Airbnb Host Fees: What You Need to Know

Renting out your property on Airbnb, the world’s largest online marketplace for vacation rentals, can be a lucrative and rewarding experience. It’s a great way to earn extra money and connect with travelers from all over the world.

Yet, if you want to become a successful host and maximize your revenue, gaining insight into Airbnb service fees hosts must pay is crucial when using this OTA platform. With a clear understanding of how Airbnb charges hosts and what you can expect to pay, you can set a competitive pricing strategy that makes sense for your STR property.

So, how much does Airbnb charge hosts? In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Airbnb host fees and give you some tips on becoming less dependent on OTAs and saving money on their commissions.

Why Does Airbnb Charge Host Fees?

Airbnb host fees are the costs that hosts incur when they use the Airbnb platform to rent out their vacation rental properties to people who prefer to stay at self-catering houses and apartments during their trips. These fees are designed to cover the operational costs of the platform and are automatically deducted from the host’s earnings with every booking.

Airbnb charges hosts fees to ensure the platform runs smoothly and provides products and services such as customer support, protection for hosts and their rentals, and marketing to guests.

You can put your house on Airbnb for free as there is no sign-up fee. The Airbnb host fee is only applied after each booking as a percentage of the booking subtotal.

Owning an Airbnb can be a profitable side hustle, but it requires regular effort to manage bookings, update calendars and prices, communicate with guests via messages, etc. That can be rather time-consuming. That’s why savvy hosts use vacation rental software like Hospitable to automate routine tasks and save time to focus on providing exceptional guest experience.

How Much Does Airbnb Charge Hosts?

The Airbnb fees are a percentage of the booking subtotal that includes the listing’s nightly price, a cleaning fee, and other additional fees charged by the host but excludes the guest service fee and taxes.

The percentage that Airbnb takes from hosts’ payments varies, ranging from 3% to 16%, and depends on the fee structure. There are two different fee structures for stays: split fee and host-only fee, so you can choose the model that best suits your needs.

The split fee model is the most common; if you choose it, the service fee will be split between you and your guests. With this arrangement, most Airbnb hosts pay about 3% of the booking subtotal, which is deducted from their payouts. Most guests typically pay a service fee of 14.2% of the booking subtotal, and their fee is included in the total price they pay. Guests can see this fee during checkout before they book, so everything is transparent. 

Starting April 1, 2024, Airbnb also charges guests an additional amount for cross-currency bookings. So when the guest pays for their booking using a different currency from the one set by the host for their listing, the guest service fee can be up to 16.5% of the booking subtotal.

With a host-only fee structure, Airbnb deducts the entire service fee from hosts’ payouts and charges no service fee to guests. In this case, the host service fee is typically 14–16%, although hosts with super strict cancellation policies may pay more. When guests book stays of 28 nights or more, Airbnb host fees may be less.

The host-only fee model is optional for most vacation rental hosts, but it’s mandatory for hotels and serviced apartments. From December 2020, a 15% host fee, simplified pricing, is also mandatory for software-connected hosts unless most of their listings are in the USA, Canada, the Bahamas, Mexico, Argentina, Taiwan, or Uruguay.

But that doesn’t mean you have no choice but to stick to the host-only fee if you opt for vacation rental software to automate your hosting routine. The host-only fee is mandatory only for those hosts who are using a property management system (PMS) with “API-synced listings” (resulting in Airbnb removing access to the calendar and/or listings descriptions, as they are being managed directly by their software).

Airbnb Host Fees: Is It Possible to Avoid Them?

It’s impossible to avoid Airbnb host fees if you use this platform to market your STR property, but you can minimize their impact on your bottom line. You can explore other OTAs to diversify your booking channels and use platforms with different fee structures.

And if you want to become less dependent on the platforms like Airbnb and save on their fees, you should consider building your own vacation rental website that will allow you to accept direct bookings. For example, with Hospitable Direct, you can create a functional and stylish direct booking website without any technical skills.

Having your own direct booking website will allow you to build your brand, foster good relationships with guests, build customer loyalty, and encourage repeat direct bookings. This way, you’ll be able to cut out the middleman and ensure that you get more money from every booking.

Creating your website with Hospitable Direct, you’ll keep complete control of your bookings and how you market your vacation rental properties, and we’ll take care of administrative hassles. We’ll help you screen your guests before they book (powered by Autohost) and insure your property with up to $5M worth of damage protection (powered by Know Your Guest by Superhog.

Hospitable Direct integrates with Google Vacation Rentals, so if you create your direct booking website with us, your STR properties will be listed on Google Vacation Rentals. Then, you’ll get direct bookings without investing any money in promotions and without high third-party fees.