Chicago, Illinois Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much would a Chicago Airbnb earn you, and is it even legal for you to run one?

Well, you'll want to look at those two together, because Chicago is stricter than most big markets on the second one, and if the city won't register your place, then it really doesn't matter how much you could've earned.

In a single-family home or a two-to-four-unit building, the city will only register the home you live in yourself, so if you're about to buy a condo just to list it on Airbnb, then I'm afraid you may not be able to register it at all. And since that's not something you want to find out after the fact, make sure to check the city's rules before you buy.

The good news is that once you clear that hurdle, the money's real, and it goes to the people who run their listings well, not simply to whoever happens to own one.

I'm covering Chicago, in Cook County, Illinois: what the market earns now, how it's shifted in the last twelve months, when it books, which city neighborhoods pay, and what the city wants before you list.

How Much Do Chicago Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Let's start with two-bedrooms, since they're the biggest group in this market. Even within that one group, the strongest bring in more than five times the revenue of the weakest for the same two bedrooms, and the best of them out-earn the typical home with four or more bedrooms, so when you run the numbers, don't stop at the bedroom count.

If you widen it to every size, the range stretches much further, though that mixes studios with four-bedrooms, so it tells you less about your own odds.

Either way the lesson holds: what you earn in Chicago comes down to how well you run the place, and hardly at all to the fact that you own it.

So who are you up against? BNBCalc tracks more than 5,000 active listings across the Chicago market, suburbs included, and a large share of them belong to professional hosts, and with the average stay running about five nights, this isn't a market of spare bedrooms either. Plenty of the hosts you'll compete with do this for a living, so I'd price and photograph accordingly, and if you'd rather not run it yourself, the Chicago property management rundown covers what handing it over costs.

And one more thing before we get to how the market has moved: if you're weighing a studio against a three-bedroom, compare gross yield rather than revenue, because revenue climbs with every bedroom you add while yield doesn't follow it.

Is the Chicago Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Knowing today's numbers only gets you halfway, though, because what you're really buying is where they go next.

So here's how the Chicago market moved, counting every listing in it. BNBCalc measures it the fair way, setting the twelve months from September 2025 to August 2026 against the twelve months before them, so you're comparing whole years, winters included, rather than a flattering stretch of summer.

Metric	Year-over-year change
Average nightly rate	+23%
Purchase price	+4%
Booking lead time	Down
Occupancy	−3%
Active supply	−4%

BNBCalc market data for all listings in the Chicago market, September 2025 to August 2026 compared with September 2024 to August 2025, with each change rounded to a whole percent. Every row is worked out on its own, which is why the percentages won't combine. Booking lead time gets a direction and no number, since this year's figures don't pin down how far it moved, and any measure whose direction this year's figures leave unclear isn't shown at all. The purchase price row follows home values rather than rentals.

Read that table as one sentence: Chicago operators pushed rates up 23% and gave back only 3% of occupancy. That's pricing power, and honestly I don't see much of it in the markets I watch right now.

So is Chicago oversaturated? No, and the listing count is the clearest sign, because active supply shrank about 4% over the year, which means fewer listings were competing for guests even as their hosts charged more. That's the opposite of what saturation looks like, since a saturated market is one where new listings keep piling in and everyone discounts to fill the calendar.

Then again, occupancy still slipped, which means hosts are leaning on price rather than on filling more nights, and I wouldn't count on another rate run like that, so make sure any deal you look at works at today's rates.

As for timing, booking lead time shortened over the year, and across the last twelve months the average booking came about 35 days before arrival. That's only about five weeks, which makes it hard to plan around if your pricing rules assume the calendar fills months ahead. Keep in mind that a shorter booking window makes last-minute pricing more valuable, not less.

The other half of the story sits on the cost side, where purchase prices rose about 4% over the same year, a far smaller climb than the one nightly rates made.

When Is Chicago's Peak Airbnb Season?

That annual picture hides something, because Chicago swings harder by season than most big markets.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	45%	$302
Oct 2025	43%	$319
Nov 2025	36%	$273
Dec 2025	33%	$265
Jan 2026	26%	$206
Feb 2026	27%	$205
Mar 2026	36%	$258
Apr 2026	40%	$269
May 2026	49%	$346
Jun 2026	54%	$399
Jul 2026	56%	$396
Aug 2026	52%	$371

BNBCalc market data for all listings in the Chicago market, one row per month from September 2025 to August 2026. The two columns are averaged separately, so don't multiply one by the other.

July booked 56% of its nights, at $396 a night on average, while January managed 26% at $206, and that gap is what I'd underwrite against, because a pro forma built on the annual average looks fine on paper and still leaves you short every winter.

