Earnings

Turo's earnings plans, and which one actually pays you more

Three plans, one trade: a bigger share of every trip against a bigger bill when something gets damaged. The arithmetic takes five minutes and most hosts never do it.

Rashed Alfarra, Turo host in McKinney, TX · September 2026

Turo replaced the old protection plans with earnings plans in 2026, and renamed deductibles to damage responsibility. Same idea underneath, cleaner labels, three choices instead of five.

The third-party liability coverage is the same on all three. So is 24/7 support and reimbursement for approved damage claims above your responsibility amount. The only thing you're choosing between is share of revenue versus exposure per incident.

The arithmetic

Moving from Balanced to More earnings gains you ten percent of everything the car earns, and costs you $1,250 more each time you have a damage claim. Those two numbers are all you need.

A car grossing $30,000 a year picks up $3,000 by moving up a tier. That covers $1,250 twice over with change left. You'd need more than two claims in a year for the switch to lose money, and if you're having more than two claims a year you have a guest screening problem, not a plan problem.

A car grossing $8,000 a year picks up $800. One claim wipes that out and then some. That host is better off lower down.

Run it on your own number:

The catch is the word “actually.” New hosts don't know their claim rate, so the honest answer in year one is to look at what you can absorb. If a $2,750 bill arriving next Tuesday would be a genuine problem, take the lower plan and treat the difference as the price of sleeping. That's a real thing to buy. Just buy it knowingly rather than by default.

Booking early is worth more in some cities

In a handful of markets, including Austin, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Maui, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, and Seattle, hosts on the More earnings plan can keep the full trip price on trips booked 28 or more days in advance.

If you host in one of those cities, that changes the shape of your calendar strategy. Early bookings are no longer just a nice buffer against an empty week, they pay a measurably better rate. Filling a weekend six weeks out at a slightly lower daily number can beat holding out for a last-minute booking at a higher one.

It also means the plans aren't strictly ten points apart where it applies. Do the comparison with your own booking-lead-time mix rather than the headline percentages.

What this does to your floor

Your plan changes the rate at which a booking stops being worth taking. A $150 day pays $105 on the 70 plan, $120 on the 80, and $135 on the 90. If your car costs you $95 in loan, insurance, cleaning, and maintenance reserve on a booked day, that's the difference between $10 of margin and $40.

So when you change plans, recompute your floor the same day. Hosts move up a tier, feel richer, and leave their prices exactly where they were, which is fine, but they also never notice that their floor moved and they could have turned down a few bad trips.

What I run

The higher plan, because my cars gross enough that ten percent is a real number and I'd rather hold the risk than pay that much for it. I also keep a reserve that covers the damage responsibility on both cars at once, which is what makes the choice comfortable instead of stressful. If I didn't have that, I'd be on a lower tier.

The plan is a financing decision, not a pricing one. Pick it on the size of your reserve, then go back to the thing that actually moves your income, which is whether your daily rate is in the right place against your market.

Pricing Lab is built by a Turo host and isn't affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Turo Inc. Figures above reflect Turo's published US earnings plans as of September 2026 and change over time. This is not insurance or financial advice.