Vacation rental listing sites compared: where owners should list

The main vacation rental listing sites for owners in the United States are Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com. Each brings its own audience and takes a commission on every booking. Around them sit specialist sites, a few that charge no commission, Google’s rental results and the one channel you control, which is your own website.

This guide compares them on what an owner cares about: the fee, the guests, the rules and the work. Every fee comes from the company’s own page, read on November 10, 2026. Where a company does not publish a rate, I say so.

Vacation rental listing sites at a glance

Site	What the owner pays	What the guest pays on top	Fits best
Airbnb	15.5% of the booking for most hosts	Nothing separate on a single-fee listing	Almost any home, anywhere
Vrbo	12% commission on bookings made from October 29, 2026	A traveler service fee	Whole homes for families and groups
Booking.com	A commission. The rate is shown when you register, not published	Not stated on the page I read	City apartments and shorter stays
Hipcamp	15% for private landowners	A service fee, with a $3 minimum	Cabins, glamping and land
Houfy	0% commission. A one-time $5.99 verification, with optional paid plans	Nothing	Owners who can bring some of their own demand
Google’s rental results	Nothing to Google	Nothing	Managers whose booking software is a Google partner
Your own website	Card processing, about 2.9% plus 30 cents	Nothing, unless you add a fee	Anyone planning to host for years

The table is a starting point. Most vacation rental listing sites are free to join and charge when a booking arrives. Fees are applied to slightly different bases, and each site has conditions the sections below cover.

How I compared them

I read each company’s own fee and host pages and recorded what they say. I did not rely on other blogs for any rate.

I looked at four things on each site.

1. What the owner pays per booking, and any fixed cost.
2. What the guest pays on top, because that affects whether they book.
3. Who the site is built for.
4. What rules come with listing there.

Two limits are worth stating. I have not tested how many bookings each site sends, because that depends on your property and your market. And Booking.com does not publish its commission, so its row has a gap that only your own registration can fill.

The three large vacation rental booking sites

Most bookings for most owners come from three vacation rental booking sites. They differ more in audience and rules than in what they cost.

The largest home-sharing platform

Airbnb is the default for most hosts. Its own fast facts list more than 9 million active listings, more than 5.5 million hosts and stays in over 220 countries and regions.

Most hosts now pay a single service fee of 15.5%, taken from the payout. Guests on a single-fee listing see no separate service fee, so the price you set is close to the price they pay. The guide to Airbnb host fees has the arithmetic and the exceptions.

What you get for the fee is reach and protection. Airbnb describes host damage protection of up to $3 million, which it says is not insurance.

What you give up is control. Payments must stay on the platform, the search order is Airbnb’s, and for bookings made on or after November 20, 2026, there are new limits on what hosts can require of guests. The guide to Airbnb rules for hosts covers them.

Vrbo

Vrbo is the closest like-for-like alternative for a whole home. Its host page says it specializes in families and groups looking for an entire place, and that listing is free.

Hosts pay a flat 12% commission on bookings made on or after October 29, 2026. Expedia Group’s announcement says that rate includes payment processing. Travelers pay a service fee on top, which Vrbo sets.

Vrbo is part of Expedia Group, and its host page says a listing can be distributed across the group’s brands if instant booking is on. It also says stays booked through Vrbo come with $1 million in liability insurance.

Vrbo has its own rules about keeping bookings on the platform. The guide to Vrbo fees for hosts has the detail, and Vrbo vs Airbnb for hosts compares the two side by side.

Booking.com

Booking.com began with hotels and lists homes and apartments as well. Its audience is used to booking a room in a few taps, often for a short stay.

It works on commission. Its own page for new partners says the percentage is shown at the agreement step of registration, and that it sends an invoice each month for the commission owed. It does not publish the rate.

That billing model is different from the other two. On Airbnb and Vrbo the fee comes out of your payout. On Booking.com the commission is invoiced each month, so keep money aside for it.

Other companies’ guides often quote a typical rate. I have not repeated one here, because I could not confirm it on Booking.com’s own pages. Go as far as the agreement step and read your number before you decide.

Niche and specialist listing sites

A general platform shows your property to everyone. A specialist one shows it to fewer people who are looking for exactly that kind of stay.

