How much does Airbnb cleaning cost in the UK

As an indicative market range, published UK short-let changeover prices tend to start somewhere around £45 for a studio or one-bedroom flat and reach £90 or more for a larger property, with linen either included or added on top. Treat that as a rough guide rather than a benchmark: every turnover figure moves with the size, the linen and how quickly you need it.

The price is per changeover because that is the unit of the work: a full reset between one guest and the next, to a photographed standard, in a fixed window. Paying by the hour sounds cheaper and usually is not, for reasons worth understanding before you set a fee.

Prices by property size

The table below puts two different things side by side. The first column is an indicative range for published UK changeover prices. It varies by city, by provider and by what is included, so read it as a rough guide, not survey data. The other two columns are our own Manchester price card: what we actually charge for cleaning only, as from prices confirmed against each property.

Our host prices sit at the upper end of that range on purpose. They pay for a cleaner who turns up on the day, a checklist worked the same way every time, and photographs of the finished flat before the guest arrives.

What changes the price

Size comes first, and bathrooms count as much as bedrooms: they are the slowest rooms to reset properly. After size, a handful of things move the figure, and it is worth knowing which ones you control.

Linen is often the difference between a changeover that finishes on time and one that waits on a wash cycle. Hiring stock keeps a clean set always ready and the cost per turnover fixed. Turnaround matters too: a checkout at ten and a check-in at three is a tighter job than one with a day of slack, and a standing schedule with a held slot costs less to run than ad-hoc bookings squeezed in.

Location matters more than most hosts expect, because travel between properties is time a cleaner is paid for but not cleaning. We work across Manchester and Greater Manchester only, and a flat on a route we already service is cheaper to look after than a one-off address across town.

Per clean or per hour?

Turnover work is usually sold per clean, at a fixed price for the property, and that is how we price it. Hourly pricing is more common for regular domestic cleaning, where there is no check-in deadline. For a changeover, an hourly rate rewards the wrong thing: the cleaner has no reason to finish before the guest arrives, and you have no fixed cost to build a fee around. A per-changeover price fixes the cost and puts the time pressure on the company holding the slot.

If you want to compare the two, divide a per-clean price by the time on site. Our 2-bed host price of £90 covers roughly two hours of cleaning, which looks high next to a cleaner's hourly wage until you add what sits behind it: travel between jobs, holiday pay, employer costs, insurance, supplies, and a replacement cleaner when someone is ill. A very low hourly figure usually means some of that is missing, and the gap tends to show on the day a cleaner cannot make it.

Setting your Airbnb cleaning fee

Your cleaning fee should cover what a changeover actually costs you, including linen and restocking. A fee below that loses money on every booking. Most hosts set the fee by looking at nearby listings, which is guessing at someone else's costs. Your own turnover cost is knowable, so start there.

So a fee of around £115 to £120 covers that turnover. Set it at £80 because the flat down the road charges £80 and you pay roughly £37 towards every stay out of your nightly rate. If a booking lands with less than 24 hours' notice, the clean rises by 25%, to £112.50, so price last-minute bookings with that in mind.

How the fee works on Airbnb

On Airbnb the cleaning fee is set by you in the listing's pricing settings, charged once per stay rather than per night, and paid out to you with the booking. The platform does not pay your cleaner; you do. Guests often see the total price, fees included, when they compare listings, so a low nightly rate does not hide a high fee. Airbnb changes its fee options from time to time, so check the current settings in your own account. The principle holds either way: keep the fee true to the cost and let the nightly rate do the competing.

The short-stay problem

Because the fee is flat, it disappears into a seven-night booking and can be a third of a one-night one. Guests read that as a penalty rather than a cost. This is the real tension in setting the fee, and it is why a fee set purely to cover cost can still cost you bookings at the short end.

There are two honest ways to handle it. Set a minimum stay, which also cuts the number of turnovers you pay for. Or fold part of the turnover cost into the nightly rate and show a lower fee. What does not work is a fee below cost to look cheap, because the money comes out of your margin either way.

Operator pricing and host pricing

We run two price lists. Hosts with one to three properties pay the host card. Operators with five or more units, or twenty or more cleans a month, pay the operator card, which starts at £55 for a studio or one-bed, ex-VAT. The difference comes from how the work is run: flats in one building or a few streets apart are cleaned back to back, with less travel and a regular cleaner who knows every property.

A host whose flat sits in a building or area we already service regularly may be quoted at the operator card, so give us the address when you ask for a price. Operators also get one monthly invoice across all their units rather than a bill per clean.