Last updated: October 2026
Fees last verified 14 October 2026
Booking.com says your exact commission percentage depends on your country, property type and accommodation agreement. Find it in the agreement or under Finance and Reservation statements in the extranet. A 15% rate can be useful for an illustration, but it should not be presented as the official rate for every UK B&B or holiday let. There is no separate guest service fee: the commission comes out of the host's side.
Short on time? Jump straight to the commission calculator.
Your rate is set in your Booking.com agreement, not by a headline on a blog. Hosts using Payments by Booking.com can also check Finance help. If the reservation statement shows a higher percentage than your base contract, check whether you participate in programmes such as Preferred Partner or Visibility Booster.
There is no guest-facing service fee on Booking.com. The guest pays the price you set, and Booking.com takes its cut from your payout. That makes the cost easy to overlook, because you never see a separate fee line, just a smaller payout.
Stack a 15% base rate with Payments by Booking.com and Preferred Partner, and the effective cost of a booking can sit well above 18% before you fund any Genius discount.
These two programmes are opt-in, and both move money out of your pocket in ways the headline commission rate does not show.
Genius: you fund the discount. Genius requires you to offer 10% to 20% off to Genius members (Level 1: 10%, Level 2: 15%, Level 3: 20%). That discount comes out of your revenue, not Booking.com's commission. On a £200 booking at Genius Level 2, the guest pays £170 and you absorb the £30 difference before any commission is calculated. Once you opt in, the discount applies to all Genius guests; you cannot pick and choose.
Preferred Partner: you pay the uplift. Joining the Preferred Partner programme adds roughly 3 percentage points to your commission rate in exchange for higher visibility in search results. On a 15% base rate, that takes you to around 18% on every booking while you stay in the programme, before payment processing fees.
Neither is automatically a bad deal: visibility and the Genius badge can bring bookings you would not otherwise get. But price them as what they are, a marketing cost you pay, not a free boost. Add them to the calculator above by raising your effective rate and comparing the yearly total.
Booking.com's current partner guidance says commission covers the room rate and additional charges such as cleaning and service fees. It also describes commission on chargeable cancellations and no-shows. Local city taxes are excluded, while treatment of VAT or GST in the booking amount depends on local rules and your General Delivery Terms.
VAT in the booking amount and VAT charged on the commission invoice are different questions. Do not assume the same treatment for both. Check your agreement, invoice and tax advice.
Assume your contract rate is 15%, the room charge is £200 and the commissionable cleaning fee is £30.
Commissionable amount: £230, commission: £230 × 0.15 = £34.50
Host receives: £195.50 before separate payment charges, programme costs, taxes and other deductions
If your contract instead states 18%, the same £230 gives £41.40 commission. That difference is why the property-specific rate matters more than a generic headline.
Now scale that across a season. A small B&B taking £40,000 a year through Booking.com at an assumed 15% hands over around £6,000 in commission alone, before extras. Figures are illustrative; your actual rate is set in your Booking.com extranet.
Use your own numbers. Set the commission rate to the one in your agreement, then add your rooms, booked nights and average rate. The saving estimate assumes only part of your bookings move to direct, and it deducts the card fees those direct bookings would pay through your own Stripe, so the figure stays honest.
Check your agreement or a reservation statement for your real rate. 15% is the common illustration; Preferred Partner and payment fees push the effective rate higher.
Most hosts keep their OTA listings. Repeat guests and people who search for you by name are the ones who move first.
Against a directbook.uk website at £1,999 one-time, 0% commission.
Honest maths: only the bookings that move direct save the commission. Direct bookings still pay card processing through your own Stripe (1.5% + 20p per booking, average stay 2 nights), and we deduct that. Booking engines such as freetobook charge £0 for direct bookings. Whatever stays on Booking.com stays exactly as it is.
Send us your numbers and we will check what you are really paying across Booking.com, Airbnb and Vrbo, and what moving your repeat and direct-search bookings to your own website would save. Free, no obligation.
Audit my commission on WhatsAppBooking.com's guidance says waived cancellation fees are not commissionable. It also describes conditions for no-shows where the fee is waived and for invalid cards you could not charge. Report reservation changes in the extranet within 48 hours of checkout so billing reflects them.
For example, if a £200 cancellation charge is retained and your applicable commission rate is 15%, the illustrative commission is £30. If the fee is fully waived and the platform's reporting conditions are met, its guidance says commission is not charged on that waived fee. Check the reservation statement rather than assuming every cancelled booking is free of commission.
A guest discount reduces the selling price. A higher commission rate changes the charge on the commissionable amount. Payment fees are another cost. Record each separately before comparing channels.
For example, a hypothetical 10% discount on £200 gives £180. At an assumed 15% commission on that amount, commission is £27 and the remainder is £153 before other costs. Relative to the original £200 price, the £47 difference includes a £20 discount and £27 commission. It is not a 23.5% commission rate.
| Booking.com | directbook.uk website | |
|---|---|---|
| Commission per booking | Per your contract (15% used as example) | 0% |
| Payment processing | 1.1-3.1% if they process it | Standard Stripe fees only, to Stripe |
| Visibility programmes | Extra ~3% (Preferred), 10-20% discounts (Genius) | None needed, it is your site |
| Cost structure | Ongoing, per booking, forever | One-time £1,999 build |
| Guest relationship | Booking.com owns the guest data | You own the guest data |
Commission is one side of the ledger; the website itself is the other. Our B&B website cost guide breaks down what each route to a direct booking site costs, so you can weigh build cost against commission cost with real numbers.
