Free tool
Your Booking.com rate is not the rate you agreed.
The contract says 15%. Then Preferred Partner, payment processing and VAT on commission go on top. Tick what applies and see the number your bookings are actually paying. Nothing is sent anywhere — this runs in your browser.
Your effective commission rate is
15.0%
€2,700 a year on €18,000 of bookings.
Where it goes
- Commission at 15%
- €2,700
- Total to Booking.com
- €2,700
Tick the boxes that apply to you — Preferred Partner and payment fees are where the gap between the contract rate and the real one opens up.
- Booking.com, at these numbers
- €2,700
- Bookeba, whatever you book
- €228
That is about 12× a year of Bookeba — and Bookeba never takes a cut of a booking, so the figure does not move when you have a good year.
Keep the listing. It finds you guests who have never heard of you. This is what the ones who already have are costing.
The three that get left out
Preferred Partner
Roughly three points on top of your commission, in exchange for higher placement and a thumbs-up on the listing. It is worth it for some properties and not others — but it is a commission increase, so it belongs in the total.
Payments by Booking.com
If they collect from the guest and pay you out, there is a processing fee on top of commission — typically between 1.1% and 3.1% depending on your country and card mix. It is easy to miss because it lands as a deduction rather than an invoice.
VAT on commission
In much of the EU the commission invoice carries VAT. If you are VAT-registered you reclaim it and it is a cashflow question; if you are not, it is a straight cost. It applies to the commission, not to the payment fee.
Rates vary by country, property type and contract, and this is an estimate rather than an invoice — your extranet has the real figures.
Questions
What hosts ask about the commission.
What is Booking.com's commission rate right now?+
15% is the usual starting point, though contracts run from roughly 10% to 25% depending on country, property type and when you signed. Preferred Partner adds about three percentage points on top. If Booking.com collects the money from the guest for you, there is a payment processing fee of roughly 1.1% to 3.1%. In much of the EU the commission invoice also carries VAT. Your extranet invoice is the authority — the calculator above takes your own figures rather than assuming ours.
Is Booking.com commission negotiable?+
More than Airbnb's, and less than you would like. Rates genuinely do vary between properties, and larger or multi-property hosts have had some success asking — particularly when signing up, renewing, or being courted for a programme. The parts you can decide outright are the optional ones: Preferred Partner is a programme you can leave, and Payments by Booking.com is a choice if you are able to take cards yourself.
Can I charge less on my own site than on Booking.com?+
In the EEA, yes. Booking.com's rate parity clauses have been struck down or narrowed across Europe — banned outright in several countries, and the Digital Markets Act required Booking.com to stop applying them in the EEA from late 2024. Outside the EEA, and on older contracts, read yours before assuming. Where parity no longer binds you, a lower direct price is simply the commission you are not paying being handed to the guest instead.
How do I actually reduce what I pay Booking.com?+
Take the optional costs off first. Work out whether Preferred Partner returns more than the three points it costs — the calculator gives you the cash figure rather than the percentage, which is the number worth judging it on — and whether you can process cards yourself instead of paying for Payments by Booking.com. Then move your repeat guests to your own link. The platform earns its commission finding you strangers; it earns nothing finding you the family that stayed last year.
Related tools
On Airbnb as well?
Their fee is split with the guest, so the number you feel is a fraction of what the booking actually pays.
Nothing on top. Nothing per booking.
A booking page for each of your places, kept in step with your Booking.com and Airbnb calendars, with no commission on anything booked through it. €19 a month for the first property, €14 for each after. From your 5th place onwards, €12 each.
€228 a year, flat · cancel any time