Airbnb Host Fee Increase: The Sept. 15 Repricing Checklist

On September 15, 2026, Airbnb's split service fee disappears for every host outside the European Economic Area, replaced by a single host-only service fee of 15.5% for most hosts. The company fixed that date in its July 7, 2026 announcement. Hosts who price through property management software crossed over long ago, in October 2025 for the US and Canada and in April 2026 for the rest of the world, according to RentalScaleUp's migration timeline. What is left is the manual wave: hosts who set rates inside the Airbnb app or on the website, with no PMS and no channel manager in between.

Nobody gets to opt out, and the cost of doing nothing is easy to quantify. Today most hosts pay a 3% service fee and keep about 97% of the booking subtotal. After the switch they keep 84.5%. That 12.5 point drop equals 12.9% of your current payout (12.5 divided by 97), and it comes out of every reservation until you change your prices.

As of August 15, 2026, that leaves exactly 30 days. The repricing itself is roughly 20 minutes of arithmetic, and done properly it barely registers with your guests, because Airbnb is retiring the separate guest service fee in the same move. What follows is the mechanics, the two formulas worth using, a worked example in dollars, and a week by week plan.

Key facts

• Airbnb is replacing its split fee (about 3% from hosts plus 14.1% to 16.5% from guests) with a single host-only service fee of 15.5% for most hosts, announced July 7, 2026.
• The cutover is September 15, 2026 for hosts outside the European Economic Area and October 13, 2026 for hosts inside the EEA and Switzerland.
• The 15.5% applies to the entire booking subtotal: nightly price plus cleaning, pet, and extra guest fees, excluding taxes and the guest service fee.
• Raising listed prices 14.79%, not 15.5%, holds your payout steady: multiply by 0.97, then divide by 0.845.
• Software-connected hosts migrated earlier, on October 27, 2025 in the US and Canada and April 13, 2026 worldwide.

What actually changes on September 15, 2026

Airbnb has been dismantling the split fee in stages for close to a year. RentalScaleUp's timeline lists them in order: October 27, 2025 for US and Canadian hosts on property management software; April 13, 2026 for PMS-connected hosts everywhere else; May 25, 2026 for Peru and South Korea; June 22, 2026 for Germany and the UK. The July 7 announcement filled in the last two entries, September 15, 2026 for everyone outside the European Economic Area and October 13, 2026 for the EEA and Switzerland. Our coverage of the announcement walks through the Q2 letter that locked those dates in.

In place of two fees sits one commission, taken entirely from the host side. Airbnb's help center puts most single-fee hosts at 15.5%, with the remainder typically between 14% and 16%, and Brazil and Mexico at 16%. The guest-side charge, historically 14.1% to 16.5% of the subtotal, goes away. Checkout gets simpler for the traveler while the full fee load lands on your payout. Our Airbnb host fees explainer walks through the structure being retired.

Airbnb also built a price adjustment tool that pushes revised prices across all your listings at once. It saves real time, though it should not be trusted unchecked; the catch appears in the checklist below. For everything Airbnb costs a host beyond the service fee itself, see our breakdown of the real cost of Airbnb fees.

Why 15.5% is the wrong number to raise prices by

The fee lands on the whole subtotal, cleaning fee included

The old rate and the new rate share a base: the booking subtotal, meaning the nightly price plus every fee you charge the guest, cleaning, pet, and extra guest included, with taxes excluded. A $150 cleaning fee that used to cost you $4.50 in host fees will cost $23.25 per booking once the switch lands. The percentage is the same 15.5% in both cases. The distortion shows up when the cleaning fee is large relative to the nightly rate, where a calculation run on the nightly rate alone quietly understates the dollars at stake.

Two formulas that work, and the one everybody repeats

Formula 1 holds your payout flat. Multiply every guest-facing price by 0.97, your old keep rate, then divide by 0.845, your new one. That is 0.97 / 0.845 = 1.1479: a 14.79% increase on the nightly rate and on every fee attached to it.

Formula 2 works backward from a net target. If you price to bank a specific amount after Airbnb's cut, divide that amount by 0.845. That is 1 / 0.845 = 1.1834, an 18.34% markup, and it is also the figure to enter in any channel-markup field, replacing the roughly 3% markup split-fee hosts used before.

The advice circulating in host groups, raise everything 15.5%, hits neither target. Run it against a $750 subtotal: the listing goes to $866.25 and nets $731.98 after the fee, a few dollars above the $727.50 parity figure and about $18 short of netting the old $750. Choose the goal first, then the formula that reaches it.

Worked example: $200 a night with a $150 cleaning fee

A 3 night stay at $200 a night with a $150 cleaning fee. The subtotal is $600 + $150 = $750.

