Published October 2026. Every figure below comes from Agoda’s own Partner Hub pages, with channel manager and operator reports where Agoda does not publish a number, all checked in October 2026. This is one of a series: the overview of every platform is in Booking platform commissions: what hosts really pay, with Booking.com’s 15% in Booking.com commission explained (2026), Airbnb’s 15.5% in Airbnb host fees explained (2026) and Vrbo’s new 12% in Vrbo fees explained (2026).
The short version
- Agoda charges the host a commission, which it calls compensation, agreed in your contract and set by your country and sometimes your payment model. Agoda does not publish a rate card. Operators and channel managers report 15% to 20% for most properties, with a wider spread of 12% to 25% by region, and Agoda’s own worked example uses 20%.
- Agoda Homes, the programme for single unit residential hosts, is reported at 5% to 15%, though some channel managers quote 15% to 18%. Your figure is in the Partner Portal under Finance and Contracted compensation.
- It is charged on the reference sell rate, which is the price the guest pays. If your rate is loaded Sell Inclusive, the default, the taxes and fees inside it are commissioned too. Guests pay no separate Agoda service fee.
- The visibility programmes stack on top. The Agoda Growth Program adds 10%, 12% or 15% to your commission on every booking. Agoda Growth Express adds whatever percentage you choose. An 18% host on the Standard plan pays 30%.
- You are paid after the stay, not before. A new single unit host’s first payout is held for 30 days after the first guest checks out. After that Auto Pay runs within 24 hours of check out, plus 3 to 5 business days for the bank.
- Agoda does not add VAT to its commission, but in many countries you have to self assess it. A $1,000 reservation at 18% costs you $180, or $300 on the Standard growth plan, and you keep $820 or $700.
- Your own website still costs you 0%. On a Hello Hosty direct booking website the guest pays a 0.9% booking fee and you keep the full rate.
What the commission is, and what it is charged on
Agoda is Booking.com’s sister company, owned by Booking Holdings since 2007 and run from Singapore. It lists over 6 million holiday properties and is the channel that matters most if your guests come from Asia: one channel manager reports that for its hosts in Thailand, the Philippines and Japan, Agoda brings more bookings than any other platform. Like Booking.com, it charges nothing to the guest. The whole cost sits with the host as a commission on each stay, which Agoda’s documents call compensation.
Agoda does not publish the rate. Its Partner Hub says the compensation is either a percentage of the reference sell rate or a markup added to the loaded rate, that it depends on your location and in some cases your payment model, and that it cannot be standardised across countries because marketing costs differ between, say, Thailand and Singapore. Third parties fill in the number: 15% to 20% for most properties, estimates from 12% to 25% by region, and one channel manager’s breakdown of 15% to 18% in Southeast Asia, 18% to 20% in East Asia and 18% to 22% in Europe and the Americas. The markup model applies to Agoda Collect bookings in the United States, Taiwan and mainland China, where the commission is built into the price rather than deducted from it. Your own rate is one click away: Partner Portal, Finance, Contracted compensation.
The base is the reference sell rate. Since November 2023 Agoda no longer lets you load a net rate; you load the price the guest will see and Agoda deducts its compensation to arrive at your base rate. Agoda’s own example: load $100, compensation at 20% is $20, you receive $80. Add a 10% promotion and the reference sell rate drops to $90, compensation to $18, and you receive $72. Two things follow. First, every discount you fund comes off the top and the commission is charged on what is left, exactly as Genius works on Booking.com. Second, the reference sell rate in Agoda’s example is labelled as including taxes and fees. If your rate is loaded Sell Inclusive, which is the default, the tax inside it is commissioned along with the room. Agoda offers a Sell Exclusive option; ask your account manager what it does to the base in your market before you assume it saves you anything.
VAT is the quieter line. Agoda’s position, in its own words, is that there is “no requirement for Agoda to charge VAT on its services (commission)”, so unlike Booking.com it does not add VAT to the commission statement. But its tax page goes on to say that in many countries you are still required to report and self assess VAT on Agoda’s services. If you are VAT registered that is usually a reverse charge that nets to nothing. If you are not, it can be a real cost, and in some markets there is a separate tax on the service itself: Malaysia, for example, applies its 8% service tax to the commission. Agoda also reminds you that the tax invoice to the guest, at the full sell rate, remains your job everywhere except the United States, mainland China and Taiwan.
