Vrbo is one of three booking platforms of real global scale, and for a great many holiday-home owners it is the one that produces the longest bookings and the least trouble. It is also frequently misunderstood, partly because a decade of articles about it — including, until this update, our own — describe a company and a fee model that no longer exist.
So here is the position as it actually stands.
What Vrbo is now
Vrbo is part of Expedia Group, alongside Hotels.com, Travelocity and Orbitz. It is not part of “HomeAway Inc” in any meaningful sense: HomeAway was folded into Vrbo and retired as a consumer brand, and homeaway.com now redirects to vrbo.com.
That matters practically, not just historically. If you read advice telling you to list on HomeAway and Vrbo as two separate channels, or quoting HomeAway's fees, it was written before 2020 and you should discount everything else in it too.
What it costs an owner
Two models, and for most owners reading this only one is available.
Pay-per-booking. The standard arrangement. Widely reported as a 5% commission on the booking, plus a 3% payment processing fee — so roughly 8% all in. The commission applies to the nightly rate and to mandatory charges such as cleaning and pet fees, but not to a refundable security deposit.
The annual subscription. A flat fee, reported at around $699 per listing per year, plus the same 3% processing. Importantly, Vrbo has closed this to new hosts — it is available only to existing subscribers who renew. If you are considering Vrbo now, assume pay-per-booking.
For anyone still holding a subscription, the arithmetic is simple: at a 5% commission, the subscription is cheaper once the listing earns somewhere above roughly $14,000 a year. Below that, pay-per-booking costs less.
Separately, guests pay a service fee on top of your rate, commonly quoted in the range of 6–15%. You do not receive any of it, but you should know it exists, because it is part of what your guest pays and therefore part of how expensive your property looks against a direct booking.
One caveat we would rather state than bury: Vrbo's own help pages were unreachable when we checked, so these figures come from property-management sources that agree with one another rather than from the platform itself. They are also companies that sell software to hosts. Treat them as a reliable guide to the shape of the pricing and confirm the current numbers with Vrbo before you budget on them.
Who it actually suits
In our experience the platform sorts owners fairly cleanly.
It suits you if your property is a whole home rather than a room, sleeps a family or two couples, and lets by the week. Vrbo's audience skews towards families and longer stays, which tends to mean fewer changeovers, less wear and guests who read the listing properly. Owners of exactly the kind of house described in our floor-plan guide — two equal main bedrooms, a real dining table — usually do well here.
It suits you less if your property is a studio or a city apartment let by the night, or if your market is one where Vrbo has thin coverage. That varies enormously by country, and it is worth checking how many comparable properties near you are actually listed before assuming demand exists.
How it fits alongside everything else
The honest answer for most owners is that Vrbo is one channel of three, not a strategy. Our guide to where to list in 2026 sets out how the global market has narrowed and what each platform is now for.
Two practical points if you do list:
- Keep the calendar current. This was our complaint about the platform fourteen years ago and it remains the single most common failure among owners. A stale calendar wastes enquiries and damages your ranking within the platform.
- Do not let it become your only channel. An 8% cost is reasonable for bookings you would not otherwise have won. It is a poor deal on a returning guest who would have booked you directly. Building that direct relationship is the subject of its own article, and it is where the margin actually lives.
We take no commission from Vrbo or any other platform, and nothing on this page is a paid placement. Fees and terms change; confirm them with the platform before making a decision.