Hosts Threatened Higher Airbnb Cleaning Fees Over Chores. The Typical Fee Has Held.

Some Airbnb hosts, furious over new limits on checkout chores, threatened to recover the cost through higher cleaning fees. With the rule two weeks off, the typical fee sits where it did before the news.

The median cleaning fee among 909 randomly sampled fee-charging U.S. entire homes was $172 at the end of September and $172 on the evening of Nov. 4, a window that spans Airbnb's Oct. 20 announcement, according to AirROI, a short-term-rental data firm.

About 77% of those homes kept essentially the same fee as at the start, about 16% raised it and 7% cut it, and the net change averaged under $2. Against end-of-October fees, 91% held.

The check covers only the cleaning fee, before the rule starts; nightly rates are separate, and a petition against the rule warns of "higher accommodation prices."

For guests, the stake is that line on the bill. Across U.S. entire homes that charge one, the median three-bedroom fee is $198, about 70% of a night at asking rates.

Fortune's headline in late October said "Furious hosts are threatening to boycott and raise cleaning fees," and Fortune reported that some are planning a booking blackout on the day the policy takes effect.

Airbnb's policy says hosts are generally not allowed to ask for tasks "including stripping the bed, taking trash offsite, or washing and putting away dishes." They can still ask guests to put used dishes in the sink and gather used towels, and they may not charge guests for skipping a checkout task.

It applies to "all reservations booked on or after November 20, 2026."

Airbnb's initial listing reviews begin that day and run through March 2027. A host whose rule a review flags gets "at least 20 days" to change it or appeal; if the problem persists, the listing can carry a notice on its page or lose visibility in search.

"Guests have told us for years that checkout chores and unexpected rules make them hesitant to book on Airbnb," the company says on its page for hosts, posted in October.

After a backlash from hosts, a Nov. 3 update added: "We also could have done a better job explaining why and how we're making these changes." The sentence listing the barred tasks did not change.

Some raises match Airbnb's own fee math

Roughly a fifth to a third of the raises land on the arithmetic of a different change, the single fee that Airbnb charges hosts: 27 of 142 since the end of September, and 20 of 62 since the end of October. A match doesn't prove motive.

Airbnb combined its host and guest fees "into a single 15.5% service fee paid by hosts," so a 15% step replaces a fee guests used to pay separately and need not mean a bigger total by itself.

"We anticipate by year-end, our entire supply base will be on that single service fee," Ellie Mertz, Airbnb's chief financial officer, said on the company's Aug. 6 earnings call.

The bulk of that step came earlier: about one in eight of the same homes took it between June and July, and under 1% between September and October.

The remaining raises, 13% of homes since the end of September, have no fee-math explanation, and nothing in the data shows why they moved.

What a reasonable cleaning fee looks like now

Fees rise with size, and the spread inside each size is wide. The table gives each size's median and middle half, plus what a host keeps of the median fee after Airbnb's cut. About 94% of U.S. entire homes in this group charge a fee.

A host on the median three-bedroom fee who paid the old 3% and wants the same take would charge about $227, a separate sum from the nightly-price gross-up.

Professionally managed three-bedrooms have a median fee of $283, against $180 for other hosts, though those homes differ in other ways.

Airbnb sets no cap on the fee, Fortune reported. Airbnb's own guide tells hosts to use it for supplies or housekeeping, "not as a way to earn extra money."

Fees also vary by place. Several beach and resort markets sit near the top of this list of metro areas.

The threat and the pushback

A Change.org petition started by Harry Newington, an Airbnb superhost, showed more than 26,000 verified signatures as of Nov. 4, and Newington says support comes from "hosts and guests around the world."

"Airbnb is forgetting its founding principles," Newington told the Boston Globe in an Oct. 29 column.

The petition asks Airbnb to let hosts require washing up, and it backs the company on stripping beds and laundering linen. It says the added costs "will either be absorbed by hosts or passed on to guests."

CNET wrote on Oct. 22 that "San Francisco host Adam said he would have to raise his cleaning fee by 30 to 50%," without giving his fee.

Airbnb's Help Center says cleaning fees are "only meant to cover the cost of standard cleaning between reservations."

Skift's founding and executive editor, Dennis Schaal, told AFAR in an Oct. 30 article: "I think some hosts will raise cleaning fees." AFAR added that "whether those costs will increase remains to be seen."

One cleaning-company owner says it depends on how the cleaner charges. "A cleaner who prices by the hour will charge for that time," Lazaro H. Moreira, owner of the Charleston, S.C., turnover company Fluffy, wrote in a company article, but "a flat per-turn price set after a walkthrough should already assume the guest did nothing." He sells that service.

"If you're running an Airbnb as a business, professional cleaning is a cost of doing business," Krissi Foskett of Glasgow, who runs a national cleaning company and has paid a cleaning fee as a guest, told the BBC in a piece updated Nov. 1.

Gabriel Valk, a host in Greenville, S.C., who calls chores "common courtesy," told NBC News in October what he imagined guests saying: "OK, you guys are paying, whatever, $100 for the cleaning. 'We shouldn't have to do anything.'" "So totally makes sense to me," he added.

Hosts also have time: the rule reaches only later bookings, and a flagged host gets that correction window once reviews begin.

Under the single fee, a host keeps 84.5 cents of each added dollar, and Airbnb's cleaning-fee guide warns that "if the fee is too high, it can discourage guests from booking your home."

Raises ran somewhat higher among bigger operators and bigger homes, though in small groups whose margins overlap. Over the full window, about 18% of homes run by hosts with 10 or more listings raised, against 14% of single-listing hosts' homes. Homes with four or more bedrooms raised at 20%, smaller homes at 14%.

Nov. 20 and the dishes

The policy is scheduled to take effect Nov. 20. Reservations made that day will be the first under which a host generally can't ask a guest to wash and put away the dishes.

About the data: U.S. and Puerto Rico entire homes booked in the past year, minimum stay under 28 nights. Check: homes with a fee in September and October and confirmed live, so no first-time fees. A move tops 2% and $2. Metros: 20-mile radius.