122,675 Google reviews across 1,334 car washes in 4 Sacramento counties. Format mix, operator rank, geographic distribution, income overlay, customer-experience signals.
Snapshot
Locations
1,334
89% independent
Chains
36
lead: Shell (37 sites)
Avg rating
4.57★
+0.16 vs national MSA median
Damage rate
1.2%
1.3× below national norm
Cancel friction
7.3%
Top format
detail shop
40% of classified inventory
Median single wash
$12
range $4–$50
Median unlimited
$24.99/mo
cheapest $16/mo at Blue Star Xpress Wash
Market Quality snapshot
Population
2,406,563
ACS 2023 5-year
Households
876,004
ACS 2023 5-year
Residents per wash
1,804
near the national MSA median
Express tunnels per 10K households
0.8
in the 0.5–1.0 filling band · classified sites
Key findings
1,334 car wash locations operated by 36 chains and 1,185 independents across 4 counties.
Weighted Google rating 4.57★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-metro norms.
Built from 122,675 Google reviews, 44,914 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
1,334 car wash locations across 4 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Locations
1,334
Chains
36
+ 1,185 independents
Reviews
123K
Avg Rating
4.57
Damage Rate
1.20%
Median AGI/return
$84K
location-weighted
Executive Read
Sacramento sits near the center of the US-metro distribution on concentration, format mix, and rating. 1,334 locations across 36 chains and 1,185 independents, distributed across 4 counties. Distinctive patterns show up below at the format and aspect levels.
Headline numbers sit near US-metro norms: rating 4.57★, damage 1.2%, cancel friction 7.3%. Staff strong (0.90); equipment reliability weak (-0.26). 122,675 Google reviews drive the analysis, 44,914 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.
Published pricing across the 93 of 1359 Sacramento locations with menus available: median single car wash $12 (range $4–$50), median unlimited membership $24.99/month (range $16–$99.99/mo). The cheapest unlimited membership in the metro is $16/mo at Blue Star Xpress Wash (Express Wash).
What does a car wash cost in the Sacramento metro?
Published menu pricing for car washes in the Sacramento metropolitan area, captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent. 93 of 1359
tracked locations have usable published pricing
(7% coverage).
Single Wash
$12
median · range $4–$50 · 40 locations tracked
Unlimited Membership
$24.99 per month
median · range $16–$99.99 per month · 73 programs tracked
Cheapest unlimited memberships in Sacramento
1
Blue Star Xpress Wash Express Wash
$16 per mo
2
Fairway Car Wash Basic
$19.98 per mo
3
Five Star Car Wash & Detail Unlimited Pass
$19.99 per mo
4
Five Star Car Wash/Detail & Gas Unlimited Pass
$19.99 per mo
5
Blue Bubble Car Wash Blue Bubble
$19.99 per mo
Cheapest single car washes in Sacramento
1
Citrus Heights Car Wash Self-Service Car Wash
$4
2
Blue Star Xpress Wash Express Wash
$8
3
Bee Shine Car Wash Express Wash
$8
4
K's Car Wash Wash
$9
5
Splasherville Car Wash and Lube Express Tire Dressing
$9
Pricing scraped from operator websites where published; the WashIndex AI calling agent rings up locations
that don’t publish menus online to capture pricing directly.
Official industry footprint · BLS QCEW 2024
The car wash industry in the Sacramento metro, officially
High-wage
Car-wash wages in the Sacramento metro run about 67% above the national average ($54,394 vs. $32,560), across 136 employer establishments and roughly 1,633 jobs.
Employer establishments
136
NAICS 811192 · 2024
Industry jobs
1,633
private, annual avg
Avg annual wage
$54,394
per employee
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, QCEW (private, NAICS 811192). Counts car-wash employer
establishments, a narrower universe than all physical wash locations — see methodology.
