What do you actually keep from an Airbnb booking?
Your nightly rate is not your income. Airbnb takes a cut, the clean costs real money, and the consumables add up. Put your numbers in and see the figure that actually lands in your account.
This booking
Nothing is sent anywhere. This runs entirely in your browser.
Your advertised rate, before any fees.
Length of the stay.
What the guest pays for cleaning, not what it costs you.
Airbnb’s cut
Around 3% on the split fee. If you are on the host-only fee it is much higher, so check your payout breakdown.
What the guest pays on top. Set it to 0 if you are on the host-only fee.
Your costs
What you actually pay your cleaner for this turnover.
Consumables for this stay: coffee, toiletries, bin bags, laundry.
$350.40
The guest paid $478.80. You keep 73% of it, or $116.80 per night.
- AccommodationNightly rate times nights$360.00
- Cleaning fee$60.00
- Guest service feePaid by the guest, on top$58.80
- Guest paysBefore local taxes$478.80
- Host service feeCharged on the subtotal, cleaning fee included-$12.60
- Airbnb pays you$407.40
- Your cleaning and supplies-$57.00
- You keep$350.40
Fee rates vary by region, account type, and cancellation policy, and local taxes are not included here. Check these against a real payout breakdown in your Airbnb dashboard before you rely on them.
The two fee models, briefly
Almost every confused conversation about Airbnb fees comes down to hosts on different models comparing notes.
On the split fee, the cost is shared. You pay a small percentage, commonly around 3%, and your guest pays a separate service fee on top of the price you set. This is what most individual hosts are on. The upside is that your payout stays close to your advertised rate. The downside is that the guest sees a total noticeably higher than your nightly price, which affects how you compare in search results.
On the host-only fee, you absorb the entire commission, usually somewhere in the 14% to 16% range, and the guest pays no service fee at all. It is mandatory for some account types and optional for others. Your listing looks cheaper to a guest comparing totals, and your payout is materially smaller.
If you are not sure which you are on, open any completed booking in your dashboard and look at the payout breakdown. The difference is large enough that guessing is not worth it.
Net per night is the number worth knowing
Most hosts can tell you their nightly rate instantly and have no idea what a night actually nets them. That second number is the one that decides whether a discount is survivable, whether a one-night booking is worth the turnover, and how many nights a month you need.
It also exposes something the nightly rate hides: the cost of a turnover is fixed, so it hurts far more on short stays. Run a one-night booking through the calculator and then the same rate over five nights. The per-night figures are usually not close, and that gap is the real argument for minimum-night rules.
What people forget to include
- The gap between the cleaning fee and the clean. If you charge 60 and pay your cleaner 45, only the difference is yours, and the fee was taxed by the service fee on the way through.
- Consumables. Coffee, toiletries, paper, bin bags, detergent, the occasional replacement towel. Small per stay, significant per year.
- Laundry. Either a service you pay for or your own time and machine, which is a real cost even when no money changes hands.
- Your own hours. Not in the calculator, because only you can price them, but a turnover you do yourself is not free.
Know your floor before you discount
Once you know your net per night, work out the point below which a booking is not worth taking. Decide it calmly now, because the temptation to discount into an empty week always arrives late at night when the calendar looks worrying.
Work out your break-even month →Earning less than you should?
If the number above is disappointing, the fix is usually bookings rather than fees. Coho’s Listing Health Check reads your actual listing and reports what is costing you clicks, with the specific rewrites to fix it.
Check your listingQuestions hosts ask first
More free tools? See all free templates and calculators. Or read whether dynamic pricing is worth it at your size.