Renta's 2.5% platform fee

Every booking on Renta carries a platform fee of 2.5%. It's added on top of the price your business set — the customer pays it, and it is not part of what your business earns.

Where to find it

In the sidebar, hover Pricing and click Fees & policies. The Renta fee card shows your plan, your fee rate per booking, who pays it, and a worked example on a $100 rental using your own tax rate. It is for reference only: nothing on that card changes what a customer is charged. To change your plan, use the Change plan in Billing link on the card.

There's no setting to turn the fee itself off. The one thing you control is whether the customer sees it as its own line item or folded into the price they see; that's the Fee display card on the same page (see Showing fees and tax as separate line items).

How it works

• Amount — 2.5% of the pre-tax subtotal (the rental price after all discounts, surcharges, and add-ons, before tax). That's the standard rate on the Commission plan. If Renta has given your business a special lower rate, the Renta fee card says "Includes a special rate of X%, in effect through (date)", or "Includes a special rate of X%, with no end date". That line only shows when the special rate is lower than the plan's normal rate, so you will never see it on the Flat plan. On the Flat plan there is no per-booking fee at all (see Renta's fee vs. your subscription plan). Special rates are set by Renta, not by you.
• Who pays it — the renter. It's added on top of your total and charged to their card; your business receives the total without the fee.
• Not taxed — the fee itself isn't subject to sales tax.
• Not refundable — if a booking is cancelled or refunded, Renta keeps this fee, except when a booking failed to go through at all (nothing was ever charged, so there's nothing to keep).

Example

A booking's subtotal (rental price plus add-ons, minus any coupon) is $1,000. Renta's fee is 2.5% of that — $25 — not 2.5% of the total after tax. If tax brought the total to $1,080, the fee is still calculated on the original $1,000 subtotal, so the customer's card is charged $1,105 ($1,080 total + $25 fee).

Good to know

• The worked example on the Renta fee card ("Example: a $100.00 rental", with rows Rental subtotal, Tax, Renta fee and Customer pays) uses the tax rate set in Settings. A pickup location with its own tax rate uses that rate instead. The card notes that the fee is figured on the subtotal before tax, so tax never adds to it.
• The fee is calculated the same way regardless of your fee display setting — that setting only changes what the customer sees, never what's actually charged.
• Because the fee is based on the pre-tax subtotal, a coupon that reduces the subtotal also reduces the fee. See How a price is calculated for the full order of operations.