SBA Lending · FY2010–present
Car wash financing in the Sacramento metro
Consolidating market
Since 2010, the U.S. Small Business Administration has backed 50 car-wash loans in the Sacramento metro worth $61.5M, at a $690,950 median per car wash and a 7.1% charge-off rate. Acquisitions are unusually prominent — 14% of loans went to buying existing washes (vs. 8% nationally), a sign operators are trading sites more than building new ones.
SBA loans
50
FY2010–2025
Total approved
$61.5M
7(a) + 504
Median loan
$691K
per car wash
Charge-off rate
7.1%
of 28 resolved
SBA car-wash loans approved per fiscal year
Loans by county
Sacramento32
Placer7
Yolo6
El Dorado5
What the loans fund · estimated from loan terms
New build / open26% · $897K
Acquisition14% · $698K
Expansion / improvement46% · $985K
Working capital14% · $25K
Source: U.S. Small Business Administration 7(a) & 504 FOIA datasets (NAICS 811192), data through 2026-03-31.
See the Car Wash Lending Tracker for national figures and methodology.
Frequently Asked Questions
About the Sacramento car wash market
How many car washes are in the Sacramento metro?
+
There are 1,334 car wash locations across the Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA CBSA, spanning 4 counties.
What is the best-rated car wash in the Sacramento metro?
+
Super Clean Xpress Carwash Elk Grove 2 in Elk Grove, CA is the highest-rated car wash in the Sacramento metro at 5.0★ across 1,389 Google reviews (filtering to locations with at least 100 reviews).
Which car wash chain has the most locations in Sacramento?
+
Shell has the most locations in the Sacramento metro with 37 sites, followed by Quick Quack Car Wash (37 sites). The metro has 36 multi-location operators in total, alongside 1,185 independent or single-location sites.
What is the average customer rating in the Sacramento car wash market?
+
The review-weighted average rating across all 1,334 car washes in the Sacramento metro is 4.57★, based on 122,675 Google reviews processed through WashIndex's customer-experience pipeline.
What is the typical household income near car washes in Sacramento?
+
Across the ZIP codes containing the Sacramento metro's car washes, the location-weighted median IRS-reported AGI per tax return is $84K (tax year 2022) — a rough proxy for trade-area household income.
How much does a car wash cost in Sacramento?
+
Single-wash prices across the Sacramento car wash market range from $4 to $50, with a median of $12 across 40 locations that publish their pricing. The cheapest single car wash in the metro is $4 at Citrus Heights Car Wash (Self-Service Car Wash). Pricing data is captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent.
How much does an unlimited car wash membership cost in Sacramento?
+
Unlimited car wash memberships in the Sacramento metro range from $16/month to $99.99/month, with a median of $24.99/month across 73 programs tracked. The cheapest unlimited membership is $16/month at Blue Star Xpress Wash (Express Wash); the most expensive tracked is $99.99/month at Vic’s Auto Detailing - Mobile (Quick).
What is the cheapest car wash in Sacramento?
+
The cheapest single car wash in the Sacramento metro is $4 at Citrus Heights Car Wash (Self-Service Car Wash tier). For ongoing customers, the cheapest unlimited membership is $16/month at Blue Star Xpress Wash (Express Wash) — a break-even of roughly 1.3 washes per month at the metro's median single-wash price of $12.
01Format Mix
What kinds of car washes does Sacramento have?
The format mix in Sacramento reads as a typical mid-market US metro — express tunnels and detail shops carrying the bulk of supply, with full-service and self-serve layered in. The bar chart pairs location count with per-format average rating.
Highest-rated format: Detail Shop at 4.88★ across 102 locations.
Lowest-rated: In-Bay Automatic at 3.70★ (59 locations).
1,078 (80.8%)
of 1,334 locations are unclassified — small independents whose websites don't surface enough signal for format assignment. Format-level statistics describe the classified subset only.
Format
Locations
% of MSA
Reviews
Avg Rating
Damage Rate
Cancel Friction
Unclassified
1,078
80.8%
20,224
4.43
0.67%
4.8%
Detail Shop
102
7.6%
10,587
4.88
0.44%
0.0%
Express Tunnel
68
5.1%
76,681
4.66
1.36%
7.4%
In-Bay Automatic
59
4.4%
4,413
3.70
0.82%
0.0%
Full Service
20
1.5%
8,670
4.19
2.99%
10.6%
Self-Serve Bay
7
0.5%
2,100
4.30
0.97%
21.4%
02Income & Demographics
What is the household income near Sacramento car washes?
