Airbnb changeover cleaning prices explained

What the starting figure actually is

Our changeover pricing starts at £59, all in. The important word is *starting* — it is a minimum job fee, not the price of a small property.

Run the rate card against every one-bed-with-one-bathroom shape and the room-by-room total lands well below that minimum every time. The minimum lifts it. So a studio, or a one-bed with one bathroom, comes to the starting figure whichever rooms you count — you are paying for a van, two people and an hour of somebody's day, not for square metres.

The figure the website gives you is a starting price for a property like yours. It is a guide, not a fixed quote, and one of us confirms the price with you before any work is booked.

Why it is counted in beds and bathrooms

A changeover is bed-making and bathrooms. Those are the two things that scale with a property and the two things a guest notices, so they are what the price is built from: per bed by size, and per bathroom by type.

A full bathroom, a shower room, an en-suite and a cloakroom are four different jobs and are priced as four. Beds are counted per bed, not per bedroom — the calculator's own single-bed field reads *“Including bunks, per bed”* — because a twin room is two beds to make and a bunk room can be four.

Pricing per property rather than per hour puts the overrun risk on us. If a changeover takes longer than it should, that is our problem, not a bigger invoice.

If you have a one-bed with one bathroom, this page has bad news

You are subsidising nobody, but you are also not getting a discount for being small. Every one-bed-with-one-bathroom configuration prices below the minimum on rooms alone, so they all arrive at the same starting figure. A studio and a one-bed with a king cost the same.

Add a second bathroom to that one-bed, though, and the rooms alone can clear the minimum on their own — at which point you are paying for what is actually there rather than for the visit.

Which is the honest answer to “am I being overcharged for a small flat?”: below a certain size the price stops being about your property at all. If that annoys you, it should — it is the one part of this that is arithmetic rather than judgement.

What the figure buys, and what it does not

Both halves belong on the same screen, because a quote you cannot compare is not a quote.

Inside it: the linen at the property stripped, laundered and remade; fresh towels and bath mats set out; your consumables checked and restocked; the changeover checklist worked through; cleaning products and equipment; and photographs of every room the same day.

Outside it: holding a stock of linen for you, so a fresh set is always ready, is something we sell separately — as is buying your consumables in and making up a welcome pack. An oven deep clean, carpets, upholstery and interior windows are the same.

That distinction is the one to press every quote on. *Laundering the linen that is already at the property* and *supplying the linen* are different jobs, and a quote that quietly means the first while you assume the second is how a cheap number turns into a surprise.

What Airbnb says your cleaning fee is for

Worth knowing, because it constrains what you can pass on to a guest — and it is narrower than most hosts assume.

Airbnb's ground rules for guests say cleaning fees set by hosts *“are only meant to cover the cost of standard cleaning between reservations (laundry, vacuuming, etc.)”*. That is a cap on what you may charge a guest. It is not a specification for what you should buy from a cleaner — a deep clean, an oven or a carpet is still work that has to be paid for, just not out of a per-stay fee.

Its ground rules for hosts say *“all listings should be clean and free of health hazards before check-in”*, and that hosts *“should be sure to clean between every stay”*. Should, in Airbnb's own wording — not requires.

What you can and cannot ask a guest to do

You can ask. Airbnb tells guests to *“follow the host's standard house rules”*, to *“complete checkout, including key return, by the designated checkout time”*, and that they *“should not leave the listing in a state that requires excessive or deep cleaning”*.

What you cannot do is charge for it: *“hosts may not charge guest fees for failing to perform specific cleaning or checkout tasks, but they may leave ratings and reviews based on cleanliness.”* The rule bars the fee, not the request, and it leaves the review intact.

One fee, however many nights

A cleaning fee is *“a one-time fee for cleaning the space you stay in”* and *“this fee is set by the host”*. One stay, one fee — which is why the same figure feels trivial on a fortnight and punitive on a single night.

Airbnb's answer to that is two tiers: a short-term stay fee *“if you want to offer guests who book 1 or 2 nights in your listing a lower cleaning fee than the standard cleaning fee”*, and the standard fee *“for all stays or stays longer than 2 nights”*. Both are decided at the time of booking from the length of the guest's stay.

One thing worth knowing before a cancellation argument: *“cleaning fees are not returned to guests once a trip is completed.”* That is a rule about completed trips. It says nothing about cancellations before a stay.

The rule your pricing is now judged against

Since 6 April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has governed how prices are presented. Section 230(4) is the operative bit: the total price of a product *“includes any fees, taxes, charges or other payments that the consumer will necessarily incur if the consumer purchases the product”*.

Omitting material information from an invitation to purchase is its own limb of unfairness under section 225(4)(b) — it does not have to be shown to have changed anybody's mind first, which is the test that applies to misleading actions.

This binds traders — a person acting for purposes relating to their business, or somebody acting on their behalf. Whether that describes you is a question about your own letting, not one this page can answer. If you let as a business, it is the standard your pricing is measured against.

Where a website stops and a phone call starts

A calculator that pretends to price everything is worse than one that admits its edges. These are ours.

Sofa beds are not a priced bed, and they do not move your figure. A changeover is all in, so a sofa bed that has been slept in is stripped, laundered and remade like any other, and it is hoovered under the cushions whether it has been slept in or not. Do not enter it as a bed — you would be quoting yourself for something you are not going to be charged for.

Bunks and twin rooms. Counted per bed, so a room that sleeps four prices as four. Unusual sleeping arrangements are a conversation.

Two flats in one building. Worth asking about rather than entering twice.

Short notice, evenings and weekends. These can move the confirmed price. We publish no percentage for them because we have not set one, and inventing a number here would be worse than saying so.

Portfolios. Our minimum job fee is the default for a single property, not a floor we never go under. Contract, multi-property and portfolio work is priced across the whole of it and can come in below the published minimum — so if you have several, ask us to beat our own starting figure.

What can move the confirmed price

Named in full in our [terms](/terms/), and worth reading before you compare us with anybody: more beds, bathrooms or rooms than were entered; heavy soiling, hoarding, mould or pet damage; builders' dust; an oven, carpets, upholstery or outside areas needing specialist work; no working power or water, or no way in at the agreed time; and short-notice, evening or weekend slots.

Nothing on that list is a surprise charge. Every one of them is something a person tells you about before the work happens.