Airbnb's 15.5% host fee starts 15 September: what Australian hosts need to do

Until now, most self-managed Australian hosts have been on Airbnb's split fee: you paid around 3% of the booking subtotal, and your guest paid a service fee of roughly 14–16% on top of your price at checkout.

From 15 September 2026, that becomes a host-only fee:

The fee applies to the booking subtotal — your nightly rate, cleaning fee, pet fee and any other mandatory charges. It does not apply to taxes or refundable security deposits.

If you're managed by an agency or connected through a property management system, you're probably already on host-only pricing — many PMS-connected Australian accounts moved years ago, and some were reported as moving from 15% to 15.5% in October 2025. This change is for everyone else. Check your own dashboard rather than assuming.

Does GST apply on top?

Australian GST of 10% may apply to Airbnb's service fee. Whether you see 15.5% or a higher effective take can depend on what Airbnb has on file and on whether you are GST-registered. Adding an ABN is not automatically a saving, and it can change how Airbnb invoices you.

Check the fee line on your Airbnb invoice and speak to your accountant before changing tax details on the account. Do not treat 17.05% (15.5% plus 10% GST on the fee) as every host's rate.

Here is the calculation nobody enjoys but everybody needs.

Under the old model you kept about 97% of your subtotal. Under a 15.5% host-only fee you keep 84.5%. To end up with the same money in your account, you multiply your rate by 0.97 ÷ 0.845:

New rate = old rate × 1.148 — an increase of 14.8%

That is the stand-still lift when the fee is 15.5% of the subtotal. If GST is added on the fee on your account, the keep is lower — check your invoice rather than assuming a second percentage.

Run the same maths on your nightly rate. The calculator uses the 15.5% host-only fee and a 3% split-fee baseline; GST on the fee is a caveat, not the default.

At a $300 nightly rate on a 7-night stay:

Apply the same increase to your cleaning fee and pet fee, not just the nightly rate. The 15.5% comes off all of them.

This is the bit worth sitting with.

Under the old model, a guest looking at your $300 night paid roughly $342 once Airbnb added their service fee. Under the new model, with your rate repriced to $344, the guest pays… $344.

Repricing correctly costs your guest almost nothing. The money was always coming out of their pocket; it was just being collected at a different point. The guest-facing checkout fee disappears; the host fee is now inside the advertised rate.

The fee is now inside your headline rate. It used to be hidden in a line item at checkout that nobody blamed you for. From 15 September, the number a guest sees on your listing — the number they compare against every other property, and against your own direct-booking page — is 15.5% higher than the number you actually receive.

That changes the strategic picture for anyone who takes bookings outside Airbnb. If your Airbnb rate has to be $344 to net you about $291, then a direct-booking page can advertise $320 and still pay you more than Airbnb does after typical card fees. The guest may pay less. You may keep more. The platform fee is the gap. If you want the practical sequence for capturing those guests, see how to get direct bookings. Keep the two calendars honest with calendar sync.

That gap did not sit in the headline rate under the split fee. It does now, and it is about 15% wide when the host-only fee is 15.5%.

1. Reprice by about 14.8%, including your cleaning and pet fees, if you want the same payout at a 15.5% host fee. Do it as one adjustment, not by guessing. Confirm the fee on your dashboard first.

2. Check your existing bookings. Reservations confirmed before the switchover generally keep their original fee treatment. Confirm this in your host dashboard rather than assuming — your payout summary is the source of truth.

3. Don't reprice blindly across every date. A flat 14.8% is the number that keeps you neutral at 15.5%. Whether your property can carry that increase in a quiet April midweek is a different question from whether it can carry it over Christmas. Peak dates will absorb it; shoulder season may not. Consider taking the full increase on high-demand dates and a smaller one elsewhere.

4. Decide what your direct rate is. Now that your Airbnb rate is visibly about 15% above your net, you have a real number to work with. Some hosts pass the whole 15.5% to the guest as a book-direct discount. Some keep it. Most split it.

Airbnb's fee moved. It came out of your guest's checkout screen and into your headline rate, where every guest, every competitor and every comparison site can see it.

Reprice by 14.8% if you want to stand still at a 15.5% host fee, and check your own invoice for GST. The gap between what a guest pays on Airbnb and what you actually receive is now visible, quotable, and about 15% wide. That's the argument for having somewhere else to send a returning guest.

StayHive gives Australian hosts a direct-booking page that stays in sync with their Airbnb and Stayz calendars, with no commission on direct bookings. See how it works or browse rentals booking direct.

• Airbnb service fees — Airbnb Help Centre (AU)
• Stripe Australia pricing
• GST — Australian Taxation Office