A six-figure pull from Airbnb and Vrbo reveals a $1,675 gap between the cheapest and priciest turnovers, and why the "national average" number every host quotes is lying to them.
Key Findings
- $191.70 mean / $175 median cleaning fee across 40,000+ active US Airbnb and Vrbo listings scraped Q1 2026.
- $200 median cleaning fee for 3-bedroom properties nationally (n = 13,172); 2BR median is $150 (n = 11,913). A $50 jump per bedroom is the rule at the middle of the curve.
- The middle 80% of US listings charge between $91 (p10) and $300 (p90). That's a $209 spread most hosts don't realize they're sitting inside of.
- 80.2% of US listings charge a cleaning fee greater than 40% of their nightly rate, and 29.4% charge a fee that is larger than a single night's stay (n = 40,443 listings with both fee and rate disclosed). Airbnb's published guidance suggests cleaning should sit closer to 10% of the nightly rate.
- Top 3 most expensive metros (n ≥ 30): Stowe, VT $387 (+121% vs national); Garden City, UT $300 (+71%); Indio, CA $289 (+65%). Ski and desert-luxury outliers, as expected.
- 52.3% of all fees in the panel are divisible by $25, and 21.1% cluster at exactly $100, $150, or $200. That's a signature of gut-feel pricing, not cost-derived pricing.
- Clean Casa's own 150+ monthly STR turnovers average $218, range $120–$720, priced per property with no volume discounts. That's our internal baseline for what a professional operator actually charges.
How We Built the Dataset
I'll keep this section boring on purpose. Reporters and researchers will reverse-engineer it before they cite it, so every choice we made is on the table.
Collection method. We built a proprietary scraper that pulls public listing pages from Airbnb and Vrbo using a headless browser and rotating residential proxies. We respect robots.txt rate limits, pull only public pages, and use no authentication-gated data. This is the first published analysis from the panel; refreshes are planned quarterly going forward.
Date range. The panel reflects a Q1 2026 snapshot: listings active between January and March 2026, with the pull closed out in early April 2026. Not a rolling average.
Dataset size. 41,209 total raw listings pulled. 40,381 US-only clean listings after filtering for valid state codes, a disclosed cleaning fee, active status within the last 90 days, de-duplication by address hash, and exclusion of corporate operators with more than 50 listings on one account. That leaves us with a clean national panel of 40,000+ listings that carry a real, guest-facing cleaning fee.
Geographic coverage. 49 states plus DC, covering 6,878 distinct city-state combinations. Every state in the continental US plus Alaska and Hawaii is represented, with n ≥ 10 in every covered state and n ≥ 30 for every metro we call out by name.
What "cleaning fee" means here. The guest-facing line item displayed on the booking page: what the guest pays, not the host payout. We do not net out Airbnb's approximately 15.5% cleaning-fee cut, because guest-facing fees are the object of the study and the object of the new FTC and California rules. Where we compare to hotel housekeeping, we say so explicitly.
Explicit limitations (these will come up). The scrape schema does not capture: square footage, pet-friendly flag, linen-service indicator, condition grade, property-manager attribution, length-of-stay or minimum-night settings, and, most importantly for this study, a direct platform tag distinguishing Airbnb from Vrbo. Where a question required one of those fields, we cut the claim rather than fabricate. No seasonality adjustment beyond the Q1 2026 window.
How this panel differs from AirDNA and Transparent. AirDNA models revenue and bundles cleaning fees into a revenue-per-booking number. Transparent / Deckard Technologies tracks tens of millions of properties globally but paywalls the granular fee breakdown. Our panel is narrower (US only, cleaning-fee-disclosed only) but deeper on the single variable everyone is arguing about.
For the full data dictionary, exclusion rules, and a downloadable sample, see our STR data methodology page.
1. The National Average Is Hiding a $600 Spread
The single most-cited number in STR cleaning-fee coverage is AirDNA's $96 one-bedroom average (Skift, May 2025). It's a fine number. It's also close to useless if you're trying to price a turnover.
Across our 40,000+ US listings, the national mean is $191.70 and the median is $175. The standard deviation is $99.30, which is more than half the mean. When the standard deviation is that fat, the average stops being a prediction and becomes a midpoint.
