What makes this different from house cleaning
Plenty of experienced domestic cleaners take on their first rental and find it harder than expected, and it is almost always one of these three things rather than the cleaning itself.
- The window. A checkout at 11 and a check-in at 3 is a hard four hours, not a flexible afternoon. Overrunning is not a rescheduled visit, it is a guest standing outside.
- The linen. Somebody has to own two or three full sets per bed and keep them circulating. If that is you, it is real capital before your first invoice.
- The consequence. A domestic client notices a missed surface. A rental client gets a public review about it, which costs them money for months.
The upside is that the same three things are why this work pays better per hour than domestic cleaning and why good operators are hard for hosts to replace once they find one.
Setting the business up
- 1Register the business properly. Requirements vary by state and city, so check with your own state and local authority rather than following a checklist written for somewhere else.
- 2Get insurance. General liability at minimum. You are working unsupervised in a property that is not yours, and most serious hosts will ask.
- 3Open a separate business account before the first payment, not after the first tax season.
- 4Decide whether you are working alone or hiring, because it changes your window. One person cannot do a four-bedroom in a tight turnaround.
- 5Work out your true cost per turnover, including travel, laundry time, products and the hours you are not cleaning.
None of that is specific to rentals. The rest of this page is.
Pricing a turnover
Price per turnover rather than per hour for standard work. It makes your client's cost predictable, which is what gets you the recurring booking, and it rewards you for getting faster rather than penalising it.
For a sense of the ceiling, the published US averages for what hosts charge guests are a reasonable anchor, because a host is rarely paying a cleaner more than they collect for cleaning.
| Property size | US average cleaning fee charged to guests |
|---|---|
| Studio | $83 |
| 1 bedroom | $102 |
| 2 bedrooms | $156 |
| 3 bedrooms | $210 |
| 4 bedrooms | $285 |
| 5 bedrooms | $371 |
| 6 bedrooms or more | $458 |
Source: AirROI, Airbnb cleaning fee study, published February 3 2026, 2.4 million active Airbnb listings across 20 countries. US entire-home listings. These are fees hosts charge guests, not what cleaners are paid.
Market matters as much as size. Across twenty US towns whose published data we read on August 16 2026, median fees ran from $115 to $450. In the same data, cleaning took between 8.8% and 19.3% of a listing's gross revenue. If you work a market at the top of that range, your client is highly aware of what cleaning costs them; at the bottom, less so.
The contract
A short written agreement prevents nearly every argument this business produces. It does not need to be elaborate; it needs to be specific about these things.
| Term | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Scope of a standard turnover, room by room | Without it, scope grows one task at a time and the rate never moves |
| What is explicitly excluded | Ovens, windows, upholstery, seasonal deep cleans |
| Rate for the turnover, and rates for everything else | So nobody is negotiating at 11am with a check-in at 3 |
| Who supplies products and consumables | The most common billing dispute in this trade |
| Linen ownership, sets held, and who replaces worn items | The second most common |
| Access arrangements and key handling | And what happens when a code stops working |
| The turnaround window and what happens if a guest leaves late | A late checkout is the client's problem to solve, not free overtime |
| Cancellation notice on both sides | A booking cancelled the night before is time you cannot resell |
| Reporting: what gets reported, to whom, how fast | This is the thing that makes you hard to replace |
| Payment terms and a schedule | Weekly or per-turnover, agreed in advance |
Have a lawyer in your own state look at the template you settle on. Contract requirements and worker classification rules are state-level questions and this page is not legal advice.
Getting the first clients
Hosts are not hard to find; hosts who will switch cleaners are. The ones who switch are almost always the ones whose current cleaner has let them down in a specific, recent way, which shapes where to look.
- Local property managers, who control several properties at once and feel a bad turnover immediately.
- Owners of larger properties, where the job is worth more and reliable cleaners are scarcer.
- Local host groups, where the recommendation you want is a host answering someone else's question about you.
- Cleaning platforms and marketplaces, which will fill a calendar and take a margin. Useful early, a poor place to stay.
- Networks that sign one company per area, including this one, which is the opposite trade: fewer leads, no competition on them.
What wins the second conversation is never price. It is a photograph set from a finished property, a written scope, proof of insurance, and a straight answer about what happens when a guest checks out late.
The operational habits that keep clients
- 1Photograph every room in its finished state, from the same position, every visit. It is proof, it is a standard, and it is what you show the next client.
- 2Report problems from inside the property, not later. A lightbulb reported from the kitchen gets fixed; the same lightbulb remembered on Thursday does not.
- 3Work in a fixed order every time, laundry first, so the constraint is running while you clean around it. Our turnover checklist sets out one.
- 4Hold your own spare linen set for tight windows. It is the single most useful thing you can own.
- 5Never leave the property until it matches the listing photographs, because that is the standard the guest is comparing it to.
Working with this site
We run the calculator and the guides on this site, and we are signing up one cleaning company per metro area across the US. Host requests from a metro go to the company we work with there, and where nobody is signed we hold the request rather than pass it around. If you run a turnover cleaning business and your metro is open, get in touch.
Common questions
- How do you start an Airbnb cleaning business?
- Register the business and get general liability insurance, work out your true cost per turnover including travel and laundry time, decide whether you can cover the tight windows alone or need a second person, and put a written scope and rate in front of every client before the first clean. The cleaning skills are the easy part; the schedule and the linen inventory are what make it a different business.
- Should I charge per hour or per turnover?
- Per turnover for standard work. It makes your client's cost predictable, which is what earns the recurring booking, and it means getting faster increases your effective rate instead of cutting your pay. Keep an hourly rate for the jobs that are not standard: deep cleans, first cleans, and unusually bad stays.
- What should be in an Airbnb cleaning contract?
- Scope room by room, what is explicitly excluded, the turnover rate plus rates for everything else, who supplies products and consumables, linen ownership and replacement, access and keys, the turnaround window and what happens on a late checkout, cancellation notice on both sides, reporting expectations, and payment terms. Have a lawyer in your own state review whatever template you use.
- How much do Airbnb cleaners charge?
- There is no published figure for what cleaners are paid, because those are private arrangements with no public record. What is published is what hosts charge guests: a US average of $188, running from $83 for a studio to $458 for six bedrooms or more, and market medians between $115 and $450 across twenty US towns. Those are the ceilings your rate sits under, not the rate itself.
- Do I need insurance to clean short-term rentals?
- General liability is the minimum most serious clients will ask for, and you are working unsupervised in property that is not yours. Requirements beyond that are state and city specific, so check with your own state rather than following advice written for somewhere else.
Where these numbers come from
- AirROI cleaning fee study — Published February 3 2026. 2.4 million active Airbnb listings across 20 countries. Source of the per-bedroom averages on this page.
- AirROI market data — Per-town pages stamped Updated: August 8 2026, read by us on August 16 2026. Source of the $115 to $450 median range and the 8.8% to 19.3% revenue-share range.