Airbnb Cleaning Price List: How Much to Charge per Turnover

How do you work out what to charge to clean an Airbnb?

Charge your break-even for the turnover divided by one minus your target margin. Break-even is the cleaner-hours at a loaded wage, plus laundry and supplies, plus a share of your yearly overhead. Bedrooms and bathrooms matter only because they set the hours and the laundry.

I'm not a cleaner - I build the pricing maths. Most pages ranking for this question are written for hosts setting a guest fee, or quote ranges from other cities. A range cannot tell you whether a turnover pays you. This page shows the arithmetic instead; every input is an assumption you replace.

1. Cleaner-hours = fixed hours (drive, kitchen and living area reset, restock check, photos) + hours per bedroom + hours per bathroom.
2. Labour = cleaner-hours × loaded rate (wage × (1 + burden %)).
3. Materials = laundry per bed set + cleaning supplies per turnover.
4. Overhead share = cleaner-hours × (yearly overhead ÷ sellable hours).
5. Price = (labour + materials + overhead) ÷ (1 − margin), never below your minimum.

The same method prices a regular home in the house cleaning pricing guide. A turnover differs in three ways: beds are stripped and remade every time, the place has to be guest-ready by check-in, and you check and report on restock and damage.

Airbnb cleaning price calculator: try a 2-bed, 1-bath turnover

On the assumptions below, a 2-bedroom, 1-bath turnover prices at $158.85 at a 35% margin. Change the hours, wage and laundry cost to your own and the price moves with them.

The calculator opens on this example. The 2.75 hours are not a cleaning speed from anywhere; they are placeholders built from the time split below. Time your own next three turnovers and replace them.

The working: 2.75 hours at a loaded $25.00 (a $20 wage plus 25% burden) is $68.75 of labour. Overhead of $10,560 a year over 1 person × 220 billed days × 8 hours is $6.00 an hour, so $16.50 on this turnover. Add $18 of laundry and supplies ($5 per bed set × 2 beds + $8 supplies) and break-even is $103.25. Divided by 0.65, the price is $158.85, which leaves $55.60 of profit.

Airbnb cleaning price list by bedrooms and bathrooms

On this page's assumptions, a turnover runs from $127.31 for a 1-bed, 1-bath to $269.62 for a 4-bed, 3-bath. Every row is the same maths as the calculator: 1.25 fixed hours + 0.5 per bedroom + 0.5 per bathroom, $5 laundry per bed set, $8 supplies.

Read the gaps between rows rather than the rows. On these rates each extra bedroom adds $31.54 (half an hour plus a bed set of laundry) and each extra bathroom adds $23.85 (half an hour). A studio priced like a 1-bed is fine; a 3-bed listing with a sofa bed has a fourth bed set and a fourth $5 of laundry.

The listing sizes are labels, not measurements. Two 2-bed apartments can differ by an hour if one has a full kitchen and a balcony. Time a turnover in each of your listings and price it from that.

Airbnb cleaning rates per hour, per bedroom and minimum charge

Per hour, the floor is (loaded rate + overhead per hour) ÷ (1 − margin) = ($25 + $6) ÷ 0.65 = $47.69 per cleaner-hour, before laundry and supplies. Across the price list the price per cleaner-hour lands between $56.21 and $57.76 once laundry and supplies are in.

That is the number to quote if a host asks for an hourly rate instead of a flat price. Quote the flat turnover price where you can: the host knows the cost in advance, and if you get faster, the margin is yours.

Per bedroom

Hosts often ask for a price per bedroom. It works as a rule of thumb only if you also price the bathrooms and the fixed time. On these rates: fixed time $47.69 × 1.25 hours plus supplies, then $31.54 a bedroom and $23.85 a bathroom. Put those three lines in your price list and any listing is a sum.

Minimum charge

Set the minimum from the shortest turnover worth the drive. At 2 cleaner-hours door to door with $13 of laundry and supplies, the minimum here is $115.38. A tiny studio or a stay-over refresh still costs the drive and the fixed half hour, so it never prices below that.

Laundry, restocking and extras: what goes in the turnover price

Put the laundry and your cleaning supplies in the turnover price, bill the host's consumables at cost on top, and price extras from their minutes.

• Laundry. If you wash linens off site, the cost per bed set (laundromat, detergent, your time to wash and fold) belongs in materials. This page assumes $5 per set; check yours. If the host has an in-unit washer, there is no laundromat cost, but the wait shows up as hours on site instead.
• Restock items. Toilet paper, coffee, soap and bin bags are the host's costs. Agree in writing whether the host supplies them or you buy them and bill at cost with receipts. Do not hide them in the turnover price, or a busy month eats your margin.
• Extras. Price each extra from its own time at the hourly floor: a heavy-mess turnover that takes an extra hour is $47.69 more; a 30-minute oven clean is half that plus supplies. Write the trigger into your terms ("more than X extra minutes billed at the hourly rate").
• Damage and missing items. Photograph and report; the host deals with the guest. That reporting time is already in the 0.25 fixed hours.

