Airbnb Cleaning Fees in 2026: What US Hosts Charge by City

The median Airbnb cleaning fee in the United States is $174 per stay, in GuestFavorites data for 1.1 million entire homes in October 2026. For the median listing that charges one, that is 24% of what a guest pays for a two-night stay, and 8% of a week. On November 20, 2026, Airbnb’s new house rules take effect, and hosts will generally no longer be able to ask guests to wash the dishes, strip the beds or take out the trash before they leave. Hosts are asking whether they will have to raise their cleaning fees to cover that work. These figures are what they charge today, the baseline to measure any change against.

Key findings

• $174 is the median fee across 1.1 million US entire homes. Half of the listings that charge one ask between $110 and $279. About 9.5% charge nothing.
• Short stays carry the fee. It is 24% of a two-night stay, 17% of three nights and 8% of a week. The median fee is about 60% of one night’s rate.
• The Gulf Coast charges the most. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach ($356) and Destin ($342) have the highest medians of the 25 largest markets. In Orlando, Panama City Beach and Gulf Shores the fee is close to a full night’s rate, about 32% of a two-night stay.
• Large operators charge about twice as much. Host accounts with 100 or more listings charge a median $236 for a two-bedroom home. Hosts with one listing charge $125.
• Small homes are the most likely to charge nothing. 22% of studios and 15% of one-bedroom homes have no cleaning fee, against 5% of homes with four bedrooms.
• Guests notice the cleaning they end up doing. In recent low-rated reviews, guests describe checkout lists that run from stripping the beds to driving the trash to the dump, fines for unwashed dishes, and paying a cleaning fee only to clean on arrival.

What changes on November 20

Airbnb published the change on October 20, 2026 in its Resource Center, and the policy takes effect on November 20. House rules have to be “reasonable”, and Airbnb lists what that excludes. Hosts generally can’t ask guests to:

• wash and put away the dishes,
• take the sheets off the bed or start a load of laundry,
• take the garbage off-site,
• avoid an amenity the listing offers, such as the air conditioning.

They can still ask guests to put used dishes in the sink, gather used towels, separate trash and recycling into the bins inside the home, and turn off the air conditioning when they leave. Airbnb allows exceptions where local conditions call for them, such as animal-proof trash containers in bear country. According to Skift, hosts also can’t charge for anything already included in the listing or set their own fines, and repeated violations can lower a listing’s position in search or cost it Superhost or Guest Favorite status.

Airbnb’s announcement does not mention cleaning fees. Hosts are free to set them as before, and the work guests no longer do will fall on whoever cleans the home.

Cleaning fees in the 25 largest US markets

Entire homes on Airbnb. Median cleaning fee: among listings that charge one, October 2026. Share of a 2-night stay: the cleaning fee as a share of two nights plus cleaning, before taxes, for the median listing. Most markets are metro or vacation areas, not just the city. Each market links to its GuestFavorites occupancy page. Source: GuestFavorites.

The headline fee says as much about the homes as about the market. Orlando’s median, $235, is pulled up by the large vacation homes around Disney: a two-bedroom there charges $149, less than in Miami-Dade or San Diego. Miami-Dade is the opposite case, with many studios and one-bedroom apartments: its overall median is $154, but a two-bedroom charges $175. To compare your own fee, use the column for your number of bedrooms.

Where the fee weighs most

A fee that equals one night’s rate is a third of a two-night stay. That is the case on the Gulf Coast and around Orlando, where vacation homes charge high fees against moderate nightly rates:

• Lakeland, between Orlando and Tampa: the median fee is slightly more than a night’s rate, and 34% of a two-night stay.
• Orlando, Panama City Beach, Gulf Shores and Cape Coral: the fee is 93% to 96% of a night, about 32% of a two-night stay.

These are also markets where guests stay longer. The average booking lasts 4.9 nights in Orlando and 6.0 in Cape Coral, so over a typical stay the fee is 13% to 17% of the bill.

At the other end are expensive coastal markets in the Northeast, where nightly rates are high and the fee is a smaller part of the stay. On Long Island, which includes the Hamptons, the median fee is $287, but it is only 13% of a two-night stay. Bar Harbor, Cape May and the southern Maine coast are between 18% and 19%.

The markets where short stays are the norm feel the fee most over a real booking. In Big Bear the average stay is 2.7 nights, and in St. George, Utah, 3.2: there the cleaning fee is about 20% of the typical stay, the highest of the 98 markets.

The highest and lowest cleaning fees

Across the 98 US markets with at least 3,000 active listings:

• Highest median fees: Gulf Shores and Orange Beach ($356), Kauai ($351), Destin ($342), Maui ($335) and Park City ($300).
• Highest for a two-bedroom home: Hawaii. Maui charges $393, Kauai $370 and Oahu $320, ahead of Gulf Shores ($306).
• Lowest median fees: San Juan, Puerto Rico ($98), Cleveland ($109), Pittsburgh ($115), East Texas ($116) and Washington, DC ($125).