Read together with the format mix above, the income scatter below tells you whether car wash quality in Sacramento tracks neighborhood income, format mix, or neither. Operating quality usually dominates this picture.
Pearson r between ZIP income and Google rating across 395 qualifying locations: 0.04 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income.
Scatter mean: $93K AGI/return, 4.31★.
Detail Shop Express Tunnel In-Bay Automatic Full Service Self-Serve Bay
Car wash count and quality by income tier
Blue bars: location count per tier. Orange tick marks: average Google rating (same y-axis).
Income tier (mean AGI/return)
ZIPs
Locations
Reviews
Avg Rating
Top Format
Under $50K
6
75
12,293
4.63
Detail Shop (12)
$50K – $75K
17
176
28,959
4.52
Detail Shop (27)
$75K – $100K
21
199
38,922
4.56
Detail Shop (32)
$100K – $150K
17
179
28,007
4.53
Detail Shop (25)
$150K+
9
35
7,369
4.51
Detail Shop (6)
Income band spread: 35/4.51★ at the highest tier; 75/4.63★ at the lowest. In a balanced market, the per-tier read is most useful as a sanity check on whether the operating quality is income-uniform or income-stratified.
03Dominant Chains
Who operates the most Sacramento car washes?
36 chains run sites in Sacramento; the top 25 are listed below by location count, with their per-chain operating-quality numbers next to them. Useful for narrowing competitive-set considerations or for M&A evaluation.
Which counties have the most car washes in Sacramento?
The table below splits the metro's car wash inventory across the 4 counties of the Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA CBSA, with location count, total reviews, and weighted-average rating per county.
Cross-county rating dispersion: 0.14★ between the highest- and lowest-rated counties with meaningful sample size.
What do customers love and complain about in Sacramento?
Reading the aspect grid: numbers above 0.3 are strong positives; numbers below -0.1 indicate meaningful friction; in between is mixed signal. staff is the brightest spot here. equipment reliability is the pain point.
Staff+0.90
Wash Quality+0.81
Facility Cleanliness+0.78
Wait Time+0.70
Per-Wash Price+0.44
Membership Value+0.31
Equipment Working-0.26
06All Locations
Where are all the car washes in the Sacramento metro?
Top 25 car washes by review volume in Sacramento. The full set of 1,334 is available in the underlying dataset.
Data as of 2026-09-26.
Pick a format and click Copy.
APA
WashIndex. (2026, September 26). Sacramento car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/sacramento
Chicago
WashIndex. "Sacramento car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified September 26, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/sacramento.
MLA
"Sacramento car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Sep. 26, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/sacramento.
BibTeX
@misc{washindex_car_wash_markets_sacramento_2026,
title = {{Sacramento car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {Sep},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/sacramento},
urldate = {2026-09-26},
}
About this analysis
Car wash inventory for the Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA CBSA is determined by point-in-polygon test against the
official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024) for the 4 counties that
make up the MSA. Each location was verified to fall inside one of those county polygons; lat/lng comes from
Google Maps metadata.
Operating-quality signals are derived from 44,914 customer reviews
processed through WashIndex's 55-field LLM extraction pipeline. Format classification comes from a separate per-location
website-reading classifier. ZIP-level income data is from the IRS Statistics of Income (tax year 2022) — mean Adjusted Gross
Income per tax return, which is directionally aligned with ACS median household income but available without authentication.
See our full methodology
for the extraction pipeline, validation samples, and aggregation logic. Term definitions in the glossary.
The free WashIndex platform shows every Sacramento car wash on an interactive map, with the same review-derived
signals and demographic overlays that power this analysis. Filter by format, drive-time, or operator and compare any
location head-to-head with its true competitive set.