Your break-even days are fixed monthly costs divided by what you keep per booked day. Here's the formula, worked examples and what moves the number.
There's no single number that works for every car, but there is a simple formula: take the car's fixed monthly costs and divide them by what you keep for each booked day after Turo's cut and per-trip costs. The result is how many days the car has to be booked each month before it earns you anything.
For the example car in this post, a $55-a-day car on Turo's 80% plan with $530 a month in fixed costs, that works out to about 16 booked days a month. A paid-off car with the same rate might need 6. A car with a big payment and a low rate can need more than 20, and at that point it's fighting the calendar.
What counts as a fixed cost?
Fixed costs are what you pay every month whether the car is booked or sitting in the driveway. For most hosts that's:
- The car payment or lease
- Your own insurance policy
- Registration, parking, GPS tracking and other monthly bills, set aside as a monthly amount
Here's an example car. These are made-up round numbers to show the math, not averages:
| Fixed cost | Per month |
|---|---|
| Car payment | $350 |
| Your own insurance policy | $140 |
| Registration, parking and tracking, set aside | $40 |
| Total fixed costs | $530 |
Use your real bills here. If you pay something yearly, like registration, divide it by 12.
What do you actually keep per booked day?
Start with your daily rate times your host share. Since January 7, 2026, US hosts pick one of three earnings plans:
| Plan | Host share | Damage responsibility per claim |
|---|---|---|
| More Peace of Mind | 70% | $250 |
| Balanced | 80% | $1,500 |
| More Earnings | 90% | $2,750 |
For the example car at $55 a day on Balanced, that's $55 × 80% = $44 per booked day.
Then take out the costs that only happen when the car is rented. Two matter most:
- Turnover cleaning. Turo doesn't pay you for routine cleaning between trips. Its $150 cleaning fee only applies to things like biowaste, major stains or heavy pet hair, reported with photos. So your normal wash and vacuum comes out of your share.
- Wear. Every rented mile wears tires, brakes and oil.
For the example car, say each turnover costs $20 and trips average 3 days. That's $20 ÷ 3 = $6.67 per booked day. Say wear runs $0.08 a mile and guests drive 40 miles a day. That's $3.20 per booked day.
So the example car keeps:
$44 − $6.67 − $3.20 = $34.13 per booked day
The break-even formula
Break-even days = fixed monthly costs ÷ what you keep per booked day
For the example car: $530 ÷ $34.13 = 15.5 days. Round up, because you can't book half a day and call it profit. The car needs 16 booked days a month just to cover itself.
Check it from both ends:
- At 20 booked days, the car keeps 20 × $34.13 = $682.60. Minus $530 in fixed costs, that's $152.60 of profit.
- At 12 booked days, it keeps $409.56. That's $120.44 short of covering its costs.
Same car, same rate. Eight days is the difference.
How your daily rate changes the number
Here's the same example car on the 80% plan, with the same $9.87 a day in cleaning and wear, at four daily rates:
| Daily rate | You keep (80%) | After cleaning and wear | Break-even days |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45 | $36.00 | $26.13 | 20.3 |
| $55 | $44.00 | $34.13 | 15.5 |
| $65 | $52.00 | $42.13 | 12.6 |
| $75 | $60.00 | $50.13 | 10.6 |
A higher rate lowers the bar, but only if the car still books at that rate. Raising the price from $55 to $65 cuts break-even by about 3 days. If it also costs you 5 booked days a month, you're worse off. For more on that trade-off, see how much Turo hosts actually make per car.
How your earnings plan changes the number
Same example car at $55 a day:
| Plan | You keep per day | After cleaning and wear | Break-even days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 70% | $38.50 | $28.63 | 18.5 |
| 80% | $44.00 | $34.13 | 15.5 |
| 90% | $49.50 | $39.63 | 13.4 |
Moving from 70% to 90% lowers this car's break-even by about 5 days. That's not free: on More Earnings, one damage claim can cost you up to $2,750 instead of $250. A single big claim on the 90% plan wipes out several months of the difference. We worked through that trade-off in Turo earnings plans explained.
How trip length changes the number
Short trips mean more turnovers for the same number of booked days. With a $20 turnover, the cleaning cost per booked day drops as trips get longer:
| Average trip length | Cleaning per booked day | You keep per booked day | Break-even days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 days | $10.00 | $30.80 | 17.2 |
| 3 days | $6.67 | $34.13 | 15.5 |
| 5 days | $4.00 | $36.80 | 14.4 |
| 7 days | $2.86 | $37.94 | 14.0 |
One catch: longer trips often come with your weekly or monthly discount, which lowers the trip price. If you offer those discounts, use the discounted daily rate in the formula, not your list price.
The cost that quietly raises your break-even
Depreciation doesn't show up as a bill, so most hosts leave it out. But every month the car is worth a little less, and rental miles speed that up.
Say the example car loses $2,400 in value a year. That's $200 a month. Add it to fixed costs and break-even jumps from 15.5 days to $730 ÷ $34.13 = 21.4 days.
You don't pay that $200 in cash, so a car can feel profitable at 18 days while losing value faster than it earns. Run the formula both ways: once for cash flow, once with depreciation.
What if the car is paid off?
Drop the $350 payment and fixed costs fall to $180. Break-even becomes $180 ÷ $34.13 = 5.3 days. Paid-off cars are forgiving, though depreciation still applies and older cars usually cost more in repairs.
What if you host in a variable host share city?
Since March 31, 2026, hosts in Austin, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Maui, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego and Seattle get a host share that depends on how far ahead the guest books. On Balanced, it ranges from 75% for trips booked 0 to 2 days out up to 90% for trips booked 28 or more days out.
For the example car, that moves break-even from about 16.9 days if every trip is last-minute (75%) to about 13.4 days if every trip is booked a month ahead (90%). Your real mix is somewhere in between. Look at the host share on your recent trip receipts and use the average.
Is your break-even realistic?
Compare it to the calendar. A month has 30 or 31 days, and a car can't be rented every one of them: it needs turnover time, maintenance and the occasional gap between trips. A car that needs 22 or more booked days just to break even has very little room for a slow month, a repair or a week in the body shop after a claim.
If a car's break-even is higher than the days it actually books, your options are:
- Lower fixed costs: refinance, shop your insurance, or sell and replace it with a cheaper car.
- Raise what you keep per day: test a higher rate, reconsider your plan, or encourage longer trips with a minimum trip length.
- Cut per-trip costs: a faster turnover routine adds up when you do it 8 or 10 times a month.
The bottom line
- Break-even days = fixed monthly costs ÷ what you keep per booked day.
- What you keep per day is your rate times your host share, minus cleaning per day and wear.
- Run it per car, with real numbers, and run it once more with depreciation included.
To do this every month you need each car's real booked days, payouts and expenses side by side. FleetEarnings reads your Turo earnings CSV and tracks expenses and recurring bills, so you can see income, costs and net profit for each car. You can also plug your numbers into the Turo profit calculator.
Sources: Turo help center pages on earnings plans for US hosts, earnings and host share, the cleaning policy for hosts and new and upcoming on Turo. Terms checked October 9, 2026. FleetEarnings is not affiliated with Turo, Inc.