Your Airbnb cancellation policy as a host is a choice between Flexible, Moderate, Limited and Firm, and for a UK holiday let the answer is seasonal. A cancellation costs you the difference between what a week would have earned and what you can still sell it for, which is small in February and large in August. You do not have to pick one setting for the whole year: Airbnb lets you apply a different policy to specific date ranges from your calendar. Protect the peak, stay soft on the quiet months.
Most owners set this once when the listing goes up, choose the middle option because it sounds reasonable, and never look at it again until a late cancellation takes out a week in the school holidays.
The four Airbnb cancellation policies a host can choose
Airbnb owns the definitive version of this and keeps it current, so the short version is here and the detail is on their help page. For stays under 28 nights the standard choice is four policies. Strict, Super Strict 30 and Super Strict 60 exist but are available only to hosts Airbnb invites.
Stays under 28 nights
Where each policy stops refunding
Read each bar right to left: the right-hand end is check-in, the left is a month out. The teal is the window in which the guest still gets everything back.
FlexibleFull refund until 24 hours before
ModerateFull refund until 5 days before
LimitedFull to 14 days, half to 7 days
FirmFull to 30 days, half to 7 days
Every one of them has a 24-hour grace period on top. A guest can cancel for a full refund within 24 hours of booking, provided they booked at least seven days before check-in. That window sits outside whichever policy you choose.
Limited is the newest of the four and applies to bookings made on or after 1 October 2025. It sits between Moderate and Firm: a guest has until 14 days before check-in to get everything back, half back between 14 and 7 days, and nothing inside a week.
What a cancellation actually costs you
Not the booking. The gap between the booking and whatever you manage to sell the week for afterwards.
That gap depends on one thing more than any other: how long you have to re-sell it, and how many people are still looking. Call it the re-booking window. A fortnight’s notice in March is a different proposition from four days’ notice in August, and the policy is the only lever you have over which of those you get.
Two consequences follow, and they are the whole argument.
A cancellation you are told about early is cheap. Thirty days is usually enough to refill a week at close to the original rate, which is why the difference between Flexible and Firm matters least in the months when nobody is in a hurry.
A cancellation you are told about late is expensive in peak and survivable off it. The week of the August bank holiday was booked months ago by someone who has now booked somewhere else. There is no queue of people still hunting for it at four days’ notice. The same four days’ notice in early November costs you very little, because the week was never going to earn much.
Why the right answer changes with the season
Put those together and the policy question stops being about your general attitude to guests and becomes a question about your calendar. Which is convenient, because the calendar is where you answer it.
Airbnb lets you apply a different cancellation policy to specific date ranges. In their words, “you can apply different cancellation policies to specific date ranges right from your calendar”, and the listing’s default stays in place everywhere you have not set one. Unbooked dates can be changed at any time.
That turns the whole question from a compromise into an allocation. Firm or Limited across the school holidays, the bank holidays and whatever else your year actually turns on. Flexible or Moderate across the quiet months, where the protection buys little and the softness may win you a booking.
One rule decides ties, and it is worth knowing before you set the dates: the policy that applies is the one attached to the check-in date. A booking that starts on the last Flexible night and runs into your protected fortnight is governed by the Flexible night it started on. If you are protecting a peak week, start the protected range a few days before the week itself.
What the policy does to demand
A stricter policy asks more of the guest, and some of them will choose a listing that asks less. That is a real trade, and no figure for it can be sourced, so you will not find one here. Anyone quoting you a conversion number for this has invented it.
What can be said is where the trade bites hardest. It is sharpest on short-notice bookings, because a guest booking four days out is the one most conscious of what happens if plans change, and softest on bookings made months ahead, where the 24-hour grace period covers the moment of doubt anyway. A property that fills on long lead times is giving up less by being firm than one that lives on last-minute demand.
If your calendar is mostly filled early, firmness is close to free. If it is filled late, you are paying for the protection, and you should know that you are.
The long-stay policies are a separate decision
This is the part most guides skip. A booking of 28 nights or more does not use the four policies above at all. It uses a different pair, and the terms are not what the same names mean on a short stay.
