Airbnb Superhost requirements: the four numbers, and how hosts lose the badge

Superhost comes down to four numbers, checked every three months over the trailing twelve: a 4.8 overall rating, 10 stays or 100 nights across at least 3 reservations, a cancellation rate under 1 percent, and a 90 percent response rate within 24 hours. Airbnb publishes the list on its Superhost requirements page. What the page does not say is which number costs hosts the badge, and it is almost never the rating.

The four requirements, and what each one means in practice

4.8 overall rating. Averaged across all your listings over the past year. One 3-star review in a year of forty 5-star stays still leaves you above the bar. Three of them in a quiet season will not.

10 reservations, or 3 reservations totaling 100 nights. The second path is for hosts who take monthly stays. A single unit with 30-night minimums qualifies on three bookings.

Cancellation rate under 1 percent. This is the one. With fewer than 100 stays a year, one host cancellation puts you above 1 percent. Airbnb makes exceptions for Major Disruptive Events and other valid reasons it lists, and it does not make exceptions for double bookings caused by a calendar you forgot to sync.

90 percent response rate. Reply to new messages and accept or decline requests within 24 hours. Automated messages count as replies, so a host with scheduled messages almost never fails this one.

Airbnb assesses all four on January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1. You can watch your standing in the host dashboard between assessments, and a fix made in the last week of March counts for April.

Where hosts actually lose it

Three failure modes account for most lost badges.

The first is a host cancellation. A listing gets sold, a family emergency lands, a plumbing job overruns. One cancellation on a 40-stay year is a 2.5 percent rate. The fix is procedural rather than moral: keep calendars synced through one tool, block dates the moment a repair is scheduled, and when you must cancel, ask Airbnb whether the reason qualifies as an exception before you press the button.

The second is a rating slide in a low season. A 4.8 average has very little slack. Two 4-star reviews in January, when you had six stays, drag the trailing average more than the same two reviews in July. Read the sub-ratings: cleanliness and check-in are the ones that drop first, and both respond to a better turnover checklist and clearer check-in instructions.

The third is the quiet failure: not enough stays. A cabin closed for the winter or a unit taken off the platform for a renovation can drop under 10 reservations in the trailing year. The badge goes away at the next assessment and comes back the one after, provided the other three numbers held.

What the badge is worth

Airbnb gives Superhosts a badge on the listing and profile, a search filter guests can apply, priority support, and a small annual coupon. It also reports the badge in its own data as a conversion factor, which is consistent with what hosts see: the same listing converts better with it than without.

Since 2023 there is a second badge, Guest Favorite, which Airbnb awards to listings rather than hosts, based on ratings, reviews and reliability data across the top share of homes. The two overlap heavily and are not the same thing. A new listing under a Superhost account can lack Guest Favorite; a Guest Favorite listing can belong to a host who cancelled once this year.

Keeping it without thinking about it

The hosts who hold Superhost for years do not manage to the thresholds. They run a routine that happens to clear them.

Scheduled messages at booking, the day before arrival, and the morning after check-in. A digital guidebook that answers the questions that would otherwise become messages and, later, 4-star communication ratings. A cleaner who signs a checklist. And a calendar rule: no manual bookings, no dates left open during work on the property.

Then a monthly glance at the dashboard, and nothing else.

Frequently asked questions