City markets cluster around $150: Chicago $145, Atlanta $143, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and New Orleans $150.

Cleaning fees by number of bedrooms

US entire homes on Airbnb, October 2026. Middle half: from the 25th to the 75th percentile of listings that charge a fee. Source: GuestFavorites.

The fee grows with the home, but so does the nightly rate, so its share of a short stay barely moves: between 22% and 25% of a two-night stay at every size. A studio and a six-bedroom house ask guests for about the same part of their bill.

Large operators charge about twice as much

Median cleaning fee among listings that charge one, by the number of US entire homes the host account has on Airbnb. Source: GuestFavorites, October 2026.

For the same number of bedrooms, host accounts with 100 or more listings charge about twice what hosts with a single listing do: $160 against $80 for a one-bedroom home, $236 against $125 for two bedrooms, $302 against $172 for three. Hosts with 20 to 99 listings sit in between. Hosts with two to four listings charge the same as single-listing hosts, and those with five to 19 a little more.

Large operators also charge more per night, but not twice as much, so the fee weighs more on their stays: for their median listing, cleaning is 30% of a two-night stay, against 21% for one-listing hosts.

It is not only that large operators are concentrated in expensive beach markets. Within the same market, a two-bedroom home costs more to clean when it is run by a large operator: $401 against $178 in Gulf Shores, $308 against $201 in Destin, $491 against $276 in Maui, $175 against $120 in Orlando. Of the ten large markets we checked, the gap is smallest in Phoenix ($162 against $149) and Las Vegas ($150 against $130).

One likely reason: a large operator pays a cleaning crew for every turnover and sets the fee to cover it, while many hosts with one home clean it themselves.

The hosts who charge nothing

About 9.5% of US entire homes charge no cleaning fee and fold cleaning into the nightly rate instead. Small homes do it most: 22% of studios and 15% of one-bedroom homes, against 5% of homes with four or more bedrooms. Hosts with one listing (12%) do it more than hosts with 20 to 99 (4%).

By market, the share is highest in Hampton Roads, Virginia (22%), rural Maine (20%), Vail (19%) and Las Vegas (17%). Within the Myrtle Beach area, 24% of the listings in the city of Myrtle Beach charge nothing. It is lowest in vacation-home markets: fewer than 2% in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, and on the Gulf Coast in Gulf Shores, Panama City Beach and Destin.

What guests say about cleaning in their reviews

We read through some 5,000 recent one- to three-star reviews of US homes that guests otherwise rate highly for cleanliness, looking for what they say about cleaning and chores. Here is some of what we found.

The checkout list. Strip the beds, start a load of laundry, sweep, wash the dishes, take out the trash, put the towels in the tub, clean the grill. One family was asked to take off the sheets, towels and pillowcases and start the first load, which added half an hour they hadn’t planned on their way out. Another list asked guests to leave the home exactly as they found it, next to an envelope for a tip for the cleaners. Several guests called their lists extensive or demanding, and more than one made the same point: that much work shouldn’t come on top of a cleaning fee. One guest only noticed the stained pillow, and another the mattress with no protector, because the instructions told them to strip the bed.

The trash. It turns up in many of the lists, and sometimes it goes further than the bin outside. One group had to drive their trash 10 to 15 minutes to the town dump, something the listing hadn’t made clear before they booked. Another left with the trash bag in their car because there was nowhere to put it. A third carried it down four flights of stairs along with their luggage.

The fines. A sign over the fridge warned of a $75 charge for dishes left unwashed. One host charged $20 for not following the checkout rules, which included leaving every light on. Another sent a price list for stains before check-in, from $1 for a hand towel to more than $100 for bedding. A hot tub came with eleven rules, adding chlorine after use among them, or part of the deposit was gone. One guest summed up the mood: a soda can in the trash? That’s $50.

The bill after checkout. Guests described being charged for an entire new living room rug over two fingernail-sized drops of sorbet, being billed after washing the dishes and taking out the trash, and a host trying to charge a cleaning fee for unloading the dishwasher.

The odd jobs. When rain came in through a window, the caretaker told the guests to dry it up with towels. Another host walked guests through taking the shower drain apart to unclog it, and another through resetting a breaker by text. A guest who asked for more towels was told they were welcome to wash the four they had. And one owner, in the middle of a bug problem in the house, asked the guests to carry seven boxes of chairs that had been delivered early.

From November 20, many of these requests fall outside Airbnb’s rules: hosts generally can’t ask guests to do the dishes, strip the beds or take the garbage off-site, and they can’t set their own fines.

