See the Airbnb host risk Superhost badges hide — before you reserve.
A free Chrome extension that flags strategic cancellations, listing-relisting tricks, and review anomalies inside the Airbnb listing you are already looking at. Built for wedding guests, group organizers, and travelers whose trip can’t be moved.
Desktop Chrome only. One email at launch. No marketing list, no resale, no follow-ups.
The scam Airbnb’s star rating cannot see.
A host accepts a booking weeks or months out. Seven to thirty days before the stay — usually right as a local event raises prices in the area — the host cancels. Days later, the same property reappears under a slightly different title, at a higher nightly rate, available to a new guest.
The original guest loses their plans, scrambles for a last-minute replacement, and absorbs the cost. Airbnb’s AirCover refunds the deposit and helps rebook at “comparable” prices, but if you were going to a friend’s wedding in Tulum or a conference in Lisbon, “comparable” doesn’t exist. The host’s Superhost badge stays clean because the pattern is invisible from any single booking.
I watched three friends get burned by some version of this in the last eighteen months. The pattern was the same every time. It was invisible at the moment they booked. Countermark makes it visible.
What it actually looks like.
These are stills, not interactive. The extension does not exist yet. The video above is the closest thing to a working prototype.
The stripe sits at the top of the listing inside the Airbnb tab you are already viewing. Click it to expand the evidence panel. Nothing happens until you click. The extension does not block bookings, does not message hosts, and does not send your browsing anywhere.
Built for trips that can’t be moved.
Use it if
- You are going to a wedding, a conference, a milestone trip, or any booking where “rebook at comparable price” is not a real recovery option.
- You book a few high-stakes Airbnb stays a year and treat each one like a real decision.
- You are organizing a group trip and your name is on the reservation.
- You are a frequent business traveler who has been burned at least once.
Skip it if
- You book Airbnb casually and a host canceling means you find another one.
- You are flexible on dates, location, and group size.
- You book primarily on a phone and never on a laptop.
- You want a guarantee. Countermark is a risk score, not insurance. (We have a plan for that — see below.)
What this is not.
- Not a guarantee. Countermark is a free risk score, the way a credit score is not a loan. If a green-flagged host cancels on you anyway, Countermark does not make you whole. A planned later release will offer travel insurance inline from a partner provider — Countermark will not be the underwriter.
- Not on mobile. Chrome extensions do not run on mobile Safari and run on only a small set of mobile browsers. The first version is desktop-only. A companion web app where you paste a listing URL is on the roadmap, but it is not in the first release. If you book exclusively on a phone, this will not help you yet.
- Not a venture-scale company. Countermark is a side project built by one person at roughly ten hours a week. The first release will ship to the Chrome Web Store free, with no account and no signup. It exists because the pattern exists and nobody else built the tool.
- Not Airbnb-affiliated. Countermark is not endorsed by, partnered with, or affiliated with Airbnb, Inc. It reads only the pages your browser already loads when you visit them.
If you want it, tell me.
I am not building this if not enough people would actually use it. One email field below. I will email you exactly once, when the Chrome Web Store listing goes live. No newsletter. No drip campaign. No selling the list. If interest is below my own pre-set threshold by July, the project stops and I email everyone here to say so.
If you have been burned by the pattern above, reply to the launch email with your story. The press release for the launch is missing a real customer quote and I would rather use a real one than a fabricated one.
One email at launch. Nothing before.
Who built this.
I’m Tim Song. I am not an Airbnb insider, a fraud-detection expert, or a travel-industry figure. I watched three friends lose deposits and ruined trips to the same scam in eighteen months, kept thinking somebody should build a tool that catches this pattern at the booking moment, and eventually realized that nobody was going to. I have a day job. I build this in the evenings. If it works, it pays for itself through a planned travel-insurance partnership and a small paid tier later. If it does not work, I will say so and shut it down. The whole point is that the pattern is real, the signals are public, and somebody has to put them in front of you before you click reserve.