Most cleaners treat Airbnb turnovers as small jobs — a quick wipe-down for less money than a real house clean. That's exactly backwards. A short-term-rental turnover pays less per job and more per hour than almost any residential work you can book, and a single property can out-earn ten one-off clients over a year. The catch is that hosts aren't buying cleaning. They're buying speed, reliability, and the freedom to never think about it again — and that's what you price for.
Why one host beats ten one-off clients
A one-off deep clean is a single transaction: you clean once, you get paid once, and you go looking for the next stranger. A short-term rental is the opposite. A popular Airbnb turns over 15–20 times a month, so even at $75 a turnover that's $1,125–$1,500 a month from a single address (Turno). Land three of those and you have a full-time income from three keys you already know how to reach.
That volume is the whole game. The hardest, most expensive part of any cleaning business is finding the next client — which is why getting cleaning clients is the work most cleaners underestimate. A host who turns over twice a week hands you that volume from one relationship. You stop selling and start servicing, and your effective cost of acquiring work drops to almost nothing.
There's a second advantage hiding in that volume: density. Short-term rentals cluster — beach towns, downtown cores, ski areas — so once you have one account in a building or neighborhood, the next is often a short drive away. A tight cluster of turnover properties lets you stack several jobs into a single day with minimal travel between them, and travel time is dead time you don't get paid for. Build a route of nearby Airbnbs and your real hourly earnings climb again, because the gaps between paying work shrink to almost nothing.
The margin math: less per job, more per hour
Turnover cleaning is priced lower per job than a standard home clean — and that scares cleaners off. It shouldn't. By property size, turnovers typically run about $40–$90 for a one-bedroom (averaging ~$53), $50–$130 for a two-bedroom (~$72), and $70–$150 for a three-bedroom (~$100) (AirDNA). A standard residential visit, by comparison, runs $120–$280 ().
Luciano Rezende · Founder, CleanerFlow
Luciano founded CleanerFlow after years building tools for residential cleaning professionals. He writes about the economics of getting clients, pricing jobs, and running a cleaning business that lasts.
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