Some guests take the chores for granted. One couldn’t find the checkout instructions and messaged the host to ask, because they were used to stripping the beds, putting the towels in the dryer and taking out the trash. Another thanked the host for not having to bother with the sheets or the trash at all.

The cleaning guests resent most, though, happens at the start of the stay. Guests who had paid a cleaning fee described doing laundry at midnight because the sheets smelled, washing every dish before they could cook, buying a mop after a long drive, and wiping their baby’s knees because the floors were black. One summed it up: they paid a cleaning fee so that their wife could do the cleaning. Guests judge the fee by the home they find at check-in as much as by the list on the fridge.

What to check before you change your fee

• Compare like with like. Your market’s overall median mixes studios and large houses. Compare your fee with listings of the same size in your market, and with the bedroom table above.
• Look at your stay length. The fee matters most to guests on two- and three-night stays. If most of your bookings are weekends, a higher fee shows up in the total price of every booking. Over a week it is a small part of the bill.
• Test the total, not the line. Guests compare the total price of the stay, cleaning included. Moving part of the fee into the nightly rate, or the other way round, changes which stays look cheap: a lower fee helps short stays, a higher one favors long stays.
• Write the new checkout list before November 20. Airbnb’s Listing editor flags house rules that don’t comply. Rules that ask guests to put dishes in the sink, gather towels and sort the trash are still allowed.

To see how your listing’s occupancy and nightly rate compare with the market before changing anything, run it through the GuestFavorites Airbnb calculator.

How we measured it

We used GuestFavorites data for entire homes on Airbnb in the United States with availability in October 2026: 1.1 million listings, and 98 markets with at least 3,000 active listings. Markets are the metro and vacation areas GuestFavorites tracks (Orlando, Destin / Fort Walton Beach, Smoky Mountains) and a few cities without one (Los Angeles, Washington, DC, New Orleans). A city inside an area already on the list is not counted twice.

• Cleaning fee: the fee each listing charges per stay, as guests see it in Airbnb’s price, in October 2026. Medians are over the listings that charge one; listings with no fee are counted apart. We leave out fees far outside the range of homes with the same number of bedrooms in the market.
• Share of a stay: the cleaning fee divided by the price of the stay, nights plus cleaning, before taxes. The nightly rate is the listing’s average calendar price over the last twelve months. We give the median across listings.
• Average stay: booked nights divided by bookings, over the last twelve months.
• Host size: the number of US entire homes the host account has on Airbnb in our data. An account is not always one owner: a management company may run several, and a family may share one.
• Reviews: some 5,000 reviews rated one to three stars, left between August and October 2026 on US listings picked at random among those with a cleanliness rating of 4.8 out of 5 or more. The examples are paraphrased and leave out names and listings.

We will publish the fees again after November 20, with the same method, to see whether hosts raised them.

FAQ

What is the average Airbnb cleaning fee in 2026?

The median cleaning fee on US Airbnb entire homes is $174 per stay, in GuestFavorites data for 1.1 million listings in October 2026. Half of the listings that charge one ask between $110 and $279. It grows with the home: $98 for a one-bedroom, $150 for a two-bedroom, $200 for three bedrooms and $270 for four. About 9.5% of listings charge no cleaning fee.

How much of a two-night Airbnb stay is the cleaning fee?

About a quarter. For the median US listing that charges one, the cleaning fee is 24% of what the guest pays for a two-night stay (nights plus cleaning, before taxes), 17% of a three-night stay and 8% of a week. In Orlando, Panama City Beach and Gulf Shores it is close to a full night’s rate, and about 32% of a two-night stay.

What changes in Airbnb’s house rules on November 20, 2026?

From November 20, 2026, Airbnb generally does not allow hosts to ask guests to wash and put away dishes, strip the beds or start laundry, take the garbage off-site, or avoid an amenity the listing offers, such as air conditioning. Hosts can still ask guests to put used dishes in the sink, gather used towels, sort trash into the bins inside the home and turn off the air conditioning when they leave. Airbnb’s announcement does not mention cleaning fees.

Which US Airbnb markets have the highest cleaning fees?

Among the 98 US markets with at least 3,000 active listings, the highest median cleaning fees are in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach ($356), Kauai ($351), Destin and Fort Walton Beach ($342) and Maui ($335). The lowest are in San Juan, Puerto Rico ($98), Cleveland ($109) and Pittsburgh ($115). Comparing two-bedroom homes only, Hawaii leads: Maui $393, Kauai $370 and Oahu $320.

Do property managers charge higher cleaning fees than individual hosts?

Yes, about twice as much for the same size of home. Host accounts with 100 or more listings charge a median $236 for a two-bedroom home, against $125 for hosts with a single listing, and $302 against $172 for three bedrooms. For their median listing, cleaning is 30% of a two-night stay, against 21% for one-listing hosts.