An Airbnb cleaning fee is a one-time charge you add to a reservation to cover the cost of getting your place ready between guests. It is set by you, the host, and Airbnb charges it once per stay, not per night. There is no fixed dollar amount and no market rate you have to match. The right number is simply what a full turnover actually costs you (cleaner labor, laundry, supplies, and a small buffer for wear), which for a small unit like the worked example below comes to roughly $85 and scales up from there for larger homes or paid cleaning crews. Below I walk through how I set the fee on the doors I manage, and why the wrong number quietly costs you bookings.

I have hosted more than 3,000 guests and helped set pricing on a nine-figure portfolio of properties I manage but do not own. The cleaning fee is one of the smallest lines on a listing and one of the most misunderstood. Get it right and it disappears into the background. Get it wrong and it either eats your margin or pushes short-stay guests to the next listing.

What an Airbnb cleaning fee actually is

The cleaning fee is a flat amount added to the guest's total once, no matter how long they stay. A guest booking two nights and a guest booking ten nights pay the same cleaning fee, because you clean the place the same way after each of them. Per Airbnb's cleaning fee policy, the fee is part of the total price and, if a guest cancels inside a free cancellation window, the cleaning fee comes back as part of their refund.

What the fee is meant to cover is the labor and materials of a full turnover: stripping and washing linens and towels, cleaning bathrooms and the kitchen, vacuuming, taking out trash, restocking consumables, and resetting the space so the next guest walks into a clean home. If you want the full turnover routine I use, I broke it down in my guide on your turnover cleaning process.

How much do hosts charge?

There is no official average I will hand you, because a cleaning fee is a cost, not a market price. A studio in a low-cost city that you clean yourself has a very different real cost than a four-bedroom house cleaned by a paid crew. Instead of copying a number off another listing, build the fee from your own costs. Here is an illustrative buildup for a small one or two-bedroom unit using round example figures.

In that example, cleaner labor is $45, supplies and restock (paper goods, coffee, toiletries, dish soap) run about $12, laundry is roughly $18 whether you wash linens yourself or use a service, and a $10 buffer covers the slow wear on sheets, towels, and small consumables. That adds up to an illustrative $85. Those are example numbers to show the method, not a quote for your market. Your cleaner's rate is the biggest variable, so start there, get a real per-turnover price, then add the rest.

How to set your cleaning fee: a cost-based method

I set every cleaning fee the same way. It takes about ten minutes and it removes the guesswork.

StepWhat you doWhy it matters1. Price the turnoverGet a real per-clean quote from your cleaner or time yourself if you do it.Labor is usually the largest part of the fee.2. Add materialsLaundry plus consumables you replace every stay.These are real costs guests should not pay in your nightly rate.3. Add a small bufferA few dollars for linen and towel wear.Textiles get replaced from use, so recover a little each stay.4. Sanity-check the totalCompare the fee to one and two nights at your nightly rate.If the fee dwarfs a short stay, the total scares guests off.

That last step is the one most hosts skip. A $120 cleaning fee is fine on a listing that averages seven-night stays. The same fee on a listing that sells a lot of two-night weekends will show up as a painful line on the checkout screen, and your booking rate drops. If you are still shaping your nightly numbers, my walkthrough on your nightly pricing strategy pairs directly with this.

Separate cleaning fee, or baked into the nightly rate?

You have two honest ways to recover turnover cost. Charge a separate cleaning fee, or raise your nightly rate and drop the fee to zero. Both collect the same money over a typical stay. They just land differently on the guest.

Separate cleaning feeBaked into the nightly rateBest forLonger average stays (4+ nights)Short stays and one or two-night marketsGuest seesA lower nightly rate plus a fee lineA higher nightly rate, no fee lineRiskShort stays feel the fee heavilyYour per-night rate looks higher in filtersMy defaultUse for weekly-stay listingsUse for weekend-heavy city listings

My rule of thumb: the shorter your typical stay, the more of the turnover cost I move into the nightly rate. On a downtown condo that sells two-night weekends, a big separate fee is a conversion killer, so I keep the fee lean and let the nightly rate do the work.

