The cleaning fee rules changed. Here is the current state

For a couple of years the cleaning fee was the most argued-about number in hosting. Airbnb has now quietly settled most of the argument in its product. If you set your fee back when the debate was loud and have not looked since, three things changed underneath you.

1. Guests see your total price everywhere now

Since April 21, 2025, Airbnb shows guests the total price of a stay, including all fees before taxes, right in search results, worldwide. It started as an optional toggle; Airbnb says almost 17 million guests used it before it became the standard (Airbnb's announcement).

What this means for you is simple: there is no such thing as a hidden cleaning fee anymore. A $95 night with a $200 cleaning fee shows up next to a $135 night with no cleaning fee, and on a two-night search yours looks more expensive, because it is. The old trick of a low nightly rate with the cost buried in fees now works against you in the search ranking a guest actually sees.

2. The refund rules changed for bookings made after April 21, 2025

This one most hosts missed. For reservations booked before April 21, 2025, Airbnb returned the cleaning fee in full for any cancellation before check-in. For reservations booked on or after that date, the rule is different: cancel inside the free cancellation window and the cleaning fee comes back in full, but outside that window "the cleaning fee is considered part of the nightly price" and follows your cancellation policy (Airbnb's cleaning fee help page).

For hosts this is mostly good news: on a strict policy, a late cancellation no longer automatically refunds the cleaning fee. But it also means guests on the fence about a trip have less reason to cancel early, so expect slightly more late cancellations, and make sure your cleaner-cancellation plan can absorb them.

Two rules did not change and are still worth knowing cold: once a trip completes, "cleaning fees are not returned to guests," full stop. And when you send a special offer, the cleaning fee is not automatically included; you have to build it into the number you quote, or you eat it.

3. There are two cleaning fees now, and most hosts only use one

Airbnb lets you set a standard cleaning fee and, separately, a lower short-stay cleaning fee for one- and two-night bookings (Airbnb's fee setup page). You can opt in and out whenever you like.

This is the tool that fixes the total-price problem without giving up fee revenue on longer stays. The cleaning cost of a one-night turnover and a seven-night turnover is nearly the same for your cleaner, but the guest math is completely different: a $150 fee is 7 percent of a week and 60 percent of a cheap night. Setting the short-stay fee somewhere near your actual incremental cost keeps you visible in weekend searches; the standard fee still carries the real cleaning cost on the stays that can bear it.

What to actually do

• Reprice against the total, not the fee. Guests compare totals now. Whether a dollar sits in the nightly rate or the cleaning fee matters less than it used to; where it shows up in a two-night search matters more.
• Set the short-stay fee if your market has weekend demand and your standard fee is more than about a third of a cheap two-night total.
• Re-read your cancellation policy knowing the cleaning fee now follows it for post-April-2025 bookings. A moderate policy refunds it more often than you may think.
• Keep the fee defensible. The fee is now displayed, compared, and reviewed. If a guest can see a $250 fee and a bathroom that was not cleaned to a $250 standard, that gap goes straight into the review. Whatever you charge, the turnover has to be able to survive the guest doing the math.

The bigger picture: Airbnb reported back in early 2023 that hundreds of thousands of listings lowered or dropped their cleaning fees once total pricing started rolling out. The market has already adjusted around transparency. The fee itself was never the problem; the surprise was. Now that the surprise is gone, the only thing left for the fee to be is honest.