The market default is 20% of net rental revenue, meaning nightly rate plus any fees the guest pays that aren't a pass-through, calculated after the platform's host service fee and after lodging taxes come out. Cleaning fees are normally excluded from the fee base because that money goes straight to the cleaner. If cleaning is left in, you're earning 20% on money you're just handing to someone else, and owners notice that fast.
On your cabin, nightly rate of $26k less roughly 3% platform host fee is about $25.2k, so a fee on that base is around $5,000 a year. If the agreement instead reads 20% of everything the guest pays, cleaning pulls into the base too, and what that adds depends on your number of stays, not your number of nights. At a three-night average, 130 nights is about 43 cleans, roughly $6,450, taking the fee to around $6,300. Even at a two-night average it's 65 cleans, about $9,750, and around $6,900. Count your actual turnovers before you argue the point. Same words on the page, very different number.
One term worth sorting out before you sign anything: who receives the payout. Airbnb has a co-host payout split feature that sends your percentage directly to your account when the guest checks in, and Vrbo does not work the same way, so on some platforms you'll be invoicing the owner monthly and waiting to get paid. That timing difference decides whether you need working capital. Write the fee base, the exclusions, and the payout mechanism into the agreement in plain numbers rather than the phrase "gross revenue," because that phrase means four different things depending on who wrote it.
