It really wasn't that long ago that if you were traveling somewhere and needed a place to stay, your only option was to book a hotel (or motel or bed & breakfast). But after its 2008 founding, online booking service Airbnb quickly gained traction throughout the 2010s by offering travelers an inexpensive hotel alternative with room and home listings from everyday people.
As Airbnb grew, the lines between its offerings and those of traditional hotels started to blur. In the spring of 2023, in an effort to return to its roots, the company rolled out a new "Rooms" feature that makes it easier to book single rooms in a person's home, rather than promoting the number of faux hotels that have increasingly taken over the site in recent years.
But Airbnb is not the only hotel alternative out there. There's also the online vacation rental service Vrbo. Vrbo was actually founded considerably earlier than Airbnb — in 1995, to be exact — but it's never had the same popularity or name recognition. But following a 2019 rebrand by current owner Expedia and an ongoing aggressive advertising campaign that began with the 2022 Super Bowl, Vrbo's profile has risen considerably in the public consciousness and is now more of a serious competitor for Airbnb's crown.
So if you're trying to decide between Airbnb and Vrbo to book your next vacation, here's everything you need to know before deciding which is for you.
Vrbo Only Offers Entire Homes
This is the biggest difference between Airbnb and Vrbo, as the two sites actually offer different types of lodging. Vrbo actually stands for "Vacation rentals by owner," and the site only offers entire homes for rent. There are no single rooms, no guest houses, no sections of homes occupied by an owner, no bed and breakfasts, no de facto hotels. If you're looking for any of those things, then Airbnb is the better bet, as it has all of those types of listings in addition to entire homes.
Vrbo's marketing reflects this whole-home model, with a focus on family vacations and pet-friendly listings being front and center. This should theoretically help Vrbo further distinguish itself from Airbnb with the latter brand's renewed focus on single-room listings, as Vrbo is more squarely aimed at long-term family vacations. So even though Airbnb also offers entire homes, it doesn't do so with as much dedication as Vrbo.
Airbnb Has a Lot More Listings
There is a reason why Airbnb is far better known than Vrbo: it's much larger. Vrbo claims to have just over two million listings around the world on its site. To be fair, that is a lot of options, especially considering that they're all entire homes. But it still doesn't come close to matching the variety and sheer number of listings provided by Airbnb, which is between 6 and 7 million — over three times as many as Vrbo. Granted, this includes all types of listings, from single rooms to entire homes to even boats, so it's not exactly a fair fight. But again, these two companies are not an apples-to-apples comparison.
For a little test, I searched for the same hypothetical trip on both sites: A weeklong stay for two people in Palm Springs for the second week of November (sounds nice, right?). Neither site gave me the exact number of listings available but met the criteria, but they both gave me a rough idea. Airbnb returned "over 1,000" places, while Vrbo came back with "300+" — which sounds about right, considering that Airbnb has more than three times as many total listings as Vrbo sitewide.
Vrbo Was More Up-Front About Pricing, But Airbnb Caught Up
One of the most frequent criticisms lobbed at Airbnb is that the site has not always been very up-front about how much you're actually going to pay for a booking until you're about to complete the process. That's because for a long time Airbnb did not, by default, include cleaning fees and service fees in the price of its listed bookings. But those cleaning fees especially can be astronomical, sometimes approaching or even exceeding the rental cost.
But in late 2022, Airbnb added a toggle at the top of your search results that allows you to display the total price, including all fees, instead of the usual fee-free nightly price. Now, that feature has been integrated even more, with Airbnb search results automatically showing the total price alongside the traditional nightly price without even having to use the toggle. Airbnb appears to have taken this strategy directly from Vrbo, which has long shown both the fee-free nightly rate and the fees-included total cost automatically for each listing.
Vrbo & Airbnb Have Slightly Different Search Options
Both sites let you filter your search results by amenities, price, bedrooms, etc. They also both let you search for only listings with free cancelation, and both allow you to say whether or not you're bringing pets when first entering your search criteria (this is new for Airbnb, which previously considered pet-friendliness an amenity).
The main area where the two sites differ now comes to filtering out results based on feedback. For Airbnb, you can search specifically for listings that the site itself bills as "Superhosts" (its certified top-rated hosts), "Airbnb Plus" (properties that have been vetted for quality) and Airbnb Luxe (company-picked luxury rentals). Vrbo offers its own version of "Superhosts" called "Premier Hosts," but otherwise takes a more grassroots approach, allowing you to search based on the feedback users themselves give properties related to cleanliness or location. You can also filter out any property with an average rating below four stars.
Vrbo and Airbnb Have Similar Pricing & Policies
Outside of the above differences, you're mainly going to judge Vrbo and Airbnb on a case-by-case basis. There is no clear winner regarding affordability, cancelation policies or risks to the booker. They're pretty even here, all things considered, and you can have good or bad experiences with both. Vrbo does pitch itself as the better value, since you're always getting an entire home, but if you're looking to spend the least amount of money, you'll find cheaper listings on Airbnb due to the availability of single rooms. But if you want to rent an entire place for your next trip away, it's a good idea to search both sites and see what suits you.