From 29 October 2026, Vrbo standardises its commission at 12%. The headline rate is only half the story: what it costs you depends on who collects the guest's payment.
Same booking, two settlement methods, a difference of around £30 per £1,000. Check your Vrbo agreement for your exact settlement method and payment fees before the 29 October changeover.
| On a £1,000 booking | Vrbo collects the payment | You collect the payment |
|---|---|---|
| Vrbo commission (12%) | £120 | £120 |
| Your payment processing (about 3%) | £0 (Vrbo handles it) | About £30 |
| Total cost | £120 (12%) | About £150 (about 15%) |
| You keep | £880 | About £850 |
Illustrative figures on a £1,000 booking. Your processor's exact rate and Vrbo's settlement terms for your account decide the real numbers.
This is not an either-or decision. Keep your Booking.com listing for discovery and keep taking those bookings. Your own website gives direct-search and repeat guests somewhere to book where you keep the full amount. Many hosts find that shifting even a third of bookings to direct covers the cost of a website many times over, while Booking.com keeps working as a discovery channel.
Commission is not the only cost going up. Across the UK, short-let regulation is tightening, and every new rule adds a compliance cost that comes out of the same revenue the platforms already tax.
Registration fees, safety upgrades and admin time apply whichever channel the booking came through: a direct website does not remove the compliance burden. What it does remove is the 15% commission the platforms take on top of it.
From 29 October 2026, Vrbo's updated host terms include a 30-day rule: if a guest contacted you through Vrbo and then books directly on your own website within 30 days, Vrbo can still charge commission on that booking, and the reporting obligation sits with you as the host.
This is exactly why owning the guest relationship matters. A guest who finds you on an OTA and books direct years later is yours. A guest who messages you on Vrbo on Monday and books on your site on Friday can still cost you 12%. The defence is the same either way: build a direct channel strong enough that guests come to you first, not through a platform inbox. Our B&B website design page explains how a hand-built site does that.
Developing: at the October 2026 VRMA conference in Nashville, hosts pushed back on the 12% commission and the 4.5.7 price-parity clause, and Vrbo signalled it may let hosts price lower on their own direct sites. As of 15 October 2026 no revised terms have been published, so the rules above stand as written for the 29 October changeover. We will update this page when Vrbo confirms.
There is no single official rate for every UK property. Your percentage is set in your Booking.com agreement; 15% is the rate most commonly used for illustrations. Programmes such as Preferred Partner add roughly 3 percentage points, and Payments by Booking.com adds a processing fee of around 1.1% to 3.1% on top.
Multiply the commissionable amount (room rate plus commissionable charges such as cleaning fees) by your contract rate. Example: £230 at 15% is £34.50 commission. The calculator above scales that across your booked nights and rooms to show the yearly total.
No. Unlike Airbnb, Booking.com has no separate guest service fee. The guest pays the price you set, and the commission comes out of your payout, which is why it is easy to overlook.
Vrbo moves to a standardised 12% commission from 29 October 2026. The headline rate only tells half the story: how the guest pays determines what you actually keep.
If Vrbo collects the guest payment, the 12% commission is the platform's cut and your payout is the booking value minus 12%: about £880 on a £1,000 booking. If you collect payment yourself, you still owe Vrbo 12% commission, and your own payment processor takes around another 3% on the transaction, so the total cost is roughly 15% and you keep about £850. Check your Vrbo agreement for your exact settlement method and payment fees.
Not on waived fees. Booking.com's guidance says waived cancellation fees are not commissionable, but commission does apply to cancellation charges you retain: a £200 retained charge at 15% means £30 commission. Report reservation changes in the extranet within 48 hours of checkout so billing reflects what actually happened.
Commission applies to chargeable no-shows and retained cancellation charges under Booking.com's partner guidance. If a no-show fee is waived under their conditions, or an invalid card could not be charged, commission is not due on that amount. City taxes are excluded from commission. Check the reservation statement rather than assuming.
England expects a mandatory short-let register from March 2027, Wales requires registration by 31 March 2027, and Scotland's licensing is already in force. These are fixed compliance costs on top of platform commission, which makes the commission, the one cost you can cut with direct bookings, matter more. See our England, Wales and Scotland guides.
From 29 October 2026, if a guest contacted you through Vrbo and books on your own website within 30 days, Vrbo can still charge commission and you must report it. The defence is a direct channel strong enough that guests come to you first.
Hand-built website, £1,999 one-time, 0% commission. Works with freetobook or eviivo.
Try a £9.90 demoQuestions? Call +44 7727 811227 (24/7 AI) · WhatsApp (human) · hello@directbook.uk
Last checked: 13 October 2026. General guidance only, not financial or tax advice. Confirm rates, programme participation, payment fees and any pricing restrictions in your own agreement. Sources: Booking.com: understanding your commission; Hostex: Vrbo 12% commission and the 30-day rule (Host Terms 4.8); TabiVista: Vrbo host fees 2026 (clauses 4.5.7 and 4.8); Staystra: Vrbo 12% commission and rate parity (4.5.7); Skift: VRMA blowback on Vrbo commission rise.