Should you raise your Airbnb cleaning fee for the new chore rules?

718 words. Last checked Oct 26, 2026. Markdown

Maybe. If your cleaner now does work guests used to do, you can raise the cleaning fee or spread the cost into your nightly rate. Neither is required. Base the number on your cleaner's real time, and gross it up if Airbnb's 15.5% fee is taken from the cleaning fee.

What changed

Airbnb's house rules and requests policy applies to reservations booked on or after November 20, 2026. It says hosts generally may not ask guests to do tasks that take significant effort or time, or that a cleaner would typically do. Its examples are stripping the bed, taking trash offsite, and washing and putting away dishes.

If your checkout list asked for any of those, that work now falls to your cleaner.

What a cleaning fee can cover

Airbnb's ground rules for guests say: "Cleaning fees set by hosts are only meant to cover the cost of standard cleaning between reservations (laundry, vacuuming, etc.)."

The same page says:

Hosts may not charge guests a fee for skipping specific cleaning or checkout tasks. You can still rate and review on cleanliness.
Guests should not leave the place needing excessive or deep cleaning, such as moldy dishes, soiled carpets, or pet stains.
Guests are expected to pay reasonable requests for unexpected cleaning costs.

So the extra time for beds, dishes, and trash is normal turnover work. It belongs in your cleaning fee or nightly rate, not in a penalty.

Two ways to cover the cost

Raise the cleaning fee. Simple, and it scales with the number of stays.
Keep the cleaning fee and raise the nightly rate. The cleaning fee looks lower in search, and long stays carry more of the cost.

Hosts disagree on which works better. Some say guests won't pay a big cleaning fee and also do chores. Others expect cleaning fees to rise. Your own booking data is a better guide than the debate.

Account for the 15.5% fee

Airbnb's service fee page says most hosts on the single fee pay 15.5%, taken out of the payout. The single fee is required for most hosts, including those who use property management software.

Under the old split fee, Airbnb's page says the host fee was a percentage of the nightly price and any fees the host charges, such as cleaning. The page does not spell out the base for the single fee. Open a recent reservation's earnings breakdown and check whether the fee was taken from your cleaning fee. If it was, a $15 bump in cost needs more than $15 in fee to break even.

Worked example

Example numbers, not real data.

Your cleaner now strips beds, does dishes, and handles trash. That adds 30 minutes at $30 an hour.
Extra cost per turnover: 0.5 hours x $30 = $15.
If the 15.5% fee is taken from the cleaning fee: $15 / (1 - 0.155) = $15 / 0.845 = $17.76, rounded up to the cent.
Check: $17.76 x 0.845 = $15.01. You keep the full $15.
A $150 cleaning fee becomes $167.76.
If the fee is not taken from the cleaning fee, the bump is just $15, so $165.
To put it in the nightly rate instead, on a 3-night average stay: $17.76 / 3 = $5.92 more a night.

The Airbnb 15.5% fee calculator does the same gross-up for any price. Enter the amount you want to keep and set the old fee to 0%.

Steps

Time your cleaner on one real turnover with the new tasks.
Work out the extra cost per turnover.
Open a recent reservation's earnings breakdown. Check whether the 15.5% fee came out of the cleaning fee.
If it did, divide the extra cost by 0.845.
Decide: raise the cleaning fee, or spread it into the nightly rate.
Update your listing, and say plainly what the cleaning fee covers.
Don't add any fee for skipped chores.

If you haven't repriced your nightly rate for the 15.5% fee yet, see our guide to Airbnb's 15.5% host-only fee.

Sources

Last checked Oct 26, 2026. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Check your own platform terms and dashboard.