← Airbnb/Vrbo host payout calculator
Airbnb publishes a free Estimate your earnings tool for people considering listing a property: type an address and a few details, and it predicts a nightly price and monthly income on Airbnb. It is forward-looking and single-channel — a forecast for a listing that may not exist yet, already netting out Airbnb's own fee, with no way to add a Vrbo or direct-booking leg and no field for a stay you have already booked or priced.
That makes Airbnb's tool the right choice for "what might this property earn on Airbnb" before you list. This calculator answers a different question: for a stay you already have real numbers for, which channel actually pays the most — Airbnb, Vrbo, or direct — and what it would take to do better.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| What might a new listing earn on Airbnb, before it exists? | Airbnb's own Estimate Your Earnings tool. |
| For this exact stay, does Airbnb, Vrbo, or direct booking pay the most? | This calculator's side-by-side channel comparison. |
| What listed-price raise restores an old 3% Airbnb payout under the new 15.5% host-only fee? | This calculator's restore-payout figure — Airbnb's tool has no equivalent. |
| How many occupied nights can I afford to lose by going direct and still come out ahead? | This calculator's direct-booking break-even. |
| What does Vrbo's pay-per-booking or legacy annual plan pay on the same stay? | This calculator — Airbnb's tool has no Vrbo leg at all. |
This tool needs no Airbnb account and no live listing: it is a static
page, the arithmetic runs in your browser, and your numbers stay on your
device — nothing is uploaded anywhere, and a shareable link carries your
inputs after the # in the URL rather than on a server.
Both, for different questions. Airbnb's own estimator, free on airbnb.com, predicts a nightly price and monthly income for a property you have not listed yet, on Airbnb only, already netting out their fee. This calculator instead takes a stay you already have numbers for — nightly rate, nights, cleaning fee, occupancy tax, deposit — and runs it through Airbnb's 15.5% host-only fee, the retired 3% split, Vrbo's pay-per-booking and legacy annual plans, and direct booking, side by side, plus the listed-price raise needed to restore an old 3% payout and the occupancy you can afford to lose going direct. Airbnb's tool cannot do any of that: it has no Vrbo or direct-booking leg and no way to enter an actual booked stay.
No. It is single-channel by design — it forecasts what Airbnb itself would pay for a listing on Airbnb. It has no field for a Vrbo commission, Vrbo's annual subscription, or a direct-booking site's processing fee, so it cannot answer which channel actually pays best on a given stay.
No. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Airbnb, Inc. Airbnb and Estimate Your Earnings are trademarks of Airbnb, Inc., named here only to describe what this calculator is for.
Also: Airbnb vs Vrbo host fees, compared on the same stay · Airbnb's 15.5% host-only fee in 2026 — what changed