need and you want the crew that does nothing else, that is a different company, and it is the one directly below this.
2. Des Moines Gutter Cleaners
Service area: Des Moines metro. Polk, Dallas, and Warren Counties.
Best for: Homeowners who want gutters done by a company that does nothing else.
Disclosure: this article is published on Des Moines Gutter Cleaners' own website, so read this entry with the appropriate skepticism. We rank ourselves second rather than first because CJ's has a longer local track record than we do and a published street address you can drive to, and we do not. We are a service-area company, which means we come to your house rather than work from a storefront, so the honest version is that you are vetting us the same way this whole article tells you to vet anyone: not by an address, but by what we will tell you on the phone before you commit. The rest of this entry is written to be checked against that standard, and if it does not hold up when you call, do not hire us.
Here is the case for us anyway, and it is the one thing on this list nobody else can claim: gutters are all we do. Not gutters and windows. Not gutters and pressure washing. Not gutters as the way onto your roof to talk about a replacement. We clean gutters, we brighten them, and we maintain them for commercial properties. That is the entire business.
That matters in two ways. The first is competence, and it is not complicated: doing one thing all season means doing it constantly. You learn which downspout elbows pack first, what a hanger looks like right before it lets go, and why the same back corner overflows on half the houses in a subdivision. A crew that cleans gutters eleven times a season between window jobs is learning that on your house.
The second is that it removes the conflict. We do not install gutters, repair them, or sell guards, so a cleaning is never also a sales call. Nothing we could find up there earns us another dollar. If something is genuinely wrong, we tell you and point you at one of the companies on this list that does that work, and two of them are good at it.
On pricing, we do the thing nobody else on this list does: you get your number before anyone parks in your driveway. Not a "starting at" figure, not a range off a website, your actual price, worked out from your address and roof height, before anyone drives out. Every other company here wants a visit first, and a visit is how a quote becomes a conversation you did not plan on having. Downspouts are included rather than an add-on, because a clean gutter draining into a packed downspout is not a finished job. The debris leaves with us.
Where we are the wrong call: if your gutters need repair or replacement, or you want the windows and the siding done in the same visit, we are not your company and we will say so on the phone rather than after we have your deposit.
3. Gutters Unlimited Elite Services
Website: www.guttersunlimitedelite.com
Phone: (515) 368-3846
Based: Offices in Des Moines and Humboldt, Iowa
Best for: Gutters that need replacing, not just clearing.
Every service they sell is a gutter service: gutter installation, gutter cleanouts and repair, leaf protection systems, and soffit and fascia work. In a market where most companies treat gutters as an add-on, that is worth noticing.
The distinction that matters is which end of the gutter lifecycle they live at. Their lead service is installation, and cleanouts sit alongside repair rather than standing on their own. That makes them the right call in a specific situation: your gutters are failing rather than full. If a run is sagging, pulling off the fascia, or leaking at the seams, no cleaning company can help you and they can.
They serve the Des Moines metro, all of Iowa, and into South Dakota and Nebraska from two offices. They do not publish a street address or pricing, so both take a phone call.
4. Goliath Gutters
Website: www.goliath-gutters.com
Phone: (515) 468-2050
Based: West Des Moines, Iowa
Best for: Bundling gutter replacement with roofing, siding, or windows.
Goliath is an exterior contractor with gutters in the name. The menu runs from gutter installation, repair, cleaning, and protection through heat tape systems and tiling downspouts, and then keeps going into roof installation, siding, and window replacement, with commercial versions of each.
They are upfront about leading with installation, and they are the natural call for the situation where a gutter problem turns out to be a roof problem, or where you are already replacing siding and the gutters are coming off anyway. Being able to hand one contractor the whole envelope of the house has real value.
For a straight seasonal cleaning, they are more company than the job requires. Their own pricing tool needs your inputs before it says a number, which tells you what kind of work the business is built around.
