Pricing Inside a Commission Range

Two hosts on the same channel can pay different commissions. The floor price has to be set against your own contract, not against a number you read online.

Last updated: November 2, 2026

Ask a room full of hosts on the same channel what they pay and you'll get several different answers, all of them correct. Commission is agreed rather than posted: it lives in your own contract, it was set on the day you signed, and it moves when you renegotiate or when the channel changes its terms. That's why a floor price copied from a forum is a floor for somebody else's business. Yours has to clear your own commission line, your own cleaning cost and your own fixed costs — and there's only one place to find those.

Key Takeaways

• The same channel, different agreements. What you pay is set in your contract, not on a page everyone can read.
• A floor is a rate one booking has to clear. Not a market average, not a rate you admire, not last year's.
• Read it off a statement. The commission line on a real payout is the only figure that describes your business.
• Three levers move the floor. Your commission, how cleaning is charged, and your minimum stay.
• Review it quarterly. Contracts, costs and the mix of stays all drift; a floor set once is a guess with good intentions.

Why two hosts pay different rates

Commission isn't a public price list. It's a term in an agreement between you and the channel, and agreements get made at different moments under different conditions. A host who signed three years ago may sit on terms that no longer exist. A host in a different market may be on a different arrangement entirely. A host with a portfolio may have negotiated something a single-unit host can't ask for, and a host who joined through a partner may be on a different schedule again.

None of that makes one of them wrong. It makes the number personal, and it makes any range you read online a description of other people's contracts.

There's a second reason the range is useless as a planning input. Even if you knew exactly what other hosts pay, you wouldn't know what they charge for cleaning, whether they absorb it, how long their minimum stay is, or what their fixed costs look like. The commission is one line in a calculation with four or five lines. Copying one line and expecting the total to work is how hosts end up busy and broke in the same season.

So the useful question isn't "what do others pay". It's "at what nightly rate does one booking of mine still cover what it costs me". That's a floor, and it's yours.

Finding your floor with your own numbers

The floor is the lowest nightly rate at which a single booking still pays for itself. Everything below it is a booking you'd have been better off without, and every night you sell below it is a subsidy you didn't agree to.

Build it from one real booking. Pick a stay from last month with a typical length, open the payout statement, and work down the page.

Start with what the channel kept. Not the headline figure, the actual amount on the statement. If you've had a terms change since, use a statement from after the change; a floor built on an old commission line is out of date before you finish it.

Add the cleaning cost you actually pay. What the cleaner charges for that unit at that stay length, including the laundry run and the consumables. If you charge a cleaning fee to the guest, note it and keep going — the next section is about whether that fee belongs in the floor at all.

Add the fixed cost the booking carries. The per-booking share of what you pay whether or not anyone stays: your subscription, insurance, the licence, the annual safety check, the accounting. A subscription priced per room per month is easy to spread because it doesn't move with bookings, which is exactly why it belongs in the floor and not in your per-night thinking.

Then find the rate. The number you're solving for is the nightly rate at which the accommodation total, minus the commission, minus cleaning, minus the fixed share, still leaves something you'd accept for the work. If you have to sell below it to fill a gap, do it knowingly, with the floor written down next to the decision.

Write the result somewhere you'll see it. A floor that lives in your head is a floor you'll undercut at eleven at night when a gap looks frightening.

The three levers that move it

Once the floor exists, three things move it, and you control them to different degrees.

Your commission. The slowest lever and the one with the most effect. It's set by your agreement, so it moves at renewal or not at all. This is also the lever that makes the range irrelevant: when your terms change, your floor changes, and no amount of reading about other hosts tells you by how much.

How cleaning is charged. If the guest pays a cleaning fee on its own line, your nightly rate doesn't have to carry the clean, and your floor sits lower. If you absorb it, the nightly rate carries it and the floor rises. Neither is wrong. What's wrong is changing the arrangement halfway through a season without changing the floor, which is how a host ends up with a rate that covers the clean in theory and doesn't in practice.

Minimum stay. The lever hosts undervalue. A two-night minimum puts the clean across two nights; a five-night minimum puts the same clean across five. The cleaning cost doesn't change; what each booked night has to carry does. On a unit with a heavy turnover cost, minimum stay does more for the floor than a rate rise that scares off the weekend bookings.

Rank them by how fast you can pull them. Minimum stay, this week. Cleaning arrangement, next season, with notice. Commission, at renewal, with a conversation.

Reviewing the floor each quarter

A floor is a snapshot of four moving things, so it ages. Review it once a quarter, on the same four inputs, and write the new figure next to the old one so you can see which input moved.

Three signals say it's time to look sooner. The mix of stay lengths shifts, so the clean is being spread across different numbers of nights. A fixed cost rises and nobody adjusts the per-booking share. Or occupancy looks healthy while the bank balance doesn't, which usually means the floor was set below the truth and the calendar has been filling at a loss.

That last one is where the dashboard earns its place. localsbnb.com shows occupancy, ADR and RevPAR beside the calendar, so a quarter of full nights at a flat ADR is visible as exactly what it is: volume without price movement. You can't fix a floor you can't see failing.

FAQ

Can I just use the commission figure a channel advertises?

You can start there, but it isn't the figure you'll be charged. What you pay is set in your own agreement, and the advertised number describes a different contract. Build the floor from a statement you've actually received.

Should the cleaning fee go into the floor or on its own line?

Either, as long as the floor matches the choice. If the guest pays it separately, the nightly rate doesn't have to carry the clean. If you absorb it, the floor has to. The mistake is running one arrangement with a floor built for the other.

How often should the floor change?

Every quarter, on purpose, with the four inputs re-read. Between reviews, change it only when an input changes — a new agreement, a cleaner's price, a fixed cost. Changing the floor because a week looks quiet is how a floor stops meaning anything.

A floor is arithmetic you do once and then check, not a feeling you consult. localsbnb.com keeps the calendar and the three operating measures together, which is where a floor that's set too low shows up first; the statement the figures come from is yours to read.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. Commission terms, cleaning arrangements and platform rules are set by your own agreements and change. Confirm the current terms of each platform you use, and your own current costs, before you reset a rate.