The same add-on method, with priced oven, fridge and wall lines, is in the move-out cleaning price list.

Same-day turnovers: two cleaners, same price

Two cleaners halve the time on the clock but not the cost, so a same-day turnover with a crew prices the same as one cleaner working alone. Price total cleaner-hours.

Take a 3-bed, 2-bath with a tight check-out to check-in gap. Two cleaners finish in 1.875 hours each, which is 3.75 cleaner-hours, exactly the solo figure from the price list.

Two cleaners at $25.00 each for 1.875 hours is $93.75 of labour, the same as one cleaner for 3.75 hours. The price, $214.23, matches the 3-bed, 2-bath row. If you send two people and quote one person's hours, the turnover is half-priced on labour.

If a host wants a promised same-day window, that is a scheduling promise that blocks other work. Price it as a separate line you choose, and say so in your terms; it is not something the hours formula produces.

What cleaning fee should a host set to cover the cleaner?

A host who pays a cleaner per turnover needs a guest cleaning fee of at least the cleaner's price, grossed up for any platform fee charged on it: cleaning fee = cleaner price ÷ (1 − platform fee %).

Example with an assumed 3% fee on the cleaning fee: $158.85 ÷ 0.97 = $163.76 for the 2-bed, 1-bath. The 3% is an input, not a statement of any platform's current fee; read your own payout statement.

Whether to charge guests the full fee is a pricing choice for the host. A short stay that pays the full cleaning cost on top of a few nights can look expensive next to other listings; a host can fold part of it into the nightly rate instead. Either way the turnover still costs the same, and it has to come out of booking revenue somewhere.

To see what that does to the month, the short-term rental calculator spreadsheet ($14.99) takes your cleaning cost per turnover as an input and multiplies it by stays per month. On its shipped example, $75 a turnover over 7.5 stays is $562.50 a month of cleaning, and it then shows net profit, margin and the break-even occupancy. The Airbnb profit calculator guide walks through the same formula by hand. If you are the host, put your cleaner's real price into the Airbnb profit spreadsheet rather than a guess.

The common mistakes: markup, the drive, the laundry

The three leaks on a turnover price are adding margin as a markup, leaving out the drive, and treating laundry as free.

• Markup instead of margin. Adding 35% to the $103.25 break-even bills $139.39 and keeps only 25.93%. Dividing by 0.65 gives $158.85. The gap is $19.46 a turnover, or $5,059.25 a year at five turnovers a week. The markup vs margin calculator has the full chart.
• Pricing time on site only. Drop the half-hour drive and the 2-bed, 1-bath prices at $135.00 instead of $158.85, $23.85 short on every turnover.
• Laundry left out. Price only the $8 of supplies and the same turnover comes to $143.46, $15.39 short. Laundry repeats every turnover, so the gap repeats too.
• Copying a host forum's fee. The fee a host charges guests is not your cost. It may include the host's own margin, or be set low to win bookings. Price from your hours.

Calculator, spreadsheet, app or custom build for turnover pricing

For one quote, the free calculator is enough. For a price list across several hosts, use a spreadsheet you keep.

There is no ready-made turnover sheet in the store. If one host books you on a fixed weekly schedule, the cleaning contract pricing spreadsheet ($39) prices recurring visits per visit and per month, with residential home as one of its six facility types; it is not built for irregular turnovers that follow a booking calendar.

What to put in your Airbnb cleaning price list

A turnover price list is a short set of your own numbers that turns a listing into a price.

• Fixed hours per turnover: drive, kitchen and living reset, restock and damage check.
• Hours per bedroom and per bathroom, timed on your own turnovers.
• Laundry cost per bed set and supplies per turnover.
• Loaded wage, overhead per hour and target margin.
• Minimum charge, worked out like the 2-hour line above.
• Terms: what a standard turnover includes, how restock items are billed, and the extra-time rate.

Layout for the formulas: B2 = bedrooms, B3 = bathrooms, B4 = fixed hours, B5 = hours per bedroom, B6 = hours per bathroom, B7 = laundry per bed set, B8 = supplies, B9 = loaded rate, B10 = overhead per hour, B11 = target margin %, B12 = minimum charge, B13 = cleaner-hours, B14 = break-even.

Reprice when your wage, laundry cost or timed hours change, not once a year by habit.

Step-by-step: Airbnb Cleaning Price List: How Much to Charge per Turnover

1. Time your fixed work. Measure drive, kitchen and living reset, and the restock and damage check on a real turnover.
2. Time bedrooms and bathrooms. Record hours per bedroom (strip, make, dust, vacuum) and per bathroom from your own turnovers.
3. Add laundry and supplies. Multiply bed sets by your laundry cost per set and add cleaning supplies per turnover.
4. Find break-even. Cleaner-hours × (loaded rate + overhead per hour) + laundry and supplies.
5. Divide by one minus margin. Price = break-even ÷ (1 − margin). Quote the higher of that and your minimum charge.
6. Write the terms. List what a turnover includes, how restock items are billed and the rate for extra time.

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