Airbnb’s 15.5% Host Fee Now Comes Out of Your Cleaning Fee.

What Airbnb changed

Airbnb used to split its service fee. Most hosts paid about 3%, and guests paid a separate fee of roughly 14% to 16.5% at checkout. It has replaced that with a single service fee of 15.5%, paid by the host and taken from the payout, so guests no longer see a separate Airbnb fee. Airbnb says the 15.5% is based on its global average service fees.

Hosts in the US and Canada who connect through property management software were moved first, on October 27, 2025. For everyone else, Airbnb set a deadline to adjust prices of September 15, 2026 outside the European Economic Area, and October 13, 2026 inside it and in Switzerland. The single fee applies to reservations made after a host switches; bookings made before then keep the old split.

What it does to the cleaning fee

The fee is charged on the nightly price and on the optional fees a host adds, and Airbnb’s own examples are a cleaning fee and a pet fee. Most hosts set the cleaning fee close to what the clean costs, so it passes straight through to the cleaner. Under the split fee that pass-through lost 3%. Under the single fee it loses 15.5%.

Across a year the gap adds up. A listing that turns 100 times at a $150 cleaning fee hands Airbnb $2,325 of it under the single fee, against $450 under the split.

Did Airbnb’s price tool raise your cleaning fee?

Before the deadline, Airbnb offered a one-time price adjustment tool. Its example takes a $100 price to $115, so the host still nets about $97, the same as under the split fee. Airbnb’s help article says the adjustment covered the nightly price and additional fees such as the cleaning fee, for the next two years of the calendar.

Hosts who did not use it kept their old prices, and Airbnb says their prices and payouts per night are now lower. Hosts who price through property management software usually set this as a channel markup in the software instead, so it is worth checking that the markup reaches the cleaning fee as well as the nightly rate.

There are also two ways to read “the same as before”. Raising a fee by 15% keeps the payout you had under the split fee: $150 becomes $172.50 and nets $145.76. Raising it by about 18.3%, to $178, nets the full $150. For a cleaning fee that pays a cleaner $150, the second is the one that keeps the clean covered.

What to check this week

Five minutes per listing is enough to know where you stand:

Sources

This summary reflects the platform’s published policy on October 26, 2026. Platforms revise these pages, so check the source before changing a listing.