Some hosts mark up the total stay cost to match the price guests see under the split fee, or you can mark up the stay to match your payout. If you don’t mark up your nightly rate, you are effectively giving your guest a nice discount on their stay; if you do, they will essentially see no difference.

The $64,000 question

Should you choose the split fee or the simple fee? First of all, I’m not sure if the reintroduction of the option to choose isn’t a fluke on Airbnb’s part. Most of the rest of the world’s host pay the simple fee when they connect their listings to a PMS.

Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume the choice is here to stay. 

What is the better option? Well, let’s also assume you are running a business and will mark up your rates to match your payout. (If you don’t - you’re running a charity, which is sweet, but also a great way to fail as a business. Oh, and remember to increase your cleaning fee, pet fee, service fee, etc. - Airbnb takes 15.5% of those as well.)

From a guest's perspective, the cost of their stay is either $510.40 - $532.00 under the split fee or $533.95 under the simple fee. The simple fee has the guest pay between $23.55 ($7.85 a night or 4.6%) and $1.95 (¢64 a night or 0.4%) more, while maintaining your payout of $334 after fees and taxes.

In the two years that we've been using the single fee, we have not seen it impact our rankings and bookings - especially not since Airbnb implemented its One Price Policy to comply with the FTC regulation on junk fees. In my opinion, it’s six one way, half a dozen the other. In other words, it makes no difference to you as a host and has a very slight (negative) difference to a guest.

Who benefits? Well, your taxing authority collects a higher amount of tax, while your payout is the same, and the guest pays a little bit more while you earn the same amount of money. 

We’ve chosen to stay with the single fee; we’ve been using it since 2024 (a year before Airbnb made the switch mandatory), and since our revenue in Q1 2026 is up over 55% over last year, let’s just say that the single fee hasn’t hurt our business.

A history of short-term rental pricing

In October of 2025, Airbnb introduced its One Price Policy, which had been announced in the spring.

The One Price policy meant guests would now see only one price when booking, instead of the rate + cleaning fee + booking channel commission + tax. You see, in the old days, all the online channels advertised the nightly rate in search, and guests were getting fed up that when they got to the check-out screen, the price of their stay had almost doubled.

Airbnb calls the 15.5% option the simple fee (they used to call it the single fee), and the 3% host commission is what it calls a split fee. What those “Airbnb online experts” omit in their online rants is the other half of the split: the guest fee.

Here's the math if you want a deep dive;