I am not happy with Peerspace taking such a large percentage from each booking, and then taking money from the guest too.
On a $1938 booking (guest will pay), my share is $1451. This is WAY too high for a passive referral web site.
One can justify an active agent taking 25%, but this is a high volume automated service and it should be much lower.
I would like to speak to someone about this, a customer is currently asking if they can do “less hours” …due to price or course.
I lost the client. The price ended up being too high. This is exactly the problem I am bringing up.
Peerspace isn’t just taking a percentage from bookings; after experiencing multiple guests who failed to clean up after themselves, I decided to add a cleaning fee. To my surprise, Peerspace also takes a percentage of that fee.
Although my bookings are not this large, I totally feel your pain. I imagine Peerspace’s perspective is that without them you would not have known about this client. Peerspace spends a lot of money on google ads in every major market.
LOL at people who complain about having to pay for a service that costs nothing to use unless they themselves make money. Don’t like paying Peerspace’s industry standard fees? Make your own Peerspace-like website, run the Google ads, manage payment processing, and provide insurance yourself.
Yes, I actually do run my own ads.
25% for a PASSIVE INCOME WEB SITE is HUGE.
I wish them success but at some point, people have to voice their opinion about what is fair, or it will get out of control. I lost a booking the other day over this. And taxing the cleaning fee too?
Imagine, if every host behaved like a perfect shill for their own pleasure of being a model host.
They’d up it to 50%! And you won’t be “LOL”-ing.
I understand now. Your issue is not about money, it’s about fairness. Perhaps some research might help with this concern. Here’s some context:
Peerspace charges 15% - 20%
Gigg-ster charges 19%
Set Scouter 20%
My fees on Peerspace seem to run around 18%. So again… fair within the context of the market.
Event Up is also a platform I have used, they charge a flat quarterly fee whether you get a rental from their leads or not, or whether you get a lead at all. As the host your are responsible for everything; collecting payments, contracts, legal fees, insurance, etc. At least that is how is was a few years ago. Everyone is different, so pick a platform that works for you. Peerspace saves me about 2 hours a client if the rental goes smoothly. And in you hit a bump, like the instance where you do need to charge fees after the rental or have insurance concerns or legal concerns, there fee is very reasonable.
It is a high fee when events get into the thousands, but it does bring in leads consistently.
Agreed. But is there an alternative, or should there be?
The alternative is that PeerSpace should be transparent with their fees. The more you charge the more the “fees” are. Uncalled for and unjust. (which many agree) For this platform to say the fees are for marketing, it’s for marketing their brand, not all of the owners spaces. Highway robbery if you ask me. The icing on the cake is that a renter of space, you dont even get what you ask for as far as costs. Insane!
In my experience Peerspace has been deducting 20% from the host and adding 20% to the guest totaling 40% commission. 10-25% commission is closer to industry standard for referrals, leads, and agents. From what I’ve read in the insurance clause, Primary Insurance is required to be obtained by the Host/property owner. Supplementary insurance rarely comes into play and often creates delays and confusion as to which company is responsible for pay out. I have yet to find a certificate of insurance on the site confirming that Peerspace even maintains insurance coverage for hosts and guests. That in itself is not a problem, but it’s then no longer a factor in justifying 40% commission.
My two pennies…
Hi Melissa!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts — I completely understand your concerns, and I’d be happy to provide some clarifiation.
The guest processing fee is the only fee applied to guests on our platform. It helps cover the cost of running our business — from securely handling transactions to providing support throughout the booking experience. This fee is a percentage of the booking subtotal (including any cleaning fees) and is automatically added to each transaction. It’s calculated based on several factors, including the subtotal and other booking details. Generally, the higher the subtotal, the lower the percentage.
Hosts also pay a service fee, which typically ranges from 18% to 20%. This fee varies based on factors like location, total earnings, and hosting history on Peerspace. As a two-sided marketplace, maintaining and improving our platform takes a lot of work — from engineering to marketing to operations — and this fee helps us support both sides of the community.
