Short Term Rental Calculator 

Model a short-term rental before you buy or list. Enter the nightly rate, occupancy, cleaning fee, average stay, operating costs, and platform fee: the tool projects monthly and annual gross and net income. Add the property price for break-even occupancy, cap rate, cash-on-cash return, and payback period. Add a down payment and mortgage to separate cash-on-cash return from cap rate.

Quick Answer

How to use the short-term rental calculator

Enter the deal as you expect it to run, month in and month out, then read the risk line before the returns. Results stay hidden until you click Calculate, and Reset restores the worked example.

1. Price the nights: enter the nightly rate and the occupancy you genuinely expect. National US occupancy is forecast around 57% for 2026, but individual markets range from the high 30s to nearly 70%, so a national average is a starting point, never the answer.
2. Count the turnovers: enter the cleaning fee and the average stay length. The tool converts them into stays per month (booked nights ÷ average stay) and adds fee × stays to revenue.
3. Load the real costs: enter operating costs per month and the platform fee. Include the mortgage or rent, utilities, insurance, supplies, management, and what you actually pay for turnover cleaning, then check the fee against the cap rate calculator later when you compare this deal to a long-term rental.
4. Add the price (optional): the property price unlocks cap rate, cash-on-cash return, and payback period. Leave it blank and those rows disappear.
5. Stress it: re-run at 10 to 15 points below your expected occupancy. If the deal still clears break-even, it has a margin of safety; if it does not, the headline cap rate was doing all the work.

The formulas

One month of 30 days, occupancy applied evenly, fees on the subtotal. Every line in the results box is one of these:

The break-even formula deserves a second look because it is more precise than the shortcut most rental guides print. The shortcut divides costs by nightly rate × 30, ignoring both the cleaning revenue and the platform fee. On the worked example the shortcut says 26.67% while the exact formula says 24.26%: the shortcut overstates your risk line by ignoring $390 a month of cleaning revenue. When you are comparing two markets, that gap decides which property is actually safer, and the net rental income calculator is the right companion when you want the same honesty applied to a long-term lease.

Worked example: $150/night at 65% occupancy, checked against this exact tool

$150/night, 65% occupancy, $80 cleaning fee, 4-night average stays, $1,200/month costs, 3% platform fee. Every figure below is the calculator’s own output for the pre-filled inputs.

• Booked nights = 30 × 0.65 = 19.5; stays = 19.5 ÷ 4 = 4.875
• Gross = 150 × 19.5 + 80 × 4.875 = $3,315.00/month; platform fees = $99.45
• Net = $3,315.00 − $99.45 − $1,200.00 = $2,015.55/month = $24,186.60/year
• Break-even occupancy = 24.26%
• On a $300,000 property: cap rate 8.06%, payback 12.4 years

Now stress it the way an investor should. Run the same property at lower occupancy and watch which numbers move:

At 30% occupancy, still above the 24.26% break-even, the property nets $284.10 a month: thin, but alive. That is what a low break-even buys you. A property breaking even at 70% would be deeply negative at the same 30% occupancy.

Why the cleaning fee matters more than hosts expect

Short stays multiply turnovers, and every turnover collects the fee again. At 4-night stays and 65% occupancy you turn the unit nearly 5 times a month, so an $80 fee adds $390 a month, almost 12% of gross. Hosts who model only the nightly rate systematically undervalue short-stay strategies and overvalue long ones. The fee is also platform-fee-bearing on most platforms: the tool applies the fee % to the full subtotal including cleaning revenue, which matches how Airbnb’s own service fee help article describes the calculation.

One honest correction the table forces: the cleaning fee is revenue, not profit. If your cleaner charges $90 a turnover and you collect $80, you lose $10 every stay and that loss scales with turnover count. Put the real cleaning cost in operating costs; the fee input is only what the guest pays you. When you are ready to weigh the whole purchase, the buying rental property calculator frames the acquisition side this page skips.

The platform fee question: 3% or 15.5%?

The pre-filled 3% is Airbnb’s legacy split-fee for hosts. Airbnb has been migrating hosts to a single-fee structure at about 15.5%, with the guest fee removed, and the split fee is being phased out market by market. The tool takes any fee, so run both and compare; the same worked example looks very different:

The fee migration costs this example $414.37 a month, pushes break-even up 3.6 points, and cuts the cap rate from 8.06% to 6.40%. If your listing has already migrated and you still model 3%, every downstream number is fiction. Check the fee on a recent payout receipt before you trust any STR estimate, and sanity-check the monthly number against the 40x rent rule calculator when you are screening listings quickly.

Cap rate, cash-on-cash, and payback, honestly labeled

Cap rate (annual net ÷ price) compares the property against other investments: 8.06% beats most bonds. Cash-on-cash divides annual cash flow after debt service by your actual cash invested: with the pre-filled 20% down payment ($60,000) and a 6.5% 30-year mortgage, the $24,186.60 annual net less $18,203.56 of debt service leaves $5,983.04 of cash flow, a 9.97% cash-on-cash return on the same property. Without financing entered, cash-on-cash equals the cap rate, because the cash invested is the full price. Payback (12.4 years) tells you when cumulative profit repays the purchase. All three move with occupancy, which is why the stress table above matters more than any single headline figure.

What the tool does not do is just as important. It ignores income tax: US hosts report rental income and expenses, generally on Schedule E, and the 14-day rule can make lightly rented personal-use property fully tax-free but expense-free too, all covered in the IRS’s residential rental guidance summarized in this Publication 527 walkthrough and TurboTenant’s IRS rules summary. It ignores regulation, which can erase the whole model: cities cap nights, require licenses, or restrict STRs to primary residences, as Airbnb’s own legal and regulatory guidance for hosts warns. And it ignores seasonality, which is why the gross potential rent view of a long-term lease on the gross potential rent calculator is worth running as the boring alternative before you commit.

What competing calculators miss

The top results for this keyword each solve part of the problem:

• RentalPropTools short-term rental cash flow calculator: the strongest rival: a full worked example ($150/night, 54% occupancy, 3-night stays) with cleaning cost separated from the guest fee, NOI, cap rate, and a mortgage that turns the deal cash-flow negative. It proves the honest point that leverage, not revenue, usually kills STR deals. It has no break-even occupancy readout and no fee-model comparison.
• EpicCalculators Airbnb rental profit calculator: adds a mortgage input and a break-even occupancy formula, but uses the crude costs ÷ (nightly rate × 30) shortcut that ignores cleaning revenue and platform fees, overstating the risk line.
• Finexplained Airbnb ROI calculator: cap rate, cash-on-cash, cash flow, and total return over a holding period, with an independently verified computation claim. Strong on investor metrics, thin on the revenue mechanics: no cleaning-fee turnover modeling, no stay-length effect.
• Techvestor Airbnb income calculator: the only rival with scenario analysis (conservative × 0.8 occupancy, upside × 1.1) and a downloadable workbook. No break-even occupancy, no fee-model comparison.
• TheCalcs Airbnb revenue estimator: adds seasonal adjustments to the revenue projection, a real gap in every other tool. No costs, no cap rate, no break-even.
• Kodivio Airbnb profit calculator: a clean breakeven explainer (fixed costs ÷ net nightly rate = nights needed), but no full revenue model behind it.
• The gap this page fills: the exact break-even formula with cleaning revenue and platform fees included, cleaning-fee turnover modeling by stay length, the 3% vs 15.5% fee-model comparison, stress-test occupancy tables, and cap rate with an explicit no-mortgage label, all verified against the tool’s own arithmetic.

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