How this calculator works
Booked nights = nights available × occupancy. Stays = booked nights ÷ average stay length. Gross revenue = booked nights × nightly rate, plus one cleaning fee per stay. Airbnb's host fee is then taken off the booking total: 3% under the standard split-fee structure (where the guest pays most of the service fee), or 15.5% under the host-only fee structure that connected and professional hosts increasingly default to. What's left is your payout.
What hosts get wrong about income estimates
1. Using the occupancy from the listing next door's best month
Occupancy is seasonal almost everywhere. A beach town can run 90% in July and 25% in February — an annual average of 55–65% is a healthy, realistic planning number for most markets. If your purchase decision only works at 85% year-round, it doesn't work.
2. Forgetting the fee structure changed under them
Hosts on property-management software are commonly moved to the 15.5% host-only fee without noticing. That single line is worth more than $180/month on a $120/night listing at 65% occupancy — check which structure you're actually on before trusting any projection, including this one.
3. Counting the cleaning fee as income
The cleaning fee passes through you to your cleaner (use the cleaning fee calculator to set it from cost). Counting it as revenue makes the top line look 10–20% better than reality.
4. Ignoring the average-stay lever
At the same occupancy, longer stays mean fewer turnovers, less wear, and less of your time. Many hosts earn almost the same net with less grief by pricing to attract 5–7 night stays. Watch how "stays per month" falls as you raise the average stay above — every one of those is a clean you don't pay for.
Sanity-check before you buy
Run three versions: pessimistic (50% occupancy), realistic (65%), optimistic (75%). If the pessimistic version still covers the mortgage with the profit calculator, you have a real deal. If only the optimistic version works, you have a hope, not an investment.