The cleaning fee is the most argued-about number in short-term rental hosting. Set it too low and you’re subsidising every booking. Set it too high and guests filter you out before they’ve read your listing.
Here’s how to get it right.
What the cleaning fee is actually for
It covers the cost of turning the property over between guests: the clean itself, linen laundering, consumables restocked, and rubbish removed. It is not a profit centre, and guests can tell when you’re treating it as one.
What hosts actually charge
Typical cleaning fees by property size:
| Property | Typical fee |
|---|---|
| Studio / 1 bedroom | $50 – $90 |
| 2 bedroom | $70 – $130 |
| 3 bedroom | $110 – $180 |
| 4+ bedroom / large holiday home | $150 – $300 |
These broadly track what a professional changeover actually costs, which is the point, the fee should reflect real cost, not what you think you can get away with.
The rule that matters most
Your cleaning fee should be roughly one night’s rate or less.
Guests do this arithmetic instinctively. A $150 cleaning fee on a $180/night listing reads as a 83% surcharge on a one-night stay, and it kills short bookings entirely. The same fee on a $400/night property is barely noticed.
If your cleaning fee exceeds your nightly rate, you have one of two problems: your nightly rate is too low, or your property is too expensive to turn over profitably at your current booking mix.
How the fee affects your search ranking
This is the part hosts underestimate. Airbnb’s search results show total price by default in most markets, and its ranking algorithm factors in conversion. A high cleaning fee:
- Raises your displayed total, pushing you down price-filtered results
- Disproportionately damages short stays, which are often your gap-fillers
- Increases the chance a guest clicks away before reading your listing
A $120 cleaning fee on a two-night booking adds $60/night to the effective rate. On a seven-night booking it adds $17. The fee punishes exactly the bookings that fill your calendar gaps.
Three strategies
1. Charge the real cost
Simplest and most transparent. Set the fee at what the changeover actually costs you. Works well for properties with mostly longer stays.
2. Build it into the nightly rate
Set the cleaning fee to zero and raise the nightly rate to cover it. Your listing shows a lower total for short stays and a competitive per-night figure.
The trade-off: on long stays you over-recover, and on very short stays you under-recover. Works best when your average stay is fairly consistent.
3. Split it
Charge a partial cleaning fee and absorb the rest in the nightly rate. Most hosts land here, roughly 50–70% of the real cost as the fee, the balance in the rate.
Which to choose
| Your situation | Best approach |
|---|---|
| Mostly 4+ night stays | Charge the real cost |
| Lots of 1–2 night bookings | Build into nightly rate |
| Mixed, competitive market | Split it |
| Premium property, high rate | Charge the real cost |
Set a minimum stay instead
If your cleaning cost genuinely makes one-night bookings unprofitable, the right tool is a minimum stay, not a punitive cleaning fee. A two-night minimum is cleaner, more honest, and doesn’t damage your search position the way an inflated fee does.
What not to do
Don’t ask guests to clean and charge a cleaning fee. This is the single most-mentioned complaint in negative reviews about fees. Strip the bed, take out the rubbish, load the dishwasher, that’s the reasonable ceiling. A checkout list that reads like a chore roster alongside a $120 fee reads as double-dipping, and guests say so publicly.
Don’t hide it. Guests see the total at checkout regardless. A fee that appears late feels like a trick.
Don’t cut the fee by cutting the clean. The cleaning fee is one of the few costs where under-spending shows up directly in reviews, and review damage compounds.
The bit hosts forget
Whatever you charge, the guest is paying for an outcome: a property that is genuinely ready. The fee is only defensible if the result is.
That’s easier to guarantee when you can actually see the finished property before check-in, which is why our changeovers produce timestamped photos of every room before the guest arrives.