Hipcamp

Hipcamp is built for outdoor stays: campsites, glamping, cabins and private land. If your rental is a cabin in the woods or a tent on a farm, its guests are already looking for you.

Its help center says listing is free and that private landowners pay a 15% commission, taken from each booking. Guests pay a service fee on top, with a $3 minimum. Hipcamp says the commission covers up to $1 million in insurance protection for hosts.

Other kinds of specialist site

There are also sites for furnished monthly stays, for high-end homes that pass an inspection and for single regions or resort towns. I have not listed fees for these, because I did not read each one’s pages.

The test is the same for all of them. Read the fee page, read the host terms, and ask how many bookings a property like yours can expect. A small site with the right guests can beat a large one with the wrong ones.

Commission-free listing sites

A few sites charge the owner no commission at all. Houfy is the best known in the United States.

Houfy’s help center says it charges 0% commission on bookings on all three of its plans: Free, Lite and Premium. A one-time $5.99 host verification is required before a listing appears in its search. Its own blog lists the optional plans at $7.99 and $11.99 per listing a month.

Guests book with the owner directly, and no service fee is added. You take the payment yourself, so card processing applies.

The trade is audience. Houfy’s blog describes more than 87,000 properties on the site, against the 9 million listings on the largest platform. Treat a commission-free site as an extra, low-cost channel, not as a replacement for the ones that send most of your guests.

Google is not a listing site, but it sends bookings

Google’s vacation rental results sit inside its travel search. A traveler picks dates, sees properties with prices and clicks through to book on another site.

Google says the listing is free and needs no advertising spend. You cannot sign up directly as a small operator. Your property reaches Google through booking software that is an approved connectivity partner.

There is a catch on eligibility. Google’s help page for property managers lists individual homeowners as currently ineligible, so ask your software whether your property qualifies. The guide to Google Vacation Rentals partners explains the route step by step.

Where should I list my vacation rental?

Owners often ask, “where should I list my vacation rental?” The honest answer depends on the property and on how many bookings you need.

Your situation	A sensible starting set
A whole home in a leisure market	The largest platform and Vrbo
A city apartment with short stays	The largest platform and Booking.com
A cabin, glamping site or rural land	The largest platform, Vrbo and Hipcamp
Several properties on booking software	The three large sites, Google’s rental results and your own site
A full calendar already, and high fees	Keep what works, add your own site, try a commission-free listing

Start with two. A third site adds bookings only if it reaches guests the first two do not, and every site adds work.

Then judge each one after a full season. Count the bookings it sent, what it took and how many problems it caused. Drop a site that costs more attention than it earns.

How many sites is too many

Each site you add has to be kept accurate: photos, prices, rules, messages and reviews. One person can run two or three well. Past that, something slips, and it is usually how fast you reply.

A simple rule works. Add a site only when your current ones are full, or when it reaches a guest the others miss. Remove one when it has sent nothing for a full season.

Short term rental listing sites and their rules

The fee is the visible cost. The rules are the hidden one, and short term rental listing sites differ on them.

On Airbnb, prices must be shown in full before booking and payment must happen on the platform. Links that lead guests off the platform and discounts for booking elsewhere are not allowed. The guide to the off-platform policy sets out what is and is not permitted.

On Vrbo, its help page says reservations and payments must stay on Vrbo. Messages that share contact details before a booking, or point to a personal website, are blocked.

Both sets of rules apply to guests the platform sent you. Neither stops you having a website, running ads or being found on Google. What you may not do is use a platform’s messages or guest list to pull its guests elsewhere.

Rules also cover what you ask of guests during a stay. For bookings made on or after November 20, 2026, Airbnb limits required checkout tasks and separate contracts. On your own site, the terms are yours to write, within the law. The guide to the vacation rental agreement covers that side.

What each site takes from the same booking

Percentages are easier to compare on one example. Take a $1,000 booking. Each company applies its fee to a slightly different base, so treat these as round figures.

Where the guest books	What comes out	What you keep
Airbnb, on the 15.5% single fee	$155	$845
Hipcamp, as a private landowner	$150	$850
Vrbo, at the 12% commission	$120	$880
Houfy, with card processing at 2.9% plus 30 cents	About $29.30	About $970.70
Your own website, same card processing	About $29.30	About $970.70

Booking.com is missing because its rate is not published.

