I think it may be easy to compare the two now, but back in the days they were fairly different. I was a fairly early user of Airbnb (they opened at a time when I was young and traveled a lot, especially solo). During those days, Airbnb was truly about renting out extra space in your own home. (Maybe not an "airbed" every time, but just a room in your house/apartment, nonetheless) All of my early usages of Airbnb (as a guest -- I was never a host) were actually renting rooms in these strangers' apartments, that they live in themselves. This was in France, Italy, Brazil, etc. It's not about vacation houses in popular resort places (Lake Tahoe etc.). In fact, I remember back in the days there was a lot of comparison of Airbnb and Couchsurfing. One is paid and one is free, sure, but both were very much about meeting folks locally.