The two numbers people mix up
The cleaning fee on your listing is what a guest pays you. What you pay your cleaner is a separate transaction that Airbnb never sees. Almost every figure you will find online is the first one, because it can be read off millions of public listings, and almost nobody says so.
We can be specific about the first. AirROI's study of 2.4 million active listings puts the US average cleaning fee at $188, with per-bedroom averages for US entire-home listings running from $83 for a studio to $458 for six bedrooms or more. Those are on the average cleaning fee page in full.
Why the number you pay is not published
- It is a private arrangement between two parties, so there is no public record to scrape the way listing fees can be scraped.
- The arrangements are not the same shape. Some are flat per turnover, some hourly, some a monthly retainer for a block of properties.
- What is included differs wildly. Laundry on site or off, supplies provided or billed, linen owned by the host or by the cleaner.
- Rates track local labour markets, which vary more within a state than most national figures admit.
Start from the ceiling, not from a rate
The guest-facing average for your property size is a genuinely useful anchor, because it is the amount the market has shown guests will pay for cleaning a property of that size. Treat it as the top of your range and work down from it.
| 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. US entire-home listings. These are fees charged to guests, not amounts paid to cleaners.
If a quote comes in above the published average for your size, that is not automatically wrong, but it is a question worth asking out loud. Usually the answer is something concrete: off-site laundry, a three-storey property, a same-day window that needs two people.
Flat per turnover or hourly?
Most short-term rental cleaning is priced per turnover rather than per hour, and there is a good reason for it on both sides.
| Flat per turnover | Hourly | |
|---|---|---|
| Your cost | Known in advance, easy to build into the fee | Varies per stay, hard to price a listing against |
| Cleaner's incentive | Rewards working efficiently | Rewards taking longer |
| Messy stays | The cleaner absorbs them | You absorb them |
| Best used for | Standard turnovers on a known property | Deep cleans, first cleans, and jobs of unknown size |
The common arrangement is both: a flat rate for the standard turnover, and an hourly rate for anything outside it. That gives the cleaner protection against a genuinely bad stay without handing you an unpredictable bill on every ordinary one.
What actually moves the price
When you compare quotes, these are the variables to compare on. A quote that is cheaper on one of them is not cheaper overall.
- Bedrooms and bathrooms, which set the size of the job. Bathrooms are the slowest rooms in any property.
- Whether linens are washed on site or have to travel, which adds a trip to every turnover.
- Whether the cleaner supplies consumables and cleaning products or bills them back.
- Whether they hold a spare set of linens, which is what makes a tight same-day window possible.
- The turnaround window itself. A four-hour gap between checkout and check-in is a different job from an empty day.
- Stairs and access. Three floors, or a high-rise with shared elevators, adds time to a job of any size.
- Pets, which add hair and odour work across every room.
What to agree before the first clean
- 1The scope of a standard turnover, in writing, room by room. Our turnover checklist is a reasonable starting point.
- 2What is explicitly not in it: oven interiors, windows, upholstery, seasonal deep cleans.
- 3The rate for those, separately, so neither side is negotiating at short notice.
- 4Who buys consumables, and to what par level.
- 5How linens work: who owns them, how many sets, who replaces them when they wear out.
- 6How problems get reported and how fast, which is the difference between a fixed lightbulb and a bad review.
- 7What happens on a same-day turnover, and whether the rate changes.
Paying too little costs more than it saves
The failure mode is not that a cheap clean looks slightly worse. It is turnover: a cleaner priced below what the work takes leaves, and you are training someone new on your property in the middle of a booked season. The cost of that lands on your reviews, and reviews are slower to repair than a rate is to raise.
It is also worth being honest about where the fee sits in your economics. Across twenty US towns whose published data we read on August 16 2026, cleaning ran between 8.8% and 19.3% of gross listing revenue. In the markets at the top of that range it is one of the largest line items in the business, and in the markets at the bottom there is more room than most hosts assume.
Getting real quotes
Everything above is a way to judge a quote. It is not a substitute for one, and no calculator is. Ask two or three cleaners who actually work in your area to price a standard turnover on your specific property, with the scope written down, and compare them on the variables above rather than on the headline number.
If you would rather we did the finding, tell us where the property is and how often it turns over, and we will pass it to the cleaning company we work with in your area.
Common questions
- How much should I pay my Airbnb cleaner?
- There is no published figure for what hosts pay cleaners, because it is a private arrangement with no public record. What is published is what hosts charge guests: a US average of $188, and per-bedroom averages from $83 for a studio to $458 for six bedrooms or more. Use the figure for your size as a ceiling, then compare real local quotes on scope rather than on price alone.
- Should I pay an Airbnb cleaner hourly or per turnover?
- Most short-term rental cleaning is priced flat per turnover, which makes your cost predictable and rewards efficiency rather than time spent. The common arrangement is a flat rate for the standard turnover plus an hourly rate for anything outside it, such as a deep clean or an unusually bad stay.
- Is the cleaning fee I charge guests the same as what I pay my cleaner?
- Not necessarily, and they are separate decisions. The fee is what the market will bear for a property of your size; what you pay is what the work costs. Hosts commonly set the fee at or near what they pay so the line breaks even, but the two numbers are not required to match and no rule says they must.
- Why do cleaning quotes vary so much for the same size property?
- Usually because the scope is different. Off-site laundry adds a trip to every turnover, supplies may or may not be included, a spare linen set changes what is possible in a tight window, and stairs or shared elevators add time to a job of any size. Compare quotes on those variables before comparing them on price.
- What share of my rental income should cleaning take?
- Across twenty US towns whose published market data we read on August 16 2026, cleaning fees ran between 8.8% and 19.3% of gross listing revenue depending on the market. That is a range for what hosts charge guests, not a target for what you should spend, but it is a useful sense of scale.
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 $188 US average and every per-bedroom figure on this page. Measures fees charged to guests.
- AirROI market data — Per-town pages stamped Updated: August 8 2026, read by us on August 16 2026. Source of the 8.8% to 19.3% revenue-share range.