• Before September 15: 3% of $750 is $22.50, leaving a payout of $727.50. Your guest separately paid Airbnb roughly 14.1%, about $105.75, for a pre-tax total near $855.75.
• After September 15 with prices untouched: 15.5% of $750 is $116.25, and the payout drops to $633.75. That is $93.75 gone per booking, 12.9% of what you used to keep.
• After a 14.79% raise: $229.59 a night, a $172.19 cleaning fee, an $860.95 subtotal. The fee works out to $133.45 and the payout to $727.50, exactly what you earned before.
• The guest's pre-tax total moves from about $855.75 to $860.95, a 0.6% increase. Your sticker rose almost 15%; the guest's real cost rose about five dollars.

Partial repricing is the trap. Raise the nightly rate and leave the cleaning fee alone, and the nightly rate has to absorb the entire adjustment: about $237 in this example, an 18.5% jump, to reach the same $860.95 subtotal. Spreading 14.79% across every price keeps each individual increase small.

Your 30 day repricing checklist

Week of August 15: pull your numbers

Export the last 12 months of payouts and write down every price a guest pays you: nightly rates by season, cleaning fee, pet fee, extra guest fee. Work out your average booking subtotal, then note what share of it comes from fees rather than nights. Listings where the cleaning fee accounts for a third or more of the subtotal carry the most exposure per booking.

Week of August 22: reprice with the right formula

Apply 14.79% to every guest-facing price for payout parity, or the 18.34% markup if you price from a net target. Do the arithmetic first, then round to natural price points. Revisit your percentage discounts afterward, weekly, monthly, early bird, since each now applies to a higher base.

Week of August 29: run Airbnb's tool, then check its work

Airbnb's price adjustment tool updates every listing in one pass, and RentalScaleUp notes that it targets your old payout rather than your old listed price. That is parity, Formula 1. Hosts pricing to Formula 2 will find it undershoots. Either way, verify it: price one test booking, work the subtotal and the 15.5% fee by hand, and confirm the payout matches your target while there is still time to correct it.

Week of September 5: reset your direct booking site prices

Your Airbnb sticker price has just risen about 15%. Set your direct rates against the new numbers rather than the old ones, which is where the second half of this transition begins.

Where this leaves your direct booking prices

Your direct price belongs inside a window: above your new Airbnb net, at or below your new Airbnb sticker. In the worked example that window runs from $727.50, what Airbnb pays you, up to $860.95, what the guest sees on Airbnb. Price anywhere inside it, account for your payment processing costs, and a direct booking beats the same stay on Airbnb for both sides. Our guide to pricing a direct site against the OTAs covers the mechanics, including the price-parity myths that surround them.

The visible effect matters as well. Once hosts reprice, nightly stickers across Airbnb climb about 15% while direct-site rates stay wherever their owners set them, so a guest comparing your direct site against your own Airbnb listing sees a wider headline gap than they saw in August. If you have no direct channel yet, Haven builds branded direct booking sites for short term rental hosts and charges no booking commission, which makes the arithmetic above the entire fee story.

What to watch after the deadline

October 13, 2026 closes the EEA and Switzerland wave, the final entry on Airbnb's migration calendar. After that, the page worth monitoring is Airbnb's service fee help page, which governs the 14% to 16% range and remains the controlling reference for what you actually pay. Your own market deserves attention too. Hosts who let the deadline pass absorb the 12.9% payout cut instead of raising prices, so search results may look uneven for a few weeks while your repriced listing sits next to listings that never moved. Hold your math. Their payouts fell, not yours.

FAQ

How much should I raise my Airbnb prices to cover the 15.5% host fee?

Raise every price the guest pays you, nightly rate, cleaning fee, pet fee, extra guest fees, by 14.79% to keep the payout you had under the 3% split fee: multiply by 0.97, then divide by 0.845. If you would rather net a chosen base price after the fee, divide that base by 0.845 instead, an 18.34% markup.

Do I have to reprice before September 15, 2026?

Only if you want to avoid a 12.9% payout cut. From September 15, 2026, Airbnb takes 15.5% of your booking subtotal rather than 3%, and guests stop paying a separate service fee. Repricing ahead of the switch holds your payout flat while moving your guest's total by less than 1%.

Does the 15.5% host fee apply to my cleaning fee?

Yes. Airbnb calculates the fee on the booking subtotal, which is the nightly price plus cleaning, pet, and extra guest fees, with taxes excluded. A $150 cleaning fee costs you $23.25 in fees per booking under the new structure, up from $4.50.

Will my guests end up paying more after the change?

Barely, assuming you reprice correctly. Guests stop paying Airbnb's separate service fee of roughly 14.1% to 16.5%, so your 14.79% increase mostly replaces a charge they were already covering. In the worked example above, the guest's pre-tax total goes from about $855.75 to $860.95, a difference of 0.6%.