The add ons
Agoda Growth Program. This is Agoda’s version of Preferred Partner, and unlike Booking.com it publishes the price. Basic adds 10% to your commission on every booking, Standard adds 12% plus a 30% discount on Sponsored Listings, and Premium adds 15% plus the Sponsored Listings discount and a one off credit for Growth Express. Agoda calls the extra the cost per booking and is explicit that it sits on top of your contracted rate: in its own webinar example, an 18% host on the Basic plan pays 28%. You get the Preferred Partner badge, a ranking boost and a share of Agoda’s spend on metasearch and affiliates. There is a 2 week free trial once per property that converts to the paid plan unless you opt out, then a 90 day minimum before you can leave, and it applies to every booking, not just the ones the badge brought.
Agoda Growth Express. This is a ranking boost you dial up yourself. You pick a percentage, Agoda adds it to your commission on each departed booking from the campaign, and you target by stay date, traveller origin, lead time or day of week. Cancelled bookings are not charged. It cannot be paused, only deleted and recreated. Agoda’s reported averages for partners running it for 30 days or more are 28% more room nights and 20% more revenue, with the usual note that growth is not guaranteed. Choose 5% and your 18% is now 23%.
Sponsored Listings. The third lever is a cost per click auction run across Booking.com, Priceline and Agoda from one account, with bids from $0.50 a click and a budget you load in advance. You pay for the click whether or not the guest books, but it is the only one of the three that leaves your commission rate alone.
Promotions. Secret deals, early bird rates and the Mega Sale are discounts you fund. They reduce the reference sell rate and the commission is charged on what is left: a 10% promotion at 18% turns $1,000 into $738 in your hands.
Cancellations and no shows. Commission is due when a guest completes a stay, and when you charge a guest under a non refundable or partially refundable policy or for a no show. If you waive the fee, or the guest cancels inside the free window, nothing is due. Report a no show in the Partner Portal within 72 hours of check in: after that the option greys out and you are into a support ticket to avoid paying commission on a stay that never happened.
When you are paid
Agoda is a merchant platform by default. Under Agoda Collect the guest pays Agoda, and Agoda pays you after the stay, net of compensation and any programme fees. The money comes one of three ways: a virtual card on ePass that you charge yourself from the departure day, a bank transfer that lands 3 to 5 business days after you confirm the payout, or an Agoda card you run through your own terminal. The virtual card has a catch: once a payout is confirmed you have 24 hours to charge it, or you wait 72 hours for a new one, and card details expire if you leave them for months. Agoda’s partner pages list no separate payment processing fee on these payouts; your bank’s charge for receiving the transfer is yours.
Single unit homes get a slower start. Agoda holds a new host’s first payout for 30 days after the first guest checks out, per property, to leave room for disputes. Once that first payout has cleared, Auto Pay processes later bookings within 24 hours of check out, manual requests within 1 to 3 days, and the bank adds 3 to 5 business days either way. If you list several homes, ask Agoda support to skip the 30 day window on the others once the first payout has arrived; it will not happen by itself. One guide for Indian hosts reports 30 to 45 days as the norm there.
Property Collect is the alternative. The guest pays you at check in, by card guarantee or without one, and Agoda recovers its compensation by offsetting it against your other prepaid bookings rather than sending an invoice. That means your Agoda Collect payouts arrive lighter than the voucher suggests, the commission on these stays only shows on the Finance tab, and if a month is mostly Property Collect your receivable can go negative until more prepaid bookings reach their payable date. Agoda says properties that switch it on see 5% more bookings on average. It applies to every room type once activated.
One change for 2026: on 18 August Agoda renamed its extranet from YCS to the Agoda Partner Portal, with new finance, promotion and messaging screens. The commission did not change with it; your rate, payouts and offsets all sit under the Finance menu of the new portal.
What a booking really costs
Take a $1,000 reservation at a contracted rate of 18%, the middle of the reported range and the figure Agoda used in its own partner webinar. Compensation is $180 and you keep $820. On the Growth Program Basic plan it is $280 and you keep $720; Standard, $300 and $700; Premium, $330 and $670. Add a 5% Growth Express campaign to the base rate and it is $230 and $770. Put the stay on a 10% promotion and the guest pays $900, Agoda takes $162 and you keep $738. If you have to self assess VAT and cannot reclaim it, add 20% of the commission in the UK, $36, or 7% in Thailand, about $13.
Now compare the guest’s side. On Airbnb the guest pays $1,000 and you keep $845. On Booking.com the guest pays $1,000 and you keep $789 to $839, less on Preferred. On Vrbo from 29 October the guest pays $1,000 plus a service fee of around 11% to 14%, and you keep $880. On Agoda the guest pays $1,000 and you keep $820 at the headline rate, or $700 on the Standard growth plan. The difference between Agoda and Booking.com is not the base rate, which is similar. It is that Agoda’s uplifts are bigger, published, and start with a free trial that converts.
