Airbnb's 15.5% host fee: what a $200 night pays you now

If you changed nothing on September 15, a night you list at $200 now pays you $169. Not $194, which is what the same night paid you under the old fee. This post is the arithmetic, the one number to change today, and the shortcut that gets it slightly wrong.

The fee moved from the guest's side to yours

For years Airbnb split its cut. You paid 3% of the booking. The guest paid a service fee of roughly 14.1% to 16.5% on top of your price at checkout. A guest who booked your $200 night saw a total of about $230, and you kept $194.

That split is being retired. Under the single fee, Airbnb takes 15.5% from you and adds nothing on the guest's side. Airbnb's own help page puts it plainly: most hosts pay 15.5%, hosts in Brazil and Mexico pay 16%, and hosts who use property management software are on it whether they chose it or not. The remaining hosts got an email with a date. Outside Europe that date was September 15, 2026.

So the guest's total went down and your payout went down with it. Unless you moved your price, you gave the whole difference to the guest.

What a $200 night pays you now

The fee comes off the subtotal, which means the nightly price plus every fee you charge: cleaning, pets, extra guests. Taxes are outside it. Three nights a host might list:

• $150 a night keeps $126.75. The fee is $23.25.
• $200 a night keeps $169. The fee is $31.
• $300 a night keeps $253.50. The fee is $46.50.

Under the old split, the $200 night kept $194. The difference is $25 a night. On a listing that books 180 nights a year, that is $4,500 you no longer see, from a change you did not make.

The number to list to keep what you kept before

To keep $194 on a night, you do not add 15.5% to $194. You divide by what is left after the fee, which is 0.845.

$194 divided by 0.845 is $229.59. List $230.

The shortcut most hosts reach for is multiplying by 1.155. On $194 that gives $224, which keeps $189.28, and you are $4.72 short on every night. It is a small gap. Over a year of bookings it is a few hundred dollars, and it is the kind of leak nobody notices because the number looks right.

The rule is one line: kept price divided by 0.845 is the listed price. Round up, never down.

Your guest will not notice

This is the part hosts miss when they hesitate to raise the number. Before the change, your $200 night showed the guest a total of about $230 once Airbnb's fee was added at checkout. If you now list $230 with no guest fee on top, the guest sees the same total they saw before. You are not raising the price. You are moving Airbnb's fee back to where it always sat, inside the total, where it has been the whole time.

The listings that did not reprice now look about 13% cheaper than they used to. That is not a strategy. It is a payout cut, and nothing more.

The cleaning fee is inside it now

The 15.5% applies to your cleaning fee at the same rate. A $100 cleaning fee pays you $84.50. If your cleaner charges $85, you are now $0.50 short on every turnover, and if your cleaner charges $100, you are $15.50 short.

Pricing tools do not write your cleaning fee. Ours does not either. It lives on Airbnb: Calendar, your listing, Price settings, and under Additional charges, Fees, then Cleaning fee. Open it once this week. Divide what your cleaner charges by 0.845, round up, and type that in. A $100 cleaner needs a $119 cleaning fee.

What to change today

Three things, in this order. About fifteen minutes.

1. Your nightly prices. Take the payout you want from a night and divide by 0.845. If you use a pricing tool, check what it assumes. A tool that still prices as if the guest pays the fee is pricing your calendar 15.5% low.
2. Your cleaning fee, on Airbnb. Same division. It is one field.
3. Your minimum price. Most hosts set a floor as the lowest price they can stomach, and the number they had in mind was a payout. If your floor was $150 because $150 covers the mortgage share and the cleaner, the listed floor is now $178. A floor left at $150 is a floor of $126.75 in your account.

How Hostomat prices it

Hostomat prices every night against the comparable listings around you, and those listings are on the same fee you are. So the market comparison already compares like with like. What changed is the number you read.

Every price on the pricing page is shown two ways: what Airbnb lists, and what lands in your account after the 15.5%. The floor can be typed either way. Type "I need to keep $150" and Hostomat stores the listed price that clears it, $178, and never writes a night below it. The check runs in our own code on every push, not as a setting Airbnb might ignore.

One honest limit. We model one rate, 15.5%, for everyone. Hosts in Brazil and Mexico pay 16%, and hosts in the UK pay VAT on top of the fee. For those hosts the kept number on the page is slightly generous. We chose one rate rather than show a wrong-looking number to the many to be exact for the few.

Do the division once

Pick your best-selling night. Write down what it paid you last month. Divide by 0.845 and compare to what it is listed at now. If the listed number is lower, every booking since September 15 has been a discount you did not intend. Fix the three numbers above, and the guest will see the same total they always did.

If you would rather not do this for 365 nights by hand, Hostomat does it every day and shows you what you keep on each one. Pricing is 14 days free with no card.

Read next: what a floor price is for, and how dynamic pricing works on Hostomat.

Source: Airbnb's help page on service fees, https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1857, read September 21, 2026.