We also provide added protections at no extra cost to hosts. Every booking includes general liability insurance with up to $1,000,000 in coverage, which protects hosts against liability claims from guests or attendees during a booking. On top of that, our Property Damage Guarantee offers U.S. hosts up to $25,000 per booking to cover damages caused by guests. Our goal is to make the reimbursement process straightforward, and so far, hosts have had great success receiving fair compensation when incidents arise.
Of course, we do require that both hosts and guests carry their own insurance appropriate to the activity booked — but we’re proud to offer these additional layers of protection as part of the Peerspace experience.
All of our fees help us reinvest in the platform and actively promote host spaces across a wide range of marketing channels. This includes digital advertising, social media campaigns, email outreach, search engine optimization, and partnerships that expand your listing’s reach. By continually investing in these efforts, we’re able to drive visibility, attract the right audience, and keep demand strong for spaces like yours.
Hi Katie,
Happy to help clarify this for you! We took a look at your listing and noticed that there’s a $15 setup fee attached to your folding table Add-On.
This fee is something you’ve manually added, so it will automatically be included whenever a guest selects that Add-On during their booking. Apart from standard processing fees and any applicable sales tax (depending on the listing location), Peerspace won’t add any extra charges—so everything stays transparent for your guests. You can read more about how the guest processing fee works here!
If this setup fee was added by accident, no worries at all—our support team can help get it removed. Just let me know, and I’ll have someone from our Customer Experience team reach out to assist you!
Hi! I am fairly new to peerspace and am trying to understand the fees for both the host and the guest and why they vary. 20% for the host seems very high to me, especially when that is on top of the guest’s percentage - is this always the case or are there variables? As far as I understand it, Peerspace deducts a flat 20% from the host’s earnings and charges guests an additional 10% to 15% at checkout. This means up to 35% of the total transaction volume disappears into the platform. When compared directly to other hourly marketplace platforms, this seems like one of the most expensive options by far. And no alternate platforms that I’m aware of apply that commission to security deposits or cleaning fees. For a wedding requiring massive preparation, turnover expenses, and post-event cleanup, losing a massive chunk of our cleaning fees and add-ons heavily squeezes our margins.
I understand the platform brings leads, payment processing, liability coverage and property damage, but when does that extra coverage ever come into play when the host and guest are both required to carry their own primary insurance? So after our own primary insurance coverage is exhausted, THEN their supplemental insurance kicks in?
And, as another community member pointed out, the digital advertising, social media campaigns, email outreach, and SEO are for the peerspace platform itself, not for our individual event spaces.
Ultimately, we love the leads the platform generates, but a flat percentage model fails to acknowledge the operational reality of large events. For a $5,000 wedding booking, the platform extracts up to $1,750 between the host and guest. This infinite scaling heavily penalizes hosts who carry the physical and financial burden of managing large gatherings. I am curious if other event hosts feel we are hitting a breaking point. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be fees, but they’re just too high.
In my opinion, Peerspace is not intended for events with that price tag. They’re going for the smaller under $1,500 bookings where the fees are (somewhat) offset by getting you more frequent bookings.
I still have my event listings up, but started carving 10% of profits from organically booked (not through Peerspace) weddings and big events and put it into running Instagram and Google ads for events. This has been a game changer for the $4,000+ venue rentals. More inquiries and I keep more of the fee.
I also have complete control over analytics and can fine tune placement and ad creative.
Something for other big venues to consider.
When I reviewed the offer, I noticed an additional fee to Peerspace. . What is the additional 10% charged by Peerspace in addition to its 20% fee. The difference between the payout to me and the fee the Guest pays is a total fee of approximately 27 to 28 %. Please explain.
Hi Clifford, thank you for your question! I’d be happy to help clarify this for you. I sent you an email so we can get a better look at the offer and fees you’re seeing on your end. When you have a chance, please respond there with the requested information, and we’ll be happy to take a closer look and help break everything down for you.