Ask most Airbnb hosts how their property is doing, and they’ll tell you how much Airbnb deposited last month.
That number is not your profit.
It’s not even close.
Understanding what your properties are actually making — net of every real cost — is the difference between building a profitable hosting business and running a very time-intensive side hustle that barely breaks even.
Here’s how to calculate your true Airbnb profitability, what costs most hosts miss, and what to do when the number surprises you.
The Formula Most Hosts Use (and Why It’s Wrong)
The most common way independent hosts estimate profitability:
Airbnb payout − mortgage (or rent) = profit
This is wrong for two reasons: it misses most of your actual costs, and it conflates the investment return on the property with the operational performance of the Airbnb business.
The right formula:
True Net Profit = Total Revenue − Platform Fees − Cleaning Costs − Supply Costs − Maintenance Costs − Utilities − Insurance − Any Other Direct Costs
Let’s go through each one.
The Costs Every Host Needs to Track
Platform fees
Airbnb charges hosts between 3% and 5% of the booking subtotal. VRBO’s structure is different but similarly meaningful. If you list on both platforms, each takes a cut.
This is often 4–6% of your gross revenue that never actually hits your bank account — but hosts still count it as income because the payout confirmation email shows the full booking amount before fees.
Track this as a separate line item. Over 12 months on a property doing $4,000/month in bookings, platform fees at 3% are $1,440 you didn’t actually receive.
Cleaning costs
What you pay your cleaner per turnover, times the number of turnovers per month.
If you’re charging guests a cleaning fee, you might assume this is covered. Sometimes it is. Often it isn’t — the cleaning fee is a pricing tool, not a cost-recovery guarantee.
Calculate: (cost per cleaning) × (average turnovers per month)
A property doing 8 turnovers/month at $85/cleaning = $680/month in cleaning costs. A host charging a $75 cleaning fee is subsidizing the difference from revenue.
Supply costs
This is the category most hosts most severely underestimate.
Supplies include everything consumed between guest stays: toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap, laundry pods, shampoo, conditioner, coffee, sugar, dishwasher tabs, trash bags, hand soap, sponges, air fresheners — the list is longer than you think.
A 2-bedroom property running at moderate occupancy typically burns through $70–120/month in consumables. Most hosts have no idea because they buy supplies reactively and never add it up.
Track it for 90 days. Keep every receipt for supplies related to the property. The number will be higher than you expect.
Maintenance costs
Maintenance is the most volatile cost category, which is exactly why you need to plan for it rather than hope for the best.
A realistic maintenance reserve for a short-term rental property is $150–250/month, depending on property age and condition. Some months you spend nothing. Some months the dishwasher breaks and you spend $800.
The hosts who feel financially stable budget for maintenance as a fixed monthly cost, even when nothing breaks. When something does, they’re not scrambling — they just draw from the reserve.
Over 12 months, most hosts spend 3–7% of annual revenue on maintenance.
Utilities
If utilities are included in your listing, they’re a cost. Even if guests pay their own utilities in long-term rentals, STR properties typically see higher utility costs due to guest patterns (longer showers, leaving AC running, full laundry cycles between every stay).
Track your utility bills by property and compare to a baseline. The delta is your hosting-related cost.
Property-specific costs
Depending on your setup, you may also have:
- Short-term rental insurance (typically higher than standard homeowners)
- HOA fees (some HOAs charge a fee for STR operation)
- Property management software subscriptions
- Smart lock maintenance and battery replacement
- Welcome amenities (wine, snacks, local guides)
- Professional photography renewal
Each of these is small individually. Together they add up to several hundred dollars per year per property.
What True Profit Actually Looks Like
Here’s an example using a 2-bedroom Airbnb in a mid-tier market:
| Item | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Gross revenue | $3,200 |
| Platform fees (3.5%) | −$112 |
| Cleaning (7 turnovers × $90) | −$630 |
| Supplies | −$95 |
| Maintenance reserve | −$175 |
| Utilities above baseline | −$80 |
| STR insurance add-on | −$42 |
| True net (before mortgage) | $2,066 |
| Mortgage (hypothetical) | −$1,400 |
| Net cash flow | $666 |
That’s a 20.8% net margin before mortgage, and $666/month in actual cash flow after.
Not bad — but very different from looking at the $3,200 deposit and thinking “I made $3,200.”
What to Do When the Number Surprises You
Most hosts who run these numbers for the first time find one of three situations:
Situation 1: Margin is lower than expected
This is the most common. You’re profitable, but less so than you thought.
The levers to pull:
- Increase revenue: pricing strategy, occupancy rate, minimum night requirements
- Reduce cleaning cost: renegotiate rates, increase minimum stay to reduce turnover frequency
- Reduce supply cost: implement par levels, buy in bulk, audit what guests actually use vs. what gets thrown away unused
- Reduce maintenance cost: proactive inspections prevent small issues from becoming large ones
Situation 2: One property is significantly underperforming others
This is the most valuable finding. Once you can see performance property by property, it becomes obvious which unit is dragging the portfolio.
Before you decide to sell or convert it, figure out why. Often it’s a pricing problem, a cost problem, or a positioning problem — all fixable. Sometimes the property is genuinely not suited for the STR market, and that’s important to know too.
Situation 3: You’re breaking even or losing money
This is rare in good STR markets, but it happens — usually from underpriced rates + high cleaning frequency + deferred maintenance all hitting at once.
The right response is not to quit. It’s to fix the largest cost drivers first, get 60 days of clean data, and reassess. Most hosts who think they’re losing money are actually in a recoverable situation once the numbers are visible.
How to Track This Going Forward
You don’t need complex accounting software to track this. You need:
- A monthly revenue figure from each platform
- A running log of cleaning payments
- Receipts for supplies, tracked monthly
- A maintenance log with costs
- Utility bills for each property
Whether you track this in a spreadsheet, in StayReady’s profitability dashboard, or somewhere else — the important thing is that you’re tracking it per property, per month, consistently.
The hosts who build wealth from short-term rentals aren’t the ones with the most properties. They’re the ones who understand their numbers well enough to optimize them. That starts with knowing what you actually made last month — not what Airbnb deposited.
StayReady tracks your Airbnb revenue, cleaning costs, supply spend, and maintenance expenses per property — automatically. See your true net profit in one dashboard. Try the calculator → or join the waitlist →