The 28-night line
The same names mean different things either side of it
Crossing 28 nights moves a booking onto a different set of policies. Firm and Strict both exist on both sides, and neither behaves the same way.
Under 28 nights
Firm
Full refund if the guest cancels more than 30 days before check-in. Half back from 30 days to 7. Nothing inside a week.
Strict
By Airbnb invitation only. Half back at 7 days or more, nothing inside that.
28 nights and over
Firm
Full refund only with at least 30 days' notice. Cancel later and you are paid for the nights already spent plus the next 30.
Strict
A full refund only if the guest cancels within 48 hours of booking and at least 28 days before check-in. After that, the same nights-spent-plus-30 arrangement.
The nights-plus-30 arrangement is the part worth knowing. On a long stay the protection is not a percentage, it is a month of notice paid for in nights, which behaves far more like a tenancy than like a holiday booking.
If you take winter lets of a month or more, this is the setting that matters to you, and it is set separately from the one you spent your time thinking about. What a booking of a month or more changes covers the rest of that ground.
Non-refundable, and when it earns its place
Your policy also decides what happens to the cleaning fee on a late cancellation, which the changeover sums covers: since 21 April 2025 the fee is treated as part of the nightly price once the free cancellation window has closed.
Alongside whichever policy you pick, Airbnb lets you offer a non-refundable rate at a discount for stays under 28 nights. The guest pays less and gets nothing back if they cancel. The 24-hour grace period still applies.
This is worth offering on exactly the dates the rest of this article is about. On a peak week you are selling certainty, and a guest who is sure of their plans can pay a little less for it while you stop carrying the risk on the week that pays for your year. On a quiet week it does very little, because the week was replaceable anyway and the discount is a straight cost.
The discount has to come off a rate that was right in the first place, which is a pricing question rather than a policy one. How dynamic pricing actually works for UK short lets covers setting the rate the discount comes off.
What this is worth getting right
A cancellation policy is a quiet setting that decides what happens on the worst day of your year. Getting it right costs nothing and takes two minutes, and most owners never revisit it after the day they listed.
That is the pattern across most of this: the money is in the settings nobody looks at twice, which is most of what full management actually covers. If you want to know what your property should be earning and what running it properly involves, get a free Airbnb valuation. About a minute, and it comes back with the assumptions written down.
Frequently asked questions
Which Airbnb cancellation policy is best for a holiday let? The one that protects your peak weeks, which for most UK holiday lets means Limited or Firm. A late cancellation costs you the gap between the booking and what you can re-sell the week for, and that gap is at its widest on the dates your year depends on. A policy chosen for the quiet months leaves the expensive weeks unprotected.
What is the Limited cancellation policy? The newest of the four standard options, applying to bookings made on or after 1 October 2025. A guest gets a full refund up to 14 days before check-in, half back between 14 and 7 days, and nothing inside seven days. It sits between Moderate and Firm.
Can I change my cancellation policy after a booking is made? A change applies to new bookings only. Each reservation keeps the policy that was in effect when it was made, so switching to a stricter setting in July does nothing for the August weeks already on your calendar. You can change unbooked dates at any time, which is the argument for setting your peak ranges well before the season rather than during it.
Does a stricter policy lose me bookings? It asks more of the guest, so some will choose elsewhere. Nobody can give you a number for it, Airbnb included, and any figure you see quoted is invented. The effect is largest on short-notice bookings and smallest on long lead times, so a property that fills early gives up less by being firm.
Sources
- Airbnb Help Centre, Set cancellation policies directly from your calendar: that a different policy can be applied to specific date ranges from the calendar, that the listing default applies where none is set, that the policy is determined by the check-in date where a booking spans two, that unbooked dates can be changed at any time, and that existing bookings keep the policy in effect when they were made. Checked 12 October 2026.
- Airbnb Help Centre, Cancellation policies for your home: the four standard policies and their refund cut-offs, the Limited policy applying to bookings from 1 October 2025, Strict and the two Super Strict options being available by invitation only, the 24-hour grace period and its seven-day condition, the separate long-term policies for stays of 28 nights or more, and the non-refundable option. Checked 12 October 2026.