One fee per stay changes your minimum-night strategy

Because the cleaning fee is charged once regardless of length, it is spread thin over a long stay and thick over a short one. A $90 fee on a one-night booking is a 90-dollar surcharge on a single night. The same $90 on a seven-night booking is under thirteen dollars a night. That math is exactly why so many hosts set a two or three-night minimum: it stops a heavy per-turnover cost from wrecking the value on ultra-short stays, and it cuts how many turnovers you pay for each month. Your minimum-night rule and your cleaning fee are two halves of the same decision. Set them together, not separately. If you want the operational side of this dialed in, I cover it in running the day-to-day of your rental.

How your cleaning fee changes the total price guests see

This is the part hosts miss. Your cleaning fee does not sit in a vacuum. It rolls into the total price a guest compares against every other listing, and it even nudges Airbnb's own service fee.

On the split-fee model, Airbnb service fees work like this: the host pays about 3 percent, and the guest pays a service fee of roughly 14.1 to 16.5 percent of the booking subtotal. The subtotal that percentage is calculated on includes the nightly price and any extra fees you charge, which means your cleaning fee is inside that base. A higher cleaning fee slightly raises the guest service fee stacked on top of it. (Some hosts instead use the host-only fee model, where most hosts pay around 15.5 percent and guests see no separate service fee.)

On top of that, guests now see a fee-inclusive number up front. Under Airbnb's total price display, US guests see a total price with fees before taxes across search. So your cleaning fee is not hidden until checkout anymore. It is baked into the headline price a shopper weighs against the listing next door. An inflated cleaning fee no longer sneaks by. It shows up in the number that wins or loses the click.

Want the co-hosting playbook? Shaun teaches this system inside 10XBNB. Get the free Airbnb co-hosting training

The guest-perception trap

Guests do not read a cleaning fee as a cost of doing business. They read it as a value signal. A fee that is clearly proportional to the space feels fair. A fee that looks padded feels like a trick, and it shows up in reviews and in your booking rate. I have watched two near-identical listings compete where the only real difference was a bloated cleaning fee on one of them. The lean one won more nights.

Two habits keep you on the right side of this:

Cleaning fees when you co-host for someone else

Here is the angle most guides skip. You do not need to own or even rent a property to earn from short-term rentals. You can co-host, running the listing and operations for an owner and taking a share of each booking. When you co-host, the cleaning fee is still built the same way, from the real turnover cost, but now you are the one designing the whole guest-facing price so it converts. Getting the cleaning fee right is part of what makes an owner want to keep you. The payout mechanics are set by agreement, and I explain how co-hosts get paid separately. If you are weighing this as a way into the business without buying real estate, start with starting your Airbnb the right way and build from there.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Airbnb cleaning fee charged per night or per stay?Per stay. Airbnb charges the cleaning fee once for the whole reservation, no matter how many nights the guest books, because you turn the place over once after they leave.

How much should I charge for an Airbnb cleaning fee?Build it from your real turnover cost rather than copying another listing. Add your cleaner's per-clean rate, laundry, per-stay supplies, and a small buffer for linen wear. For a small one or two-bedroom unit the worked example in this guide lands near $85, and it scales up for larger homes or paid cleaning crews.

Does a high cleaning fee hurt my bookings?It can, especially on short stays. Airbnb now shows guests a fee-inclusive total price before taxes in the US, so an inflated cleaning fee shows up in the headline number a shopper compares against other listings. Keep the fee proportional to the space.

Should I use a separate cleaning fee or raise my nightly rate?Both recover the same cost over a typical stay. Use a separate fee on longer-stay listings and lean toward baking the cost into the nightly rate on short-stay, weekend-heavy markets where a big fee scares off one and two-night guests.

Is the cleaning fee refundable if a guest cancels?If a guest cancels within a free cancellation window, Airbnb returns the cleaning fee as part of their refund. Outside that window, the refund of the fee follows your cancellation policy, so check Airbnb's current cleaning fee terms.

Does the cleaning fee affect Airbnb's service fee?On the split-fee model, yes, indirectly. The guest service fee of about 14.1 to 16.5 percent is calculated on the booking subtotal, and your cleaning fee is part of that subtotal, so a higher fee slightly raises the service fee stacked on top.

Ready to host without owning the property? Co-hosting lets you build Airbnb income by running listings for owners. Get the free Airbnb co-hosting training