5. Gutter Cleaning Iowa
Website: guttercleaningiowa.com
Phone: (515) 882-2799
Based: Central Iowa, Eastern Iowa, Western Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska
Best for: The lowest published entry price in the market.
Gutter cleaning is the domain, the company name, and the lead service, with gutter guards, pressure washing, and window cleaning behind it. They also publish the only hard entry price of any local company on this list: residential service starting at ninety nine dollars. That number is the anchor everyone else in this market gets compared against, and it is worth knowing before you call anyone.
Read the "starting at" carefully, though. It is an entry point rather than a quote, and what moves it is the same thing that moves everyone's: roof height, linear feet, and how long it has been. Ask what is included before you book on the strength of the headline.
The thing to weigh is footprint. They cover Central Iowa, Eastern Iowa around Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Western Iowa, and Omaha. That is a wide territory for a gutter company, and Des Moines is one region of several rather than the whole business. They do not publish a street address.
What to Look for When Choosing a Gutter Cleaning Company
If you take nothing else from this list, take the questions. In a trade with no licensing, what a company is willing to tell you on the phone is most of the signal you are going to get. The five that sort the real companies from the seasonal ones are quick to ask:
- Are downspouts included, or billed separately?
- Does the debris leave with the crew, or get bagged and left behind?
- Do they hand-clear and flush, or only run a vacuum from the ground?
- Can you get a price range before anyone drives out?
- If they find a problem up there, who fixes it, and do they profit from it?
We wrote a fuller guide on how to vet a gutter cleaning company in a state that does not license them that walks through why each of those answers matters, and one on what gutter cleaning actually costs in Des Moines so you know whether a quote is fair before you take it.
Final Thoughts
Get two quotes, and pick based on which one is more specific. The company that asks about roof height, gutter length, and when you last had them done is doing the work of quoting. The company that leads with a headline price and gets vague when you ask what is in it is doing something else.
If you want one company for the whole exterior and you want it to be one that has been here a long time, call CJ's. If your gutters are failing rather than just full, call Gutters Unlimited Elite or Goliath. And if you want the gutters done by people who do nothing but gutters, that is us, and you can have the price before anyone gets in a truck.
Choosing a Gutter Cleaning Company in Des Moines
Who is the best gutter cleaning company in Des Moines?
It depends on what you actually need. For one established local company to handle the whole exterior at once, CJ's Window Cleaning Services is the strong default pick, with a published Ankeny address and a long local track record. If your gutters are failing rather than just full, Gutters Unlimited Elite or Goliath Gutters live at the installation-and-repair end. If you want the gutters done by a company that does nothing but gutters and will quote you a price over the phone, that is us, and we rank ourselves second and say exactly why.
Why do you rank yourselves second instead of first?
Because the top slot is about local track record and a published street address, and CJ's has both in a way a newer company honestly cannot claim yet. Specialization is a separate criterion, and it is the one we win: gutters are the only thing we do, while for most companies on this list gutters are one service among many. Both rankings are honest, and putting CJ's first is the point. A roundup that crowns itself number one is not one you should trust.
How did you rank these companies?
On local track record, gutter focus, transparency about scope and price, and how the company handles the parts of the job that are easy to skip, like downspouts and haul-away. We deliberately did not rank on review count or star rating, because both are gameable and a new company can be genuinely good before it has a pile of reviews. The goal is to match you to the right company for your specific situation, not to point everyone at the same name.
Should I avoid national gutter cleaning booking services?
Be careful with them. Several results for gutter cleaning in Des Moines are national operators that display a local number but route your job to whichever subcontractor is available, so the person who answers a complaint has never seen your house. We cut every one of those from this list on purpose. Each company here has a real, checkable presence in the metro, which is the whole point of ranking on local track record instead of whoever bids the most on the search term.
Need Your Gutters Cleaned in the Des Moines Metro?
Gutters are all we do, and we will quote you before anyone drives out. Give us your address and roof height and you get a real number on the phone, downspouts and haul-away included.