Here is the actual distribution:
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Mean | $191.70 |
| Median | $175 |
| Standard deviation | $99.30 |
| 10th percentile | $91 |
| 25th percentile | $125 |
| 75th percentile | $240 |
| 90th percentile | $300 |
| Minimum | $25 |
| Maximum | $1,700 |
The minimum fee was $25 (a Portland studio, a Postville, Iowa 3BR house). The maximum was $1,700 on a 9BR/7BA home in Heber City, Utah. A 68x gap. And even ignoring the tails, the middle 80% of the market charges anywhere from $91 to $300 for what is ostensibly the same job.
Every host I talk to quotes "the average" when asked how they priced their fee. Half are above it, half below. Both halves are making the same mistake, treating a midpoint as a target. Cleaning fees are a distribution, not a number. More on the pricing-psychology side in why guests hate your cleaning fee more than your nightly rate.
2. Property Size Changes Everything (Studio to 8BR Breakdown)
Bedroom count is the first real predictor the data supports. Here's what hosts actually charge:
| Beds | n | Median | Mean | p25 | p75 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5,457 | $105 | $115.80 | $77 | $150 |
| 2 | 11,913 | $150 | $156.40 | $120 | $185 |
| 3 | 13,172 | $200 | $204.10 | $150 | $250 |
| 4 | 5,633 | $250 | $258.10 | $200 | $300 |
| 5 | 1,860 | $300 | $323.20 | $250 | $379 |
| 6 | 582 | $350 | $386.10 | $275 | $450 |
| 7 | 147 | $400 | $439.40 | $313 | $500 |
| 8 | 76 | $450 | $506.60 | $300 | $606 |
Two things jump out. First, every bedroom tier adds roughly $50 to the median. That's a suspiciously clean pattern we'll come back to in Section 5. Second, the mean grows faster than the median at every step above 4BR, which is the statistical signature of a long right tail. Luxury ski and beach stock is pulling the top of the curve away from the middle.
The 1BR median of $105 is the cleanest benchmark we have against AirDNA's $96. We run $9 higher, which is consistent with our sample skewing slightly toward active, higher-quality listings rather than the AirDNA panel's broader definition of "available."
The practical cost of underpricing shows up at 4BR and up. A 4BR with two full bathrooms is a four-hour job for two experienced cleaners: eight labor-hours, plus laundry, plus supplies, plus quality-check time. Any host charging less than the p25 figure of $200 for that property is subsidizing the guest from their nightly rate, whether they realize it or not.
"When a host tells me they pay their cleaner $100 for a 3BR, I can tell you exactly what that cleaner is skipping. Usually it's the laundry, sometimes the bathroom deep-clean, occasionally both. It's not a discount. It's a corner."
David Stuart, Founder, Clean Casa
We break down what a $218 turnover actually buys (labor, supplies, insurance, linens, inspection) in Post 2: The True Cost of an STR Turnover.
3. Coastal Premium, Mountain Premium, Middle-America Discount: Fees by Market
The most-expensive-metros list is not a list of famous cities. It is a list of places with short, intense seasons and thin cleaner supply.
Top 10 US cities by median cleaning fee (n ≥ 30)
| Rank | City, State | n | Median | vs National |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stowe, VT | 40 | $387 | +121% |
| 2 | Garden City, UT | 32 | $300 | +71% |
| 3 | Indio, CA | 60 | $289 | +65% |
| 4 | Peoria, AZ | 34 | $275 | +57% |
| 5 | Angel Fire, NM | 142 | $275 | +57% |
| 6 | Sea Ranch, CA | 87 | $275 | +57% |
| 7 | Greenville, ME | 30 | $274 | +57% |
| 8 | La Quinta, CA | 58 | $265 | +51% |
| 9 | Ocean View, DE | 37 | $260 | +49% |
| 10 | Palm Springs, CA | 165 | $255 | +46% |
Bottom 10 US cities by median cleaning fee (n ≥ 30)
| Rank | City, State | n | Median | vs National |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ogden, UT | 127 | $75 | −57% |
| 2 | Mountain View, AR | 31 | $75 | −57% |
| 3 | Columbus, OH | 42 | $79 | −55% |
| 4 | Millcreek, UT | 53 | $95 | −46% |
| 5 | Lincoln, NH | 57 | $98 | −44% |
| 6 | Salt Lake City, UT | 506 | $98 | −44% |
| 7 | Newport, OR | 35 | $100 | −43% |
| 8 | South Salt Lake, UT | 59 | $100 | −43% |
| 9 | Bryson City, NC | 47 | $105 | −40% |
| 10 | Old Orchard Beach, ME | 33 | $105 | −40% |
These are all-bedroom medians, not 2BR-normalized. Garden City's Bear Lake resort stock skews 4BR-plus. The surprise is the bottom list: four of the ten cheapest cities in the country are in Utah. That isn't because Utahns are worse hosts. It's because Salt Lake County stock is dominated by urban apartments and studios where a $75 turnover is the right price. Park City and the resort corridor tell a completely different story.
