Airbnb Calculator — Free STR Cash Flow vs Long-Term Rent

Short-term revenue is nightly rate times the nights you actually fill — then cleaning, platform, and management take their bite. A long-term rent comparison keeps you honest.

Toggle nightly × occupancy when you have a rate and a fill percentage. Occupancy here is percent of 365 nights. Fifty percent at $200 is $36,500 gross, not 'two hundred a night' as if the house rented like a hotel with a sign. Toggle annual gross when you already have a trailing twelve from a manager or a channel dashboard. Do not mix them. Pick one story and stick to it.

Cleaning is monthly because that is how the invoices feel. Platform and management percents come off gross. Maintenance percent does too. Taxes and insurance are annual dollars. Furnishing is cash in at the start and the payback line asks how many years of cash flow it takes to earn that furniture back. If payback is 'never' because cash flow is negative, the couches are not an investment. They are a donation to the guest who left sand in the sofa.

NOI is net revenue minus taxes and insurance. Cash flow subtracts debt service from a loan sized by purchase and down payment percent. Cash-on-cash uses down payment plus furnishing as the stack. That is the honest denominator. People who omit furnishing are reporting a fantasy CoC.

The long-term comparison uses monthly LTR rent minus taxes, insurance, and the same debt. It does not give the long-term side a management percent, because many small landlords self-manage. If you would hire a 1-year manager either way, mentally haircut the LTR number. The point is direction: is the extra STR hassle actually paying you, or are you running a hotel to match what a boring lease would have done?

Regulations, HOAs, and seasonality will do more damage than this calculator can. If your city is unstable on permits, haircut occupancy until you would still buy. A model at 75% occupancy in a town that just banned stays under 30 days is fan fiction.

Use multifamily when you have several long-term doors. Use BRRRR if the play is furnish, stabilize, refinance. Use this when the operating question is STR versus a plain lease on the same house.

The identities

Gross = Nightly × 365 × Occupancy%
Cash-on-cash = Annual cash / (Down + Furnishing)

You can replace gross with an annual number. LTR cash uses rent × 12 minus taxes, insurance, and debt.

How people blow the result

• Using peak-season nightly as if it were January Tuesday.
• Forgetting platform fees because 'I collect off-platform.' Until you don't.
• Skipping furnishing in cash-in so CoC looks like a hedge fund.

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