Airbnb Cleaning Fee: How Much to Charge Under the New Rules

The Airbnb cleaning fee is the one number in your price that’s tied to the turnover, not the night. From November 20, 2026, that turnover gets a little bigger: Airbnb’s new house rules policy moves bed stripping, dishwashing and hauling trash off the guest’s checkout list and onto the host’s side. So the fee you set now has to pay for a full clean, start to finish. Below, we work out how much to charge, with a worked example, and what you can still ask guests to do before they leave.

An Airbnb cleaning fee is a one-time fee the host sets to cover cleaning after each stay. Set it at what one full turnover costs you: cleaner pay, laundry, supplies and restocking, plus the time guests used to spend on checkout chores. Then add Airbnb’s service fee on top, so the clean is paid for in full.

Airbnb rules and fees below are for US listings and come from Airbnb’s Help Center pages linked in each section. Airbnb can change them, so check your own account before you update prices. This post is educational and is not financial or legal advice.

How much should an Airbnb cleaning fee be?

Your Airbnb cleaning fee should equal the real cost of one turnover, plus the share Airbnb takes from it. Airbnb’s own cleaning fee page for hosts puts it simply: the fee “typically pays for the housekeeping you expect to do after hosting guests.” It’s a flat charge per booking, so a guest pays the same fee for two nights or ten.

For a reality check, compare with nearby listings of the same size. Skift, reporting AirDNA data on short-term rental cleaning fees, found that 89% of US listings charged a cleaning fee as of April 1, 2025, and that one-bedroom homes averaged $96. Treat that as a benchmark for a one-bedroom. Your own fee comes from your own costs, which is the next step.

What Airbnb’s new checkout rules change for hosts

Airbnb’s reasonable house rules and requests policy applies to all reservations booked on or after November 20, 2026. It says hosts generally may not ask guests “to complete tasks that require significant effort or time, or would typically be performed by a cleaner, including stripping the bed, taking trash offsite, or washing and putting away dishes.”

The same policy covers three more points that touch the cleaning fee:

• Fines come out of house rules. The policy rules out host-imposed fines or other penalties, so a “$50 if the bed isn’t stripped” line has to go.
• All fees in the booking price. Any fee for an advertised part of the listing has to be included in the price shown at booking.
• Rules live in one place. House rules and requests go in the designated section of the listing, set before the guest books, and stay consistent with the rest of the listing page.

Airbnb allows reasonable local requests, such as shorter showers during drought restrictions or an animal-proof trash container in bear country. When a listing’s requests fall outside the policy, Airbnb says it may educate the host, show a notice on the listing page, or reduce the listing’s visibility in search.

Airbnb’s reasonable house rules policy, effective for reservations booked on or after November 20, 2026, names stripping beds, taking trash offsite, and washing and putting away dishes as cleaner tasks that belong to the host. For hosts, the practical result is that the cleaning fee now pays for the whole turnover, so any time guests used to save the cleaner belongs in the fee.

How to calculate your Airbnb cleaning fee in 4 steps

This is the method behind any Airbnb cleaning fee calculator. Work it out once per listing, then update it when your cleaner’s rate or your supplies change.

1. Get your cleaner’s price for a full turnover. Ask for the price with the beds stripped and remade, dishes washed and put away, and trash taken to the outside bins. If you clean it yourself, time a full turnover and multiply by the hourly rate you’d pay someone else.
2. Add laundry. Count the sets of sheets and towels per stay and price them at your laundry service or your own water, power and detergent.
3. Add supplies and restocking. Divide a month of cleaning products and guest consumables by the number of stays in that month.
4. Gross it up for Airbnb’s service fee. Airbnb’s service fees page says most hosts on the single host-only fee pay 15.5%, and that fees are a percentage of the nightly price “and any fees charged by the host.” Divide your cost by 0.845 so the fee still covers the clean after Airbnb’s share.

Worked example (example figures only; use your own quotes). A two-bedroom listing:

At $160, Airbnb’s 15.5% takes about $24.80 and $135.20 is left for the clean. Charging exactly $135 would leave you about $21 short on every stay.

A turnover checklist that fits the new rules

A clear Airbnb cleaning checklist keeps the cleaning fee honest, because it shows exactly what the fee pays for. Under the new policy, these jobs sit on the host’s list:

• Strip all beds, wash the linens and remake with fresh sheets
• Wash, dry and put away all dishes; run and empty the dishwasher
• Empty every bin and take the trash and recycling to the outside bins
• Clean the kitchen, bathrooms and floors, and wipe down high-touch surfaces
• Restock toilet paper, soap, coffee and anything else you provide
• Check for damage and lost items, and photograph the space when it’s ready

Give your cleaner the same list. When the work and the price match, it’s easy to spot when either one drifts.

Short-stay fees and how guests see the total price

Airbnb lets you set a standard cleaning fee and an optional, lower short-stay cleaning fee for one- and two-night bookings. The standard fee then applies to stays longer than two nights. Airbnb sets the right fee at the time of booking based on the stay length, and its host page notes that special offers need the cleaning fee factored in by hand.

Short stays are where an Airbnb cleaning fee weighs the most. A $160 fee adds $80 a night to a two-night stay and about $23 a night to a week. Since April 2025, Airbnb has shown guests worldwide a total price including all fees before taxes, right in search results. Guests compare that total, so a high fee on a short stay shows up straight away.

On the guest side, Airbnb’s cleaning fees page for guests describes the fee as part of the total price. If a guest cancels within a free cancellation period, the full cleaning fee is refunded. After that, it’s treated as part of the nightly price and follows your cancellation policy.

What you can still ask guests to do at checkout

Short, reasonable requests remain fine. ABC News, covering the new Airbnb cleaning rules, gives placing used dishes in the sink as an example of a task hosts can still ask for. Requests that follow local rules, like bear-proof bins, are also allowed under the policy.

Rewrite your checkout instructions as a few quick steps:

• Leave used dishes in the sink
• Put used towels in the bathroom
• Turn off lights and lock the door
• Send a quick message once you’ve left

Then put your house rules and requests in the designated section of the listing, so every guest sees them before booking. TechCrunch reported that some hosts pushed back on the changes, one saying it could end a twelve-year run on Airbnb. If the new rules add work to your turnover, raising the cleaning fee to the real cost of a full clean is the direct, transparent way to cover it.

Should you charge a cleaning fee or raise the nightly rate?

A separate Airbnb cleaning fee works best when most bookings are three nights or longer, because one turnover is spread over several nights and the nightly rate stays sharp. If most of your bookings are one or two nights, use the short-stay fee or fold part of the cleaning cost into the nightly rate. Either way, Airbnb’s service fee applies, so the gross-up step stays the same.

Keep a simple log of cleaning cost per stay alongside your other expenses. Our guide to bookkeeping for small business shows a light way to track that.

Hosting a single spare room works the same way on a smaller scale. Renting out a room is one of the options in our list of side hustles from home, with pricing tips for each.

Check your cleaning fee against your profit

An Airbnb cleaning fee that covers the clean is the first step. The second is knowing the whole listing pays. Our free Airbnb calculator takes your nightly rate, occupancy, average stay, cleaning fee, cleaning and supply costs, platform fee and fixed costs, and shows monthly profit, RevPAR and your break-even occupancy. Try your new fee there and see how it moves profit at your usual stay length.

To plan a rental over three years, the Airbnb Business Plan & Financial Model builds 36 months of occupancy, cleaning fees, platform commission and costs, with break-even occupancy for every month.