Utah market medians (home market, full disclosure): Park City $217 (n = 604), with the 4BR-plus subset at $429 (n = 196). Moab $177 (n = 36). St. George $150 (n = 18). Salt Lake City $98 (n = 506).
The Park City 4BR-plus number ($429) is within $44 of our own anchor price for a 4BR/3.5BA Park City turnover ($385). Our published rates sit slightly below the top of the local market, which is where we want to be. More in Post 4: Utah STR Market Deep Dive.
4. The Outliers: Who's Charging $500+ to Clean a 2BR?
At the top of the distribution, a small tail does most of the reputation damage for the whole category. Here's the actual count:
- 542 listings (1.34% of panel) charge $500 or more.
- 147 listings (0.36%) charge $700 or more.
- 31 listings (0.08%) charge $1,000 or more.
- Maximum observed fee in the panel: $1,700, on a 9BR/7BA home in Heber City, Utah.
When you look at what property types are over-represented in the top 1% (p99 = $510), the answer is not "condos charging bananas money." It's mountain and beach stock with a lot of square footage:
| Property Type | Share of Top 1% | Share of Full Panel | Over-index |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chalet | 1.5% | 0.1% | 19.3x |
| Townhouse | 3.9% | 0.3% | 11.9x |
| "Other" | 4.9% | 0.4% | 11.8x |
| Home | 12.8% | 1.5% | 8.6x |
| Villa | 3.9% | 0.7% | 5.5x |
Chalets, branded villas, and custom-built "Home" listings dominate the extreme tail. Condos and apartments barely appear in the top 1% at all (0.04x over-index for apartments). This is a luxury-stock story, not a greed story.
Nine of the twenty highest cleaning fees in the panel are in Park City: villas, chalets, and large-format homes priced $1,150 and up. The remaining top-20 slots are scattered across Kennebunk ME, Shenandoah TX, Breckenridge CO (two), Eagle Nest NM, Surfside Beach SC, Great Falls VA, Jacksonville FL, and Nags Head NC. Almost all 5BR-plus coastal or mountain stock. The one outlier is a 3BR/2BA condo in Horseshoe Bay, TX at $1,250. Every other entry is a big house.
As an operator, what that tells me is that $500+ fees generally reflect real labor. A 6BR/6BA villa with a hot tub, pool, and a laundry load is a full day for a two-person team. The optics on the booking page are brutal for guests, but the unit economics check out.
"People ask us all the time about volume discounts for property managers with 20 doors. We don't do them. Every property gets priced on its own bones: square footage, pet policy, hot tub, laundry load. A flat rate across a portfolio is how operators quietly lose money. A flat-fee cleaner who says yes to twenty doors at one price is cutting corners somewhere."
David Stuart, Founder, Clean Casa
5. What Hosts Get Wrong (Three Recurring Patterns)
Three patterns jumped out of the data once we stopped looking at averages and started looking at shapes.
Pattern 1: Round-number clustering. 52.3% of every cleaning fee in the 40,000+ panel is divisible by $25. 35.4% is divisible by $50. And 21.1% of all listings (more than 8,500 hosts) cluster at exactly $100, $150, or $200. If hosts were pricing from a cost model, the distribution would be smooth. It isn't. It's a picket fence at round numbers, which means most hosts are picking a fee that "feels right" and typing it into the form.
Pattern 2: Flat fees across mixed-size portfolios. A large share of multi-listing hosts use the same cleaning fee on their 2BR as on their 4BR. That is mathematically impossible to cost-justify. A 4BR is not 1.0x the labor of a 2BR.
Pattern 3: Fees below any sustainable operator cost model. The SLC p25 of $65 is below what any professional cleaning operator can deliver a full turnover for once you stack market-rate labor, employer burden (FICA, workers' comp, PTO), supplies, linen handling, vehicle time, and insurance. Either the cleaner is cutting corners on one of those line items, or they're operating at a loss. Neither is durable supply for the market. Hosts pricing this low should expect the failure modes that come with it: 90-minute rushed turnovers, missed damage inspections, and cleaner churn every 60–90 days. We see the result every time a new client hands off a property their previous cleaner walked away from.
