Updated Oct 2026

How to reply to Airbnb reviews by API

If you manage holiday rentals, you have probably looked for an Airbnb API to answer guest reviews from your own software, and found that there isn’t one you can sign up for. Airbnb’s API is invitation-only: it is open to the software partners Airbnb chooses, mostly property management systems (PMS) and channel managers, and a host or an agency can’t apply on its own.

There is still a way to read and reply by API, and it is the one most professional managers already have.

The route that works: a PMS that is an Airbnb partner

Property management systems that are Airbnb software partners receive your guest reviews through Airbnb’s API and can publish your response. Some of them expose that in their own API. Hostaway does: its official API lists the guest reviews of every listing and has an endpoint to publish the host’s response, for Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo. Hospitable and Guesty do the same for Airbnb and Booking.com.

So if your listings are in Hostaway, you can answer Airbnb reviews from your own code, without Airbnb partner access and without logging in to Airbnb.

With Prisma: one endpoint for every channel

Prisma connects to your Hostaway account with an API secret you create in Hostaway (Settings → Hostaway API) and imports every listing. Then:

# New guest reviews from Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo, in one JSON format
curl "https://api.prismareviews.com/v1/reviews?platform=hostaway&has_reply=false" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PRISMA_API_KEY"

# Publish your response on the channel the review came from
curl -X POST https://api.prismareviews.com/v1/reviews/rev_01JB7Q/reply \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PRISMA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "Thank you, Sam! We hope to host you again."}'

You get a webhook for each new review, the same fields as every other platform (rating, text, author, date, reply) and replies queued and retried for you. The Hostaway connection is free on every Prisma plan, including the free one, because it costs us nothing to run.

Prisma never writes replies: it publishes the text you, your team or your own software send. There is no AI ghost-writing.

Rules to know

• One response per review. Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo accept one public response; it can’t be edited or deleted afterwards.
• Time window. Airbnb accepts the host’s response for 30 days after the guest’s review is published.
• Published reviews only. Reviews still hidden by Airbnb’s double-blind period appear once both sides have reviewed or the period ends.
• Ratings. Hostaway reports ratings out of 10; Prisma halves them into the usual 1–5 scale.

If you don’t use Hostaway

Prisma can still read the public reviews of any Airbnb listing or Booking.com property from its page, with paid reads, on any paid plan. Each review links to the listing, where you answer it in Airbnb or the Booking.com Extranet. If your listings are in Hospitable or Guesty, connect that instead: both read your Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo reviews and answer Airbnb and Booking.com ones by API. Of the other property management systems we looked at, Smoobu, Lodgify and Uplisting have no reviews in their API, and OwnerRez, Hostfully and Beds24 can read reviews but not answer them.

FAQ

Does Airbnb have a public API for reviews? No. Airbnb’s API is only open to software partners it invites.

How can I reply to Airbnb reviews by API? Through a PMS that is an Airbnb partner and exposes reviews in its API. Hostaway, Hospitable and Guesty do, and Prisma connects to all three.

Does this work for Booking.com and Vrbo? Yes, the same Hostaway connection answers reviews on the three channels.