A blog that says “Airbnb takes 15.5%, Vrbo takes 8%” is flattening two different fee shapes. Airbnb’s host-only service fee is one percentage of the booking subtotal (nights + cleaning + extras), with processing bundled. Vrbo’s pay-per-booking model is a 5% commission on that same subtotal plus a 3% payment-processing fee on the guest payment, which usually includes occupancy tax and a security deposit. Those two threes are not on the same base.
Compare both on your own stayFor a $225 × 2-night stay with a $95 cleaning fee, $200 deposit, and 10% tax, Airbnb host-only keeps about $84.50 of the $545 subtotal. Vrbo keeps about $27 in commission and about $24 in processing on the wider guest payment. The host’s per-stay gap is real. It is also incomplete: Airbnb may still deliver more booked nights. The calculator asks for marketplace bookings per year and, for a direct site, the share of those nights you would keep.
Card processing and a $29/month site look cheapest on a single reservation. They lose if the occupancy haircut is large. The useful number is the break-even: how many direct stays you need, after processing and the site cost, to match the best marketplace’s annual payout. If that figure is 80% of the nights Airbnb already sends, going direct is a demand problem, not a fee problem.
Some existing hosts can still renew a subscription that drops the 5% commission and leaves the 3% processing. New hosts generally cannot join it. Treat it as a row you turn off unless you actually pay it. Spread the annual invoice over the bookings it carries — a $599 plan on four stays is not the same product as a $599 plan on forty.