Airbnb moving into Single Fee model (27 October, 2025)

Airbnb is moving hosts who use property management or channel management software from a Split Fee model (where both hosts and guests pay service fees) to a Single Fee model (only hosts pay). Under the new model, a 15.5% service fee will be deducted from the price set by hosts, while guests will not pay the service fees.

  • The change takes effect on October 27.

  • It affects the hosts who use property or channel management software (incl. Rentals United).

  • Action required: Adjust your nightly rates. If you keep your current prices, expect lower price for guests and lower payouts.

  • If you want to make changes to your pricing before October 27, you must manually update to the Single Fee structure in your Airbnb Payments settings.

For more details, visit Airbnb Help Centre.

 

What you need to do next

Note: If you do not take any action and keep your current prices, your guests will pay less, but you can expect a decrease in your payouts.

We recommend reviewing and adjusting your prices on October 27 to keep payouts and guest prices consistent with your current structure. Raising your nightly rate to account for the new fee ensures you and your guests experience no change in payout or total price.

Option 1 - Raise your prices (recommended): Increasing your nightly rate will help you preserve both your usual earnings and the amount guests are used to pay. For instance, if you move your rate from $100 to $115, your payout will be about $97.18, and guests will still see $115 at checkout.

Option 2 - Keep prices as they are: Leaving your rates unchanged means guests will benefit from lower prices, but your earnings per night will drop. For example, at a $100 rate, your payout would fall to $84.50 after the 15.5% fee, while guests would pay $100.

 

Raise your prices Keep your prices

+ Maintains earnings

+ Guest price stays consistent

- Risk of overpricing (see below)

+ Lower price may attract more bookings

- Lower earnings for host

- Payout decreases

 

Impact of overpriced rates

We advise you to mark up your prices reasonably to balance earnings with competitiveness and avoid the risks of overpricing. Overusing mark-up on top of your rates or overpricing your rates above the market trends have the following consequences.

  • Lower booking volume: Guests may choose cheaper alternatives.

  • Longer vacancy periods: Nights may remain unbooked, reducing total revenue.

  • Reduced competitiveness: Listing may appear less attractive than similar properties.

  • Negative effect on search ranking: Platforms may show your property less often.

  • Guest dissatisfaction: Expectations may not match the price, affecting reviews.

 

Adjust price with mark-up

It is important to understand that you will never receive the full rent amount that you set in your channel management software. Even if you increase the base rent by a certain percentage using the mark-up feature, the Airbnb service fee will be deducted from the total. Simply adding a percentage to the rent and then subtracting the service fee does not bring you back to the original amount. This means that the higher the guest-facing price, the higher the fee deducted, so your earnings will always be slightly less than the figure you entered in the software. The mark-up feature only allows you to bring your payout near the originally set rent price, therefore it is really important to price carefully.

 

How to adjust rates in Rentals United

 

You can check your current mark-up and fee mark-up values in the Property Settings for Airbnb. The values are displayed next to each of your listings individually. You have multiple options to update the mark-up values, but we recommend doing it in two simple steps.

  1. Update your current settings. Adjust your current price mark-up settings for all listings. Do it in a couple of clicks with our bulk actions - see here.

  2. Use the same mark-up when creating new: To stay compliant with the new mark-up values, change the default mark-up amounts. This will ensure that the new mark-up value will be suggested to you every time you create a new listing - see here.

 

Practical use: Adjusting price with channel mark-up

Scenario:

  • Base nightly rent: $100

  • Cleaning fee: $10

  • Airbnb single service fee: 15.5%

  • Goal: adjust price so guest sees a higher price, but payout stays close to the original.

 

Example: Apply 10% rent mark-up

  • Rent after mark-up: $100 + 10% = $110

  • Total booking price (including $10 cleaning fee): $110 + $10 = $120

  • Service fee (15.5% of $120): 120 x 15.5% = $18.60

  • Host payout = 120 - 17.05 = $101.40

  • Guest pays = $120

 

Using a simple rent mark-up is easy and changes the guest-facing price. Even after Airbnb takes the 15.5% fee, your host earnings are only slightly lower than the base rent, but the guest sees a fair, only slightly higher price. So you avoid the risk of overpricing your rate.