Commissions & fees
Does Airbnb take commission on your cleaning fee?
It feels wrong because it is: the cleaning fee is money you collect to pay a cleaner, yet Airbnb still takes its cut of it. Here's exactly how the 2026 host fee works on cleaning, a worked £ example, and how independent hosts keep every penny of it.
Updated 7 July 2026 · 6 min read
Short answer
Yes. Airbnb's host service fee, 15.5% in 2026, is charged on your entire booking total, and that total includes the cleaning fee you pass to guests. So Airbnb effectively takes a cut of the money meant to pay your cleaner. Booking.com works the same way, commissioning the full amount including cleaning.
Key takeaways
- ✓Airbnb's 15.5% host fee applies to the whole booking subtotal, nightly rate plus cleaning fee, extra-guest fees and pet fees.
- ✓On a £30 cleaning fee, that's about £4.65 gone to Airbnb before your cleaner sees a penny.
- ✓For UK hosts who aren't VAT registered, VAT pushes the effective fee to roughly 18.6%, so the skim is a little worse.
- ✓Baking cleaning into your nightly rate changes nothing: the fee is charged on the total either way.
- ✓On your own direct-booking site the commission is 0%, so the full cleaning fee stays whole and goes to your cleaner.
There's a particular kind of annoyance every host feels the first time they read their payout breakdown closely. The cleaning fee isn't profit. It's money you collect on a guest's behalf to hand straight to a cleaner (or to your own back and knees on changeover day). And yet, right there in the maths, Airbnb has taken a slice of it too. It feels like being charged commission on a bill you're only passing along. That's because, in effect, you are. Here's exactly how it works in 2026, what it costs in pounds, and the one setup where the cleaning fee stays whole.
Does Airbnb charge its service fee on the cleaning fee?
Yes, it does. Airbnb's host service fee is calculated on the booking subtotal, and the subtotal is the nightly rate plus every host-set charge on the reservation: the cleaning fee, extra-guest fees, pet fees, the lot. In 2026 that host fee is 15.5% under the single host-only model that Airbnb rolled out to all hosts worldwide (the old 3% split fee is gone). So when a guest pays a £30 cleaning fee, Airbnb treats that £30 as part of the total it commissions, and takes roughly £4.65 of it. Your cleaner still needs the full £30.
The bit that stings
The cleaning fee isn't your income, it's a pass-through cost. But Airbnb doesn't see it that way. To the platform it's just more booking value to take 15.5% of. You either absorb that skim or pad the cleaning fee to cover it, which makes your listing look more expensive to guests.
See a version where the cleaning fee stays whole
Build a free preview of your own direct-booking site, on your own domain, in under a minute. 0% commission means the cleaning fee your guest pays is the cleaning fee your cleaner gets. No signup needed.
Build my free preview →How much does it actually cost me? A worked £ example
Let's take a simple, realistic booking: a £100 room charge plus a £30 cleaning fee, giving a £130 subtotal. Airbnb applies its 15.5% host fee to the whole £130, not just the £100. Here's how the money splits, and how much of the fee is coming specifically out of the cleaning portion.
| Line | Amount | 15.5% fee | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room charge | £100.00 | £15.50 | £84.50 |
| Cleaning fee | £30.00 | £4.65 | £25.35 |
| Total booking | £130.00 | £20.15 | £109.85 |
Airbnb 15.5% host fee on a £100 room + £30 cleaning booking (2026 host-only model). VAT not shown; for non-VAT-registered UK hosts the effective rate is nearer 18.6%.
Look at the cleaning row. You collected £30 to pay your cleaner, but Airbnb kept £4.65 of it, so only £25.35 actually reaches you against that cost. If your cleaner charges the full £30, you're now £4.65 short on every single changeover, and that's before VAT. Fifty stays a year and you've quietly handed over £230-odd purely on the cleaning line, money that was never yours to keep or to give away.
Does Booking.com do the same thing on cleaning fees?
Yes, in effect. Booking.com charges commission (commonly 15% to 25% depending on your market and any visibility boosters) on the total reservation value, and where a cleaning fee is included in that total, it's commissioned along with everything else. So switching from Airbnb to Booking.com doesn't rescue your cleaning fee, it just changes the percentage taken off the same total. The uncomfortable truth is that any commission-based OTA is going to take its cut of the whole amount, cleaning fee and all. It's baked into the model, not a quirk of one platform.