So budget the real shape: four strong months from May to August, two poor ones in January and February, and a shoulder that covers the mortgage and little else.

Now, the week has a shape too: Saturday runs 29% above the average day on occupancy and Friday 28%, whereas Monday and Tuesday both sit about 20% below. Rates follow that curve, though far more gently, peaking 16% above average on Saturday, and that mismatch is what I'd act on, since demand swings harder than most operators' pricing does. Weekend rates here look underpriced to me.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Chicago?

City-wide numbers stop being useful the moment you have an address, and here the neighborhood does more work than any other variable.

So I mapped every listing inside the city limits to its official neighborhood, and the top 20 by what the median listing earns look like this.

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
1	Rush & Division	$108,040	$792	40%	$134,340
2	River North	$76,370	$584	39%	$123,505
3	The Loop	$69,985	$466	40%	$87,981
4	West Loop	$68,923	$549	36%	$93,387
5	Streeterville	$58,335	$474	39%	$65,744
6	Old Town	$55,660	$442	35%	$82,350
7	Printers Row	$51,746	$392	42%	$87,148
8	Near South Side	$49,068	$386	35%	$54,960
9	Lincoln Park	$49,001	$362	39%	$62,370
10	Gold Coast	$46,278	$407	41%	$115,673
11	United Center	$44,497	$420	35%	$61,255
12	Wrigleyville	$43,375	$440	30%	$59,098
13	West Town	$41,573	$316	36%	$61,826
14	Lakeview	$38,600	$322	34%	$54,079
15	Sheffield & DePaul	$37,047	$445	35%	$62,543
16	Belmont Cragin	$35,032	$273	37%	$56,787
17	Wicker Park	$34,622	$335	33%	$60,577
18	Little Italy, UIC	$33,814	$295	33%	$49,284
19	Chinatown	$33,617	$337	30%	$40,258
20	North Center	$32,685	$293	32%	$42,078

BNBCalc listing data inside official City of Chicago neighborhood boundaries, trailing twelve months as of September 2026. Medians rather than averages, so one trophy listing can't drag a neighborhood up the table. Neighborhoods too thin to measure reliably are excluded.

The pattern looks blunt to me: the money sits downtown and along the lakefront north of the river, and the whole top 10 is walkable to the Loop or the Gold Coast.

The top of that table deserves more than a row each, though, since those names rarely come up when people ask me about Chicago.

Rush & Division is nightlife-adjacent supply on the highest median rate in the city at $792, but its numbers also rest on the thinnest sample in the top five, so treat that median with some caution and expect a fight for anything that comes up for sale.

The Loop and Streeterville sit in the thick of downtown's offices and hotels, where I'd expect business travel to fill a good share of the calendar, and the Loop books more of its nights than anywhere else in the top five, at 40%.

Old Town sits close behind at a $56K median, but its best quarter of listings starts at $82,350, and among the top six only River North climbs further above its median, so if you run a place well there, you've got real room above that $56K.

Honestly, though, one caveat on that premium cluster: all four are small, expensive and mostly condo, which is exactly where Chicago's unit caps and opt-out lists bite hardest.

So the five I've broken out next aren't the five highest earners. I picked them because they're deep enough that their numbers don't hang on a handful of listings, known enough that guests search them by name, and spread from premium down to value. If you'd rather chase the top of the table, work from that ranking instead, but verify the building before anything else. And if what you want is the character of each area rather than its numbers, that's the job of the companion piece on the best Chicago neighborhoods for Airbnb.

1. River North

River North sits right next to downtown, with the galleries, steakhouses and nightlife to match, and at a $584 median rate it's the second-priciest neighborhood in the table, while its top quarter of listings clears $123,505, a figure only Rush & Division beats.

My guess is that weekday business travel carries a lot of that, and if so, a unit here is your best shot at flattening the Monday and Tuesday dip that shows up market-wide.

2. West Loop

The West Loop went from meatpacking district to Chicago's restaurant center, and Randolph Street is the reason guests book it.

Loft conversions and new high-rises dominate, so the stock skews modern, which means you'll be competing on finish more than on location, because everything here is already well located.

3. Lincoln Park

Lincoln Park pairs the zoo, the conservatory and the lakefront with a quick run downtown, and it tends to draw families and older couples over a party crowd, which usually means fewer complaints, while its 39% median occupancy makes it the steadiest of my three residential picks.

So it's my choice for a quieter operation, as long as you'll accept paying more per square foot going in.

4. Lakeview

Lakeview runs from the ballpark up to the lake, and its calendar runs on the Cubs.

