How Long Do Airbnb Reviews Last?

Last updated: June 2025

Airbnb reviews do not expire. Once a review is published on a listing or host profile, it stays there indefinitely — there is no time limit after which old reviews are hidden, removed or discounted by the platform.

This page covers three questions that hosts and guests search for together: how long do reviews last once published, what happens to reviews if you delete your Airbnb account, and whether it is possible to have a review removed.

The answers matter in practice. A review left three years ago carries the same visibility on your listing as one left last week. A negative review does not age out. And the options for removing a review you disagree with are narrower than most hosts assume.

The final section covers what the review score means for occupancy and what professional management does to protect and build it systematically — which is the part that most directly affects your income.

The 14-day review window — what it governs and what it does not

There are two distinct time limits in the Airbnb review system that are frequently confused. The first governs when you can leave a review. The second would govern when published reviews disappear — but that limit does not exist.

The posting window: 14 days after checkout

Both hosts and guests have 14 days from the checkout date to leave a review. This window is fixed: once 14 days have elapsed, the option to leave a review is no longer available on Airbnb's platform, and it cannot be extended. A guest who forgets to review during this window has permanently missed the opportunity for that booking.

How long published reviews stay visible

Once a review is published — either because both parties have reviewed, or because the 14-day window has closed with at least one review submitted — it stays on the listing indefinitely. There is no six-month, one-year or three-year time limit. A review from 2019 is as visible on a listing today as one from last month.

Airbnb does not apply any weighting that makes older reviews less prominent in the overall score calculation. Your overall star rating is a straight average of all reviews received since the listing was created. A run of poor reviews three years ago continues to affect your current score unless offset by a sufficient volume of subsequent positive reviews.

What happens to your Airbnb reviews if you delete or deactivate your account

This is the question with the largest search volume in this topic cluster — and the answer is not what most people expect.

Reviews about your property listing

Reviews left by guests about your property listing are attached to the listing itself, not solely to your account. If you deactivate or delete your Airbnb account, the listing becomes inactive — but the reviews associated with it remain in Airbnb's records. If the same property is re-listed on Airbnb at any point in the future — whether under the same account after reactivation or through a new account — Airbnb's policy is that historical reviews may be reinstated on the listing.

Deleting your account is not a mechanism for clearing a bad review history. It is one of the more common misconceptions about how the platform works, and it does not produce the outcome people hoping to start fresh are looking for.

Reviews you have written about guests

Reviews you have left about guests as a host are associated with your account. If your account is deleted, those reviews may no longer be attributed to an active profile — but Airbnb's systems retain the review data. In practice, the effect is that your historical guest reviews may become less easily traceable but are not necessarily erased from the guest's record.

If you want to start fresh with a new listing

If you genuinely want to re-list a property with a clean review slate — for example, because a previous listing had significant problems you have since addressed — the correct approach is to work with Airbnb directly. Airbnb has a process for appealing the reinstatement of historical reviews on re-listed properties, which is separate from the standard review removal process. Deleting an account and starting a new one does not guarantee a clean start and may violate Airbnb's terms of service.

Can you delete or remove an Airbnb review — and when does Airbnb actually take one down

This is the question most hosts arrive at after receiving a review they believe is unfair. The honest answer is that the options are more limited than the volume of search queries on this topic implies.

What you can do yourself

You can retract or edit your own review — one you wrote — within 48 hours of submitting it, as long as the other party has not yet submitted their review. Once both reviews are published, neither party can edit or delete what they wrote. This 48-hour edit window applies to reviews you leave as a host about guests, and to guest reviews of your property before the other party has also reviewed.

You cannot delete a review the other party has left about you. There is no option in Airbnb's interface to remove a guest's review of your property through host action alone.

What Airbnb will remove

Airbnb's content policy identifies specific circumstances under which a review can be removed. The threshold is policy violation — not unfairness, inaccuracy as a matter of opinion, or a score you feel is disproportionate to the stay.

• Content that is threatening, harassing or hateful toward the other party
• Private information about the host or guest (addresses, contact details, financial information)
• Content that is not related to the actual stay or host experience — for example, a review that complains about the local area or an unrelated third party
• Evidence of extortion — a guest threatening a bad review unless a refund is issued
• Factually false statements that Airbnb can independently verify as incorrect
• Reviews that violate Airbnb's non-discrimination policy

What Airbnb will not remove

• A review you believe is unfair but does not violate the content policy
• A negative review from a guest who had a genuine bad experience, even if you dispute the severity
• A review with a low star rating that the guest was entitled to leave based on their stay
• A review you disagree with on the basis of your own account of events

How the Airbnb review score actually works — what goes into the number on your listing

The overall star rating displayed on an Airbnb listing is a weighted average of scores across six subcategories: cleanliness, accuracy, check-in, communication, location and value. Guests rate each subcategory individually — though many guests give the same score across all categories — and the overall score is derived from the combination.

The subcategories and what they measure

Cleanliness is consistently the highest-weighted concern in guest decision-making and the subcategory that most frequently pulls down an otherwise strong score. A listing with strong scores in every other subcategory and a 3.8 in cleanliness will have its overall rating pulled materially below its natural level.

Accuracy refers to whether the listing description and photographs matched what the guest found on arrival. A listing with outdated photographs, an overstated bedroom count or amenities listed that are no longer available is structurally set up for low accuracy scores regardless of the quality of the physical property.

Value is the subcategory most sensitive to pricing. A guest who paid £90 per night and found the property adequate is more likely to give a high value score than a guest who paid £180 per night and found the same property adequate. Value scores are a reason why properties priced at the very top of their local market need to over-deliver on every other dimension to maintain the overall score.

What review score means for occupancy — and how professional management protects it

A review score is not a certificate of past performance. It is an active ranking input that Airbnb uses to determine search visibility on an ongoing basis. A property whose score drops from 4.8 to 4.6 due to two or three poor reviews in a short period will see measurable occupancy decline — not because guests are reading the negative reviews directly, but because the algorithm has adjusted the property's placement in search results.

The approach that consistently produces high review scores at scale is resolution during the stay, not after checkout. A guest who contacts a host about a heating issue at 9pm on a Tuesday and receives a response within the hour — with a solution or a genuine acknowledgement — almost never leaves a negative review. A guest who cannot reach the host, or who receives a response two days later, frequently does. The difference is not the problem; it is the response time and quality.

Stayful manages 70+ properties with a 4.8 Google rating across the portfolio. The 40% direct booking rate that builds over time is partially a function of the review score — guests who have stayed at a Stayful-managed property and found it well-run return and refer. The income estimate below gives you the specific net figure for your property after the management fee, including the occupancy assumption based on local managed portfolio data.

The questions hosts and guests ask about Airbnb reviews most often