This is the uncomfortable version of the headline finding: the median is not "the average host charging fair market." In many markets, the median is the average host subsidizing the guest.
"The hosts who call me panicked about 'Airbnb cleaning fee backlash' are almost never the ones charging $400. They're the ones charging $95 on a 3BR and wondering why they're losing money. The fix is usually to raise the fee, not lower it. Show the guest the full total up front so they're not surprised."
David Stuart, Founder, Clean Casa
If you want a self-service starting point for what a fair fee looks like in your metro and property size, the Clean Casa STR Cleaning Fee Calculator benchmarks your fee against the full 40,000+ panel in 30 seconds.
6. How STR Cleaning Fees Compare to Hotel Housekeeping
The "STR cleaning fees are a rip-off" narrative is partly an amortization problem. Hotels bundle housekeeping into the nightly rate. STRs charge one fixed fee regardless of length of stay. For a one-night booking, the fee is 100% of cleaning cost, and for a seven-night booking, it's about 14%.
The hardest data point from our panel: the median US cleaning fee ($175) equals 81% of the median US nightly rate. Across 40,291 listings with both a fee and a nightly rate, the median per-listing fee-to-rate ratio is 0.78; the mean is 0.82. For the typical listing, booking a single night means the cleaning fee is nearly as much as the room itself. 80.2% of listings charge a cleaning fee greater than 40% of nightly rate; 29.4% charge a fee bigger than a single night's stay. Airbnb's published guidance is ~10%. The guidance and the market are not close.
Hotel housekeeping labor, when you back it out of occupied-room-night economics, runs significantly less per night than an STR cleaning fee amortized across an average stay. The reason isn't technology or management sophistication. It's frequency. A hotel housekeeper cleans the same 15 rooms on the same floor back-to-back; an STR cleaner drives between properties, reloads linens off-site, and re-qualifies a property they may not have cleaned in two weeks. The per-turn labor is legitimately higher. The economics are closer than the optics, but not identical, and that distinction is where the "just charge what the hotel charges" critique of STR cleaning fees gets it wrong.
Length-of-stay and minimum-night settings aren't in our current schema. That's a documented gap and a priority for the next pull.
7. The Regulatory Reset: FTC Junk Fees and California AB 537
Two live regulations are reshaping fee disclosure faster than hosts realize.
Federal: the FTC Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees. Effective May 12, 2025, the rule mandates total-price disclosure (including cleaning fees) on any live-booking page, with penalties up to $53,088 per violation (FTC Rule FAQ). The rule applies to platforms and, under some readings, to direct-booking host sites.
California: AB 537 and the July 2024 + July 2025 amendments. California requires the total nightly price (inclusive of cleaning fees) to be shown before taxes (Avalara MyLodgeTax), with the July 2025 update adding stricter chore-disclosure requirements (Bailey Law). Penalties run up to $10,000 per violation.
California has 2,947 listings in our panel, a median fee of $210. That's 20% above the national median and the fourth-most-expensive state in the country. The state is one of the highest-fee, highest-scrutiny regulatory environments for STRs right now. We cannot compute a California non-compliance rate from the current panel because our scrape schema does not capture listing copy or fee-disclosure position; that's a gap we plan to close before the next study.
The compliance angle is less about how much you charge and more about whether the guest saw the fee before they clicked book. Any host whose listing surfaces a cleaning fee only at checkout is now one guest complaint away from a regulator test. See our STR cleaning fee compliance checklist for a plain-English breakdown of what to change this week.
About the Author
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is the average cleaning fee for a short-term rental in the US?
Q2. How much should I charge for cleaning as an Airbnb host?
Q3. Why are Airbnb cleaning fees so high?
Q4. Are Airbnb cleaning fees regulated?
Q5. What's the difference between a cleaning fee and a service fee on Airbnb?
Q6. How do cleaning fees compare between hotels and Airbnbs?
Q7. Can guests negotiate Airbnb cleaning fees?
Q8. What cleaning fee should I expect on a 3-bedroom Airbnb?
Bring Your Fee Into the Data
Benchmark your cleaning fee in 30 seconds. Compare what you charge against 40,000+ real listings in your metro and property size with the free Clean Casa STR Cleaning Fee Calculator.
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Data updated April 2026. For sourcing, re-use, or embargoed access to the underlying dataset, contact hello@cleancasa.co.
Last updated: 2026-04-17