How to calculate a co-host's pay in Airbnb property management
Calculating a co-host’s pay is one of the most time-consuming — and most sensitive — tasks in running an Airbnb property-management business. A few euros off, repeated across dozens of bookings, and your team’s trust starts to erode. Here are the most common compensation models and how to calculate them cleanly.
What base do you calculate on?
Before even choosing a model, you need to define the calculation base: which amount does the percentage or flat fee apply to? Three bases come up most often:
- Gross revenue: the total paid by the guest.
- Revenue after channel fees: the gross minus the booking platform’s commission (Airbnb, Booking, etc.).
- Revenue after the cleaning fee: the gross minus the cleaning fee charged to the guest.
The choice isn’t neutral: paying your co-host on the gross while the platform takes 15% means paying them on money you never received. Most property managers calculate after channel fees.
The main compensation models
Percentage of revenue
The most common: the co-host earns a percentage (often 10–25%) of the revenue per booking. Easy to understand, it aligns pay with the property’s performance.
Flat fee per booking
A fixed amount (say €25) for each booking, regardless of its value. Ideal for work whose effort doesn’t depend on the nightly rate — welcoming guests, check-in, key handover.
Monthly flat fee
A fixed amount paid every month, independent of the number of bookings. Suited to a coordination role or a stable partnership.
Remaining revenue
Often reserved for the property owner: after all other compensations and fees are paid, whatever is left goes to them. This model never combines with a percentage or flat fee on the same person.
A concrete example
Take a €1,000 booking, with 15% platform fees and a €60 cleaning fee:
- Revenue after channel fees: 1,000 − 150 = €850
- Co-host at 15% after channel fees: 850 × 15% = €127.50
- Cleaning at a flat fee: €60
- Remaining revenue for the owner: 850 − 127.50 − 60 = €662.50
Multiply that by 40 bookings a month, split across several team members and several properties, each with its own rules… and you see why the end-of-month spreadsheet quickly becomes a nightmare.
Pitfalls to avoid
- Mixing bases: applying a percentage on the gross for one person and on the net for another creates unmanageable inconsistencies.
- Forgetting channel-specific fees: cleaning fees and commissions vary by channel.
- Recalculating by hand: every rule change mid-month multiplies the risk of error.
Automating the calculation
That’s exactly what CastorBnb does: you define one compensation rule per member and per property (percentage, flat fee, remaining revenue, calculation base), the tool syncs your bookings from your PMS and automatically computes what each person is owed — error-free, with a clear monthly report.
Try the free demo and watch the calculation run itself on sample data.