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Model the business · Nasdaq: ABNB

Airbnb: a marketplace that holds other people’s money

Held until check-in. The key waits in a box beside someone else’s door until the guest arrives, much as the money they paid waits with the platform, held for the host rather than kept.

Guests booked $91.3bn on Airbnb in 2025: it kept $12.2bn as fees, turned $4.6bn into cash and held $7.0bn that was never its own.

By Surojit Chakraverti, founder of L3VLUP and an investor running a long-short healthcare and technology equities strategy.

On this subject: the Airbnb, Inc. case.Updated 25 October 2026

Latest filing 6 August 2026 · Information to 25 October 2026

Gross Booking Value, FY2025AFiling
$91,273.0m
What guests booked, host earnings and taxes in it. Not revenue.
Revenue, FY2025AFiling
$12,241.0m
Airbnb’s own fees: 13.41% of GBV, a derived rate.
Free cash flow less SBC, FY2025ADerived
$3,021.0m
Airbnb’s free cash flow less share pay.
Customer funds held for hosts and guestsFiling
$6,959.0m
Owed to hosts and guests. Never the company’s cash.

How to read the figures

Every figure on this page is a cell in the Airbnb operating model, and each carries one of four tags.

  • Filing what the company filed, with its tag
  • Derived arithmetic on filed figures, such as a proxy or a residual
  • Assumption a judgement of this page, never the company’s
  • Model what the model computes from the three

The business

Airbnb runs a marketplace for places to stay, and lately for experiences and services. Guests book through it and pay it, at booking, in instalments, or under Reserve Now, Pay Later nearer the stay; Airbnb holds what they pay until check-in, keeps its service fee and pays the host. Substantially all of its revenue comes from stays, booked in about 50 currencies, and North America and EMEA together made 81% of it in 2025.

In 2025 guests booked 533m nights and seats worth $91.3bn, and Airbnb’s revenue, its fees net of incentives and refunds, was $12.2bn. Its costs are payment processing and hosting, customer support and trust and safety, then engineering, marketing and administration, with stock-based compensation inside them.

Three numbers that move together

Gross Booking Value is what guests book, counted at booking and including host earnings, cleaning fees and taxes. Revenue is Airbnb’s fee, recognised at check-in. Cash is the company’s own, and separately the guests’ money it holds for hosts. A March booking for a July stay is March GBV and July revenue, and the cash arrives in March or, under Reserve Now, Pay Later, nearer July. The model never lets one stand in for another.

FY2025, and what kind of number each is
MeasureFY2025Kind
Gross Booking Value$91,273mReported, a key metric, not revenue
Revenue$12,241mReported
Adjusted EBITDA$4,297mCompany, non-GAAP
Free cash flow$4,613mCompany, non-GAAP
Free cash flow less stock-based compensation$3,021mDerived
Company cash and short-term investments$11,014mReported, the company’s own
Customer funds held$6,959mReported, owed to hosts and guests

What the platform keeps

Revenue over GBV gave a take rate of 13.54%, 13.57% and 13.41% in 2023 to 2025. Airbnb states the rate by quarter in its letters but files none for a year, so the page derives it, and checks its own quarterly figures against the letters: 13.61% for the fourth quarter of 2025 against the stated 13.6%.

A quarter’s rate swings from about 9% in the first quarter (9.18% in 2026) to about 18% in the third (17.89% in 2025), because bookings and stays fall in different quarters; a year’s barely moves.

Cash before revenue

Airbnb collects its fee when a guest pays and records it as unearned fees until the stay: $1,743m at the end of 2025, 1.9% of the year’s GBV. Growth in that balance is cash ahead of revenue, $122m in 2025.

Reserve Now, Pay Later loosens the link. At 30 June 2026 unearned fees were flat on a year earlier while first-half GBV grew 18%, and the 10-Q says the timing among GBV, revenue and cash receipts may become less correlated. The forecast holds unearned fees flat in 2026 for that reason.

Money that is not Airbnb’s

At the end of 2025 Airbnb held $6,959m for hosts and guests, matched by an equal amount owed to them, and the balance is seasonal: $12,224m at 30 June 2026. Its own liquidity was $11,014m of cash and short-term investments. The cash flow statement’s closing cash of $13,486m counts the customers’ cash with the company’s, which is the trap.

The interest on the customers’ money sits inside the $705m of interest income, unsplit, and Airbnb’s free cash flow includes it. The forecast carries it at an assumed share so its free cash flow stays comparable, and the valuation sets it aside and shows it as a memo of $6.30 a share.

Profit, read back to the filings

Adjusted EBITDA of $4,297m rebuilds exactly from net income, tax, interest, D&A, $1,592m of stock-based compensation and the tax-settlement lines; the add-backs are worth $1,662m. Free cash flow of $4,613m is operating cash flow less $33m of capital spending, and $3,021m after stock-based compensation.

Net income of $4,792m in 2023 included a $2,897m one-time tax benefit, and 2025’s $2,511m carried a $213m one-time charge. Without both, the three years earned $1,895m, $2,648m and $2,724m. Cash tax ran well below book tax: $232m paid in 2025 against $626m charged.

The forecast and what it is worth

The model keeps three kinds of number on three sheets. Reported holds only what Airbnb filed, each row with its document and tag or the statement that it is untagged. Derived holds arithmetic on Reported and nothing else: the take rates, GBV per night, the rebuilt non-GAAP measures, company money apart from customer money. Forecast holds the assumptions in three cases, every row an editorial judgement of this page and none of it Airbnb’s guidance, which is not used.

FY2026E starts from the filed first half; only the second half is assumed. In the base case GBV reaches $152.8bn and revenue $20.5bn by FY2030E. Discounted at 9% with 3% growth, stock-based compensation as a cost, and customer funds, their interest and the lease liability (whose cost is already in the cash flows) left out, the forecast implies $121.11 a share; the downside $75.13 and the upside $151.02. That is what the inputs imply, not a target, a fair value or a recommendation, and the page does not compare it with the market.

The base case, filed to FY2025A and forecast to FY2030E
$0$10,000$20,000$30,000FiledForecast23A24A25A26E27E28E29E30E$m
  • Revenue
  • Adjusted EBITDA (the company’s measure)
  • Free cash flow less SBC (this page’s measure)
  • Forecast years: lighter bars, dashed lines
Read as a table
FY2023A (filed)FY2024A (filed)FY2025A (filed)FY2026EFY2027EFY2028EFY2029EFY2030E
Revenue$9,917m$11,102m$12,241m$14,121m$15,714m$17,325m$18,922m$20,471m
Adjusted EBITDA (the company’s measure)$3,653m$4,041m$4,297m$4,996m$5,692m$6,421m$7,173m$7,932m
Free cash flow less SBC (this page’s measure)$2,717m$3,077m$3,021m$3,331m$3,950m$4,376m$4,803m$5,221m

Change the case or an assumption in Explore; the filed years never move.

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Every sheet behind the page, with every input at the base case and the Sources sheet citing each filed figure, so what you change on the page you can change again in Excel.

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The method behind the case

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