Airbnb now charges you 15.5% — not the guest. Here’s the exact math.

Airbnb is changing how it charges: instead of the guest paying their own fee and you paying 3%, the entire 15.5% fee now lands on you. If you don’t adjust your prices by 13 October, your payout per night drops by roughly 13% — same guests, same dates.

No panic and no dramatic headlines: the change is real, but so is the arithmetic. Let’s walk through the numbers, the deadlines, and the lesson actually worth taking from this.

What exactly is changing

Until now, host and guest split the fees. You set a price of, say, €100: the guest saw about €115 at checkout (their 14–16% fee added on top), and after your 3% you kept about €97.

Under the new model — which Airbnb calls “simplifying service fees” — the guest fee disappears and you pay a single 15.5%, on nightly rates, cleaning and every extra fee you charge. Airbnb’s own example: set your price at €115, the guest sees €115, and you keep about €97 — the same as before, provided you raised your price from €100 to €115.

And there’s the catch: do nothing and you stay at €100 — the guest now pays less than before, and you keep €84.50 after the fee. You’ve gifted the difference, half to the guest, half to Airbnb.

The math for a Croatian rental

Take a villa doing €30,000 a year through Airbnb. Hosts registered in Croatia generally self-assess 25% Croatian VAT on Airbnb’s service fee — so the numbers look like this:

• Until now: 3% fee = €900 + €225 VAT = €1,125 per year.
• From now: 15.5% fee = €4,650 + €1,162.50 VAT = €5,812.50 per year.
• The difference: about €4,700 a year — if your prices stay where they are.

To keep the same net income you need to raise prices about 15% — closer to 18% once VAT on the higher fee is counted. That’s not our estimate, it’s arithmetic; the exact figures for your setup (flat-rate taxation, VAT registration, country of establishment) are a conversation with your accountant before you touch your price list.

€30,000 is our example, not yours. Put your own revenue into the commission calculator and see what this change means for you — over one season, and over ten.

What to do before 13 October

• Adjust prices with Airbnb’s tool. A one-time bulk adjustment across all your listings. Deadline for the EEA and Switzerland: 13 October 2026 (15 September outside the EEA).
• Do it yourself. Co-hosts cannot run this adjustment for you.
• Check your channel manager. If you sync prices through software, the switch may reach you earlier — read your provider’s notes.
• Count on new reservations only. The new fee applies to bookings made after you switch; existing ones stay under the old rules.
• Call your accountant. Higher gross prices change your books — better to ask in July than in October.

What this change actually tells you

The point isn’t that Airbnb is “evil.” The point is simpler and less comfortable: you don’t set the terms of a channel you don’t own. One platform decision moved your margin by more than ten percentage points — and your only move is to comply by a deadline someone else picked. This time it’s 15.5%. What it will be next time, neither you nor we know.

That’s why “I’m leaving Airbnb” is the wrong conclusion — for most owners the portals still bring guests they can’t reach alone, as we’ve written in detail. The right conclusion: a channel you own is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s become an insurance policy.

A direct booking is now worth 15.5% more

There is one piece of good news, and it isn’t small. Under the old model your fee was 3%, so a direct booking instead of an Airbnb one didn’t gain you much — the guest pocketed most of the saving. Now it’s reversed: every reservation that comes through your own website instead of Airbnb is worth 15.5% more to you. On the villa from our example, every quarter of revenue moved to the direct channel keeps about €1,450 a year in your pocket — every year.

And since guests on Airbnb now see your full price, for the first time you can offer a visibly lower price on your own site — say 8% off for booking direct — and still earn noticeably more than through Airbnb. The guest does better, you do better; until now the middleman took that difference. To see what a site that can carry this looks like, have a look at thestone villa demo.

Frequently asked questions

What is Airbnb’s new service fee?

A single 15.5% fee paid entirely by the host, calculated on the full booking subtotal: nightly rates, cleaning fees, pet fees and extra-guest charges. The separate guest service fee is being removed.

When do I have to adjust my prices?

Hosts in the European Economic Area and Switzerland — including everyone renting out Croatian properties — have until 13 October 2026. Outside the EEA the deadline is 15 September 2026. The new fee applies only to reservations made after you switch.

Will guests pay more?

They shouldn’t. If you raise your price by about 15%, guests see the same final price as before, because their separate fee disappears. If you do nothing, guests pay less and you absorb the difference.

Is there VAT on Airbnb’s fee?

Usually yes. Hosts registered in Croatia generally self-assess 25% Croatian VAT on Airbnb’s service; the rate depends on where you are registered. Check the exact treatment with your accountant.

The next step costs nothing

If this change moved your numbers too, do with us what you’re about to do with Airbnb’s tool — only in your own favour. Send us the link to your listing and we’ll send back a free demo of your villa’s website, with your photos and your name on it. No obligation; the demo is yours. We’re based in Rovinj — in season, we can also meet in person.

Get a free demo of your villa

P.S. Airbnb gave you a deadline of 13 October to adapt your prices to its new fee. Nobody gives you a deadline to start building the channel where there is no fee — but the 2027 season is coming either way.