Cleaning fee calculator

What goes into a turnover

A turnover is everything between one guest leaving and the next arriving. Most hosts count the cleaner and forget the rest: the toilet roll, dishwasher tablets and coffee pods, the linen service or the electricity and detergent to wash it yourself, and the hour you spend checking the place, restocking and fixing the thing that broke.

Your own time counts even if no money changes hands. If you do the cleaning yourself, put your hours in and choose an hourly figure. Otherwise your cleaning fee pays for supplies and you work for free, which feels fine until the season gets busy.

The sum

Cost per turnover is the cleaner, plus supplies, plus laundry, plus your hours times your hourly figure.

If the platform takes its fee from the cleaning fee too, charging exactly your cost leaves you short. So the calculator divides by what is left after the fee. At 15.5%, a turnover that costs 50 needs a cleaning fee of about 59.17 to leave 50 after the fee.

The margin is added on top of cost before that division. Check whether a fee is taken from your cleaning fee in your earnings report: help article 3632 explains that the CSV report from Earnings lists cleaning fees and host service fees per booking. If none is taken, set the platform fee box to 0.

A worked example

Made-up numbers again. Say your cleaner charges 35, supplies cost 6 and laundry 9, and you spend half an hour checking the place at a figure of 20 an hour. One turnover costs 60. At a 15.5% fee, the cleaning fee that covers cost is about 71.01, and with a 10% margin about 78.11. That margin leaves you 6 per turnover after the fee and the cost, or 48 a month at 8 turnovers, towards breakages and rising prices.

Why a high cleaning fee can hurt

Airbnb's 2022 hosting article says the algorithm prioritizes the total price of a listing before taxes (resource 460), and help article 39 says price is compared with other listings in the area for the given dates. Airbnb also shows guests the total price in search. Your cleaning fee is inside that total.

A cleaning fee hits short stays hardest. A fee of 60 adds 60 to a one-night stay, but under 9 a night to a seven-night stay. So a fee that covers your costs can still make your one- and two-night stays look expensive next to a place that folds cleaning into its nightly rate.

Ways to handle it

Raise your minimum stay, so each turnover is spread over more nights. Fold part of the cleaning cost into your nightly rate, so the cleaning fee looks smaller. Or keep the fee and accept fewer very short stays. There is no right answer for every listing; it depends on how busy you are and how your total compares with nearby places for the same dates.

Airbnb's calendar insights, added in May 2026, can suggest lower minimum nights among other changes (resource 768). Before you follow that suggestion, run this calculator: more short stays means more turnovers, and each one has a cost.

Don't save money on the clean itself

Cleanliness is one of the six rating categories, and high ratings across them are part of what Airbnb looks for in Guest Favourites (resource 642). Cutting the clean to make the fee look smaller is a false saving if it costs you a review. Set the fee from what a good clean actually costs, then decide how to show it.

The small print

The calculator ignores tax and rounding. It is arithmetic, not tax or financial advice, and nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.