💷 The commission you're giving away
£100 booking × 15.5% (Airbnb) × 50 a year = about £775 a year handed to the platform.
Direct bookings cost 0% commission, just ~1.5% card processing. You'd keep about £700 of that back.
See your free site →If I fold cleaning into the nightly rate, do I dodge the fee?
No, and this is the trap a lot of hosts fall into. Because the fee is charged on the total regardless of how you label the lines, moving £30 of cleaning into a higher nightly rate leaves the subtotal (and therefore the 15.5% fee) exactly the same. A £130 booking is a £130 booking to Airbnb whether it's '£100 + £30 cleaning' or '£130 room, no cleaning fee'. The commission on that £130 is £20.15 either way.
The only thing that changes
Hiding cleaning inside the nightly rate can make your listing look pricier per night in search, and it removes a line guests expect to see. It's a presentation choice, not a fee saver. The maths on what Airbnb takes doesn't move at all.
There's a similar half-myth about lowering the cleaning fee and raising the nightly rate, or vice versa, to game the fee. It doesn't work for the same reason: the platform commissions the sum, not the split. The only way to stop paying commission on the cleaning fee is to stop paying commission at all.
How do I keep the whole cleaning fee?
Take the booking somewhere the commission is zero: your own direct-booking website. When a guest books direct and pays you directly, there's no platform in the middle taking 15.5% of anything. The £30 cleaning fee arrives as £30. The room charge arrives whole. The only costs are the ordinary payment-processing fees (a couple of percent, the same card fees any business pays), which apply to genuine card processing, not a commission on your labour and your cleaner's.
You don't have to abandon the OTAs to do this, and most hosts shouldn't. Airbnb and Booking.com are brilliant at putting your place in front of strangers for that first booking. The move is to give returning and referred guests a direct option so the repeat business, the cheapest and easiest bookings you'll ever get, comes through a channel that doesn't tax your cleaning fee. For the compliant way to do that, see how to reduce OTA commission, and to sanity-check the numbers across platforms, the OTA commission calculator is a quick reality check.
The cleaning fee is the clearest example of the problem: it's not even your money, it's your cleaner's, and the platform still takes a slice. On your own site, it doesn't.
, The direct-booking case, in one line
Stop paying commission on your cleaner's wages
FindYourStay builds and hosts your direct-booking website on your own domain, with payments straight to your account and 0% commission on every booking, cleaning fee included. Plans from about £79-299 a year, plus a done-for-you website add-on.
See how it works →Frequently asked questions
Does Airbnb take a percentage of the cleaning fee?+
Yes. Airbnb's 15.5% host service fee (2026) is charged on the full booking subtotal, which includes the cleaning fee, extra-guest fees and pet fees. On a £30 cleaning fee that's about £4.65 taken by Airbnb before your cleaner is paid.
How much is the Airbnb service fee on a cleaning fee in 2026?+
It's the same 15.5% host fee applied to everything else, so 15.5% of your cleaning fee. A £30 fee loses about £4.65; a £60 fee loses about £9.30. For non-VAT-registered UK hosts the effective rate is nearer 18.6% once VAT is added.
Can I avoid Airbnb's fee on the cleaning fee by including it in the nightly price?+
No. Airbnb charges its fee on the total booking value regardless of how you split the lines, so moving cleaning into the nightly rate leaves the fee identical. The only way to avoid commission on the cleaning fee is to take the booking commission-free on your own site.
Does Booking.com charge commission on cleaning fees too?+
Yes, in effect. Booking.com's commission (typically 15% to 25%) is charged on the total reservation value, so any cleaning fee included in that total is commissioned along with the rest. Switching OTA changes the percentage, not the principle.
How do I keep the full cleaning fee my guests pay?+
Take the booking on your own direct-booking website, where the commission is 0%. The guest pays you directly, so the cleaning fee arrives whole. You still keep your OTA listings for reach; you just route repeat and referred guests to the direct channel.
Stop paying commission on every booking
See exactly what your own direct-booking website would look like — free, no signup. Built and hosted for you, on your own domain.