Side by side
Checked October 2026. Figures are for a $1,000 reservation before itemised taxes. Figures marked reported come from channel manager and operator accounts because the platform does not publish them.
| Agoda | Booking.com | Airbnb | Vrbo from 29 Oct 2026 | Your own website on Hello Hosty | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Host fee | 15% to 20% reported, 12% to 25% by region; Agoda Homes 5% to 15% reported | 10% to 25%, about 15% | 15.5% | 12% (12% to 15% some regions) | 0% |
| Charged on | Reference sell rate, taxes and fees included when loaded Sell Inclusive | Rate plus fees, itemised taxes excluded | Rate plus fees | Rate plus fees | Nothing |
| Payment processing | No separate fee listed | 1.1% to 3.1% if Booking.com pays you | Included | Included where Vrbo processes | Your own gateway |
| VAT on the fee | Not added; self assess where your country requires it | Added if not registered, about 3 points | Included in the fee shown | Added where applicable | None |
| Guest fee | None | None | None | About 11% to 14% | 0.9% booking fee |
| Visibility programmes | Growth Program plus 10, 12 or 15 points; Growth Express plus whatever you choose; Sponsored Listings from $0.50 a click | Preferred about plus 3 points, Preferred Plus about plus 8 (reported); Genius 10% to 20% discount you fund | None | None | None |
| You keep on $1,000 | $820 at 18%; $700 on Growth Program Standard | $789 to $839, less on a programme | $845 | $880 | $1,000 (guest pays $1,009) |
| First payout | After check out; 30 day hold on a new single unit host’s first payout | Monthly invoice, or deducted per payout | About 24 hours after check in | After check in | Your gateway’s schedule |
What to do now
Open the Partner Portal and read your contracted compensation, then open Growth programs and check whether a trial has quietly become a plan. If you joined the Growth Program and the 90 days are up, work out what it brought in against the 10 to 15 points it costs on every booking, including the bookings you would have had anyway. Treat Growth Express the same way: run it on the dates you struggle to fill, delete it for the dates you do not.
Price Agoda to carry its own cost. The guest sees the whole price, so the number you load should be grossed up for the commission and any plan you are on. To net the same as your own website at 18%, the Agoda rate needs to be about 22% higher; at 20%, 25% higher; on the Standard growth plan, 43% higher. Hello Hosty’s channel manager lets you set a rate modifier per platform, up or down by an amount or a percentage, so Agoda can sit 22% above your website, Booking.com 20% above it and Airbnb 18% above it without you touching four calendars.
Ask the Sell Exclusive question. If your Agoda rate is loaded Sell Inclusive, every tax and fee inside it is being commissioned. Agoda’s calculator in the Partner Portal shows the base rate under each option; ten minutes with it and your account manager is the cheapest audit you will do this year.
Mind the payout gap. A 30 day hold on the first payout, a virtual card you must charge within 24 hours of confirming it, and Property Collect offsets that never appear on the booking itself are all survivable, but only if someone is watching the Finance tab monthly. Your owner statements need to show the compensation as well as the payout, or your owners will think Agoda pays less than it does.
The money left on the table
Take a 20 property manager turning over $1,000,000 a year with $300,000 of it through Agoda, the kind of split a portfolio in Phuket, Bali or Kuala Lumpur can see. Compensation at 18% is $54,000. On the Growth Program Standard plan, the one with the free trial attached, it is $90,000. A 10% promotion across the year, the kind the Mega Sale asks for, costs another $30,000 in price before the commission is calculated.
Now move one fifth of that Agoda volume, $60,000, to your own website: repeat guests, guests who found you on Google, guests who read the lower rate in your guidebook. At 18% the commission on that slice drops from $10,800 to nothing, and the guest pays a 0.9% booking fee that never touches your payout. That is $10,800 a year back, $32,400 over three years, or $18,000 a year if you were on the Standard plan. The software that makes it possible costs $410 a month for those 20 properties on Hello Hosty, $4,920 a year, website included. The Agoda saving alone pays for it twice over.
To be fair to Agoda, it brings a guest the others do not: travellers from across Asia who pay in full up front, and in Southeast Asia it is often the largest channel there is. The point is not to leave it. The point is to price it for what it costs, to say no to the plan you did not ask for, and to stop sending it the guests who would have booked you anyway.
