Fees, commissions, and payouts

Kabora's pricing is designed to be readable in one breath:

• No subscription, ever. The software is free — all of it.
• A guest pays the price on your listing, plus any lodging tax. Kabora adds no fee of its own at checkout.
• Bookings that came from Kabora search: a 5% platform fee, paid by you, out of your side of the booking.
• Bookings you brought yourself, taken through your own site: a 2% platform fee, paid by you. Cheaper because all Kabora did was run the checkout.
• Bookings you type in yourself: 2% on whatever the guest pays through Kabora. Nothing when they pay you some other way.
• Nights another site's calendar link blocks: nothing. Kabora never saw that money.
• Money a guest pays you outside the booking through Kabora — a money request they agreed to, or money they send you: 2%. Money going back to a guest never carries a fee.
• Payments you record yourself — cash at the door, a bank transfer, a cheque: nothing.
• Lodging tax is charged to the guest and passed to you in full. Kabora never takes a percentage of tax.

Kabora's fee only ever comes out of money that goes through Kabora.

This changed on 14 August 2026. Before that the guest paid an 8% service fee on top of your price and nothing came out of your side. If you read that here previously, this is what replaced it.

Where the money actually goes

The guest pays you, not Kabora. The card charge is created on your own Stripe account, so your business name is on the guest's statement, the money is yours from the moment it settles, and it is paid out to your bank the day after the guest checks in (see "A refund after you've been paid" for what happens before and after that day). Kabora never holds it, not even briefly.

Our fee is taken out of that same charge at the moment it happens, so there is nothing for you to remit and nothing for us to invoice. You also pay Stripe's own card processing directly, exactly as you would with any card processor — that is not something Kabora added, it is the cost of taking a card.

Because you are the merchant, refunds and chargebacks are yours to control rather than ours to sit between.

What a cancellation costs

The platform fee and the card processing are never returned, to anyone, whatever the reason. A guest is told the exact amount before they press pay.

• If the guest cancels, their cancellation policy decides the rest — and the fees come off the top first, so a "50%" band means 50% of what was left after them. On a $2,000 booking with $98.30 of fees, a 50% band pays the guest back $950.85.
• If you cancel, the guest gets everything they paid, in full. The fees still are not returned, which means you absorb them. That is deliberate: the guest did nothing wrong and has lost their trip.

Payouts

Card payments run on Stripe, on your own connected account, and each stay's share reaches your bank the day after the guest checks in. Connecting it is under Settings → Payments and payouts — see "Setting up payments". A place can't be listed on Kabora until it is connected.

Paying a teammate for a finished job is under Operations → Payments: record what you paid them yourself, for nothing, or Pay through Kabora once they have set up payouts — 2%, out of their side. See "Paying a cleaner for a task".