Now a year. Say you take $40,000 in bookings, in 40 bookings of $1,000.

How the year is split	Fees for the year
All on the largest platform	$6,200
All on Vrbo	$4,800
Half on the largest platform, half on your own site	$3,686
All on your own site	$1,172

Nobody moves a whole year of bookings to their own site. The third row is the realistic goal, and it is worth $2,514 against the first. The Host Fee Calculator runs the same comparison with your own numbers.

A lower fee is not the whole picture. The platforms also bring the guest, handle the payment and stand behind some of the risk. The page on direct booking vs Airbnb weighs both sides.

Listing on several sites without double bookings

More sites mean more calendars. If two of them accept the same night, you have a double booking, an unhappy guest and a cancellation on your record.

There are two ways to keep calendars in step.

A calendar link, usually called iCal, lets one site read another’s booked dates. It is free and simple. It also updates on a delay, which leaves a gap in which two guests can book the same night.

Booking software holds one master calendar and updates each site through a direct connection. A booking anywhere closes the dates everywhere within moments. It can also push your rates, so you are not changing prices in three places.

If you list your vacation rental on multiple sites, software pays for itself the first time it prevents a clash. The same software can run the booking steps on your own website, as the guide to the direct booking engine explains.

Keep your prices consistent while you are at it. Guests compare, and a property that is cheaper on one site trains them to look there.

How to list: a checklist that works on any site

The details differ by site. The work does not.

1. Photos first. Lead with the outside, the main room, the best bedroom, the kitchen and the one thing guests come for.
2. Write the description as facts: beds, bathrooms, parking, distances.
3. Give the property a name guests can remember. The guide to vacation rental names can help.
4. Set a price by looking at the total a guest pays, fees included, at three similar places. The guide to the Airbnb cleaning fee covers the fee part.
5. Open the calendar as far ahead as you can honor.
6. Write house rules that are short and reasonable. Each site has its own format. The house rules template follows the largest platform’s categories.
7. Decide how you will handle damage. The guide to the Airbnb security deposit explains what the platforms allow.
8. Check your local rules on permits and lodging taxes before the first booking. Some sites collect certain taxes for you and some do not.
9. Check your insurance. A platform’s protection is not a substitute for your own policy.

Do it once, carefully, and copy the material to each site. The words and photos are yours and they travel.

Once a listing is live, the guide to Airbnb marketing covers how to move it up in search.

The risk of relying on one site

A single listing site is the simplest setup and the most exposed. Vacation rental listing sites change their terms on their own schedule, not yours.

In 2026 alone, Airbnb moved most hosts to the 15.5% single fee and set new limits on what hosts can require of guests, for bookings from November 20. Vrbo changed its commission to a flat 12%. None of those changes was the host’s choice, and each one moved income or control.

The guide to the Airbnb host fee change shows what the first of those cost.

Search position is the other exposure. A listing can lose visibility with no change on the owner’s side. The guide to Airbnb bookings down explains how to tell a local dip from a platform one.

A second site spreads that risk. It does not remove it, because the second site sets its own fees and rules too. The guide to Airbnb alternatives for hosts looks at the options from that angle.

Your own website: the channel you control

Every site above is rented space. Your own website is the only channel where the fee, the rules and the search order are yours.

It is also the only one that arrives empty. A platform brings travelers. A website brings none until you earn or buy the visits, through Google, AI search, ads, social pages and guests who have booked direct before.

That makes it a long-term channel, not a quick one. It suits an owner who plans to host for years and wants one source of bookings that cannot be repriced by someone else. The guide on how to get more direct bookings covers where the visits come from.

I build these sites, so weigh this part accordingly. If you want to see what is involved and what it costs, the page on vacation rental website design sets it out. If you already use booking software, the booking software integrations page shows how a site connects to it.

Final Thought

The best mix of vacation rental listing sites is usually two or three that reach different guests, kept in step by one calendar. Choose them by audience first and fee second, and judge each after a season on what it sent and what it took. Then add the channel none of them can give you, which is a site of your own.

Start by putting numbers on it. The Host Fee Calculator shows what each platform takes from your bookings in a year, and what a direct booking would keep.