Hello Hosty includes a direct booking website on your own domain in every subscription, with the channel manager for Agoda, Booking.com, Airbnb, Vrbo, Trip.com and 50 plus platforms, rate modifiers per platform, monthly owner statements per property that show the commission as well as the payout, the AI assistant that answers guests on every channel, and the digital guidebook that collects the guest’s email so the second booking comes to you. $24 per property per month, $17 from your 11th and $12 from your 31st (£17, £12 and £9 in the UK), no setup fee, free migration, and every price on the website. Nothing is taken from your bookings.
Frequently asked questions
What commission does Agoda charge hosts in 2026?
Agoda does not publish a rate card. The commission, which Agoda calls compensation, is set in your contract by country and sometimes by payment model. Operators and channel managers report 15% to 20% for most properties, with a wider spread of 12% to 25% by region, and Agoda’s own worked example uses 20%. Your exact rate is in the Agoda Partner Portal under Finance and Contracted compensation. Guests pay no separate Agoda service fee.
What is Agoda’s commission charged on?
The reference sell rate, which is the price the guest pays. Since November 2023 you load the guest price rather than a net rate, and Agoda deducts its compensation to arrive at your base rate. Agoda’s example applies the percentage to a rate that includes taxes and fees, so if your rate is loaded Sell Inclusive, the default, the tax inside it is commissioned too. Discounts you fund reduce the base first, and the commission is charged on the discounted price.
What is the Agoda Homes commission?
Agoda Homes is Agoda’s programme for single unit residential hosts, listing is free, and the commission is reported at 5% to 15% depending on location, with some channel managers quoting 15% to 18%. It is deducted automatically from the rate you load. The first payout on a new Agoda Homes listing is held for 30 days after the first guest checks out; after that Auto Pay processes payouts within 24 hours of check out.
What do the Agoda Growth Program and Agoda Growth Express cost?
The Agoda Growth Program adds a published cost per booking on top of your contracted commission: 10% on Basic, 12% on Standard and 15% on Premium, so an 18% host on Basic pays 28%. It comes with a 2 week free trial that converts to the paid plan unless you opt out, and a 90 day minimum. Agoda Growth Express adds a percentage you choose to each departed booking from the campaign, and can be deleted at any time. Sponsored Listings is a separate cost per click auction from $0.50 a click.
When does Agoda pay hosts?
After the stay. Under Agoda Collect the guest pays Agoda, and you are paid net of commission by a virtual card you charge from the departure day, a bank transfer that arrives 3 to 5 business days after you confirm the payout, or an Agoda card on your own terminal. A new single unit host’s first payout is held for 30 days after the first check out. After that Auto Pay runs within 24 hours of check out, plus the bank’s 3 to 5 days. Under Property Collect the guest pays you at check in and Agoda offsets its commission against your other prepaid bookings.
Does Agoda charge VAT on its commission?
No. Agoda’s partner pages say there is no requirement for it to charge VAT on its commission, so unlike Booking.com it does not add VAT to the statement. In many countries you are still required to report and self assess VAT on the service. If you are VAT registered that is normally a reverse charge that nets to zero; if you are not, it can be a real cost, and some markets add a tax on the service itself, such as Malaysia’s 8% service tax. Ask your accountant how it applies where you are.
Do I pay Agoda commission on cancellations and no shows?
Only on money you collect. Commission is due on completed stays and on any amount you charge a guest under a non refundable or partially refundable policy or for a no show. If you waive the fee, or the guest cancels within the free cancellation window, no commission is due. Report no shows in the Partner Portal within 72 hours of check in; after that the option is greyed out and you have to raise it with support.
Is Agoda cheaper than Booking.com for hosts?
At the headline, they are close: Agoda’s reported 15% to 20% against Booking.com’s roughly 15%. Agoda does not add VAT or a payment fee to its commission, which Booking.com can, but its growth programmes are bigger, adding 10 to 15 points rather than Booking.com’s reported 3 to 8, and they start with a trial that converts. The cheapest channel is still your own. A direct booking website on your own domain is included with Hello Hosty; the guest pays a 0.9% booking fee and you keep the full rate. Try it free for 14 days.
Sources: Agoda Partner Hub (compensation, net rate calculation, rate loading change, Property Collect, payouts, the 30 day payout window, tax invoices, Agoda Growth Program, Agoda Growth Express, Sponsored Listings), Agoda’s Partner Portal announcement of 17 August 2026, and reports from Hostex (updated 10 September 2026), Hospitable, Roommaster (1 May 2025), Stayfarer (checked 1 October 2026), Smartorder (updated September 2026), Zeevou, Rentals United and NightsBridge, all checked October 2026. If Agoda publishes a rate or changes a rule, tell us and we will update this page. That is a standing promise.