The field here is the most crowded in the city, and that's before you count Wrigleyville, which Chicago maps separately and which out-earns the rest of Lakeview at a $43K median. That spike cuts both ways, though, so I wouldn't underwrite a full season here without checking the home schedule first.

5. Wicker Park

Wicker Park is the design-forward one, full of boutiques, music venues and restaurants.

Look at the stretch from its median to its top quartile, $35K against $61K, the widest gap among the cheaper picks, and you'll see why I like it for a strong operator: my read is that it pulls younger travelers who book on photos, so a well-styled unit punches above the median here. If your edge is interiors rather than square footage, this is where I'd put you.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Chicago?

The right neighborhood only gets you into the running, and what's inside the unit helps decide how far above the median you land.

The one Chicago publishes outright is a pool, worth about 48% more revenue as of September 2026, and that figure surprised me until I held it against a warmer market. The same model puts a Chicago pool at more than twice what it gives a pool in Tampa, which is what scarcity does to a number: fewer than one Chicago listing in 20 has one, whereas more than half of Tampa's do, so the few Chicago hosts who have a pool own the category outright.

That pooled figure hides how much the answer depends on what you're buying. Split by size, a pool is worth about 39% on a two-bedroom and 18% on a three-bedroom, whereas the only amenity that registers for studios at all is a barbecue. So a pool does its heaviest lifting in the middle of the range, and on a small unit your money is better spent almost anywhere else.

One-bedrooms answer to something different again, where the strongest signal is a hot tub rather than a pool, and homes with four or more bedrooms put a hot tub first too. Beyond the pool, six amenities carry a signal strong enough for the model to track in Chicago: a gym, a hot tub, lake access, internet, a TV, and an EV charger. BNBCalc Markets holds their lift figures and the public page doesn't show them, so I'm naming them without putting numbers on them. Lake access is the one I'd call distinctly Chicago, and it doesn't show up on Tampa's list at all.

What's missing from that list matters just as much. The model deliberately leaves out a few everyday fixtures that most Chicago listings already have, so you won't find a return figure for adding one. Clear the basics because guests expect them, then put the money into whatever your block doesn't already have, because that's where my margin has always come from.

Cleaning fees are the other lever, and most Chicago hosts leave them on the table: as of September 2026 only 46% charge one, and where they do, it averages about $133 a stay. Spread across every listing, including the ones that charge nothing, cleaning fees bring in about $2,100 a year, so the hosts who do charge are collecting more than twice that, and it's the easiest line here to fix before dinner.

Is Airbnb Legal in Chicago?

None of that matters if the city won't let you operate, and this is where Chicago separates itself from the markets it competes with.

Any stay of 31 days or fewer needs shared housing registration, which costs $250 a year under the city's 2026 registration guide, but whether you can get one depends on the building, and that's what kills deals.

In a single-family home or a two-to-four-unit building, the city will only register the home the host lives in, one rental per building, while five units or more gets you more room, capped at a quarter of the units or six, whichever is smaller.

So the classic play, buying a small building just to put it on Airbnb, mostly isn't available here, and that's the first thing I'd want in hand before touring anything.

Three more gates sit on top of that one: more than 2,400 buildings had opted out through the city's Prohibited Buildings List as of August 2026, whole Restricted Residential Zones are excluded on top, and your own lease or HOA can ban short-term rentals too, regardless of what the city allows.

There's an exception process, called a Commissioner's Adjustment, if your home falls outside those limits, but at $360 and non-refundable I'd treat it as more of a long shot than a formality.

Then price with the tax in mind, because it's heavy. Your guest pays it on top of the booking, so none of it comes out of your nightly rate, but it still raises what a stay here costs them. Chicago charges a 4.5% hotel accommodation tax plus a 6% shared housing surcharge on short-term bookings, Cook County adds 1%, and Illinois puts its own hotel taxes on top of that. If you book through Airbnb, it collects those taxes from the guest and pays them for you, and the city requires any licensed platform to collect its hotel tax the same way. Take bookings through your own website, though, and you'll need a city tax account so you can pay the city yourself. The Illinois short-term rental tax guide walks through the state side.

Enforcement got sharper this year as well, since in June 2026 the city sued Airbnb itself, along with one of its most active Chicago hosts, asking a court for fines and for the profits from those rentals, and to me that makes operating unregistered a different class of risk.

Two smaller things worth remembering: you can't advertise or take bookings while the application is pending, and once you're approved, your registration number has to go on your listing.

Rules like these move, so make sure to check yours before you buy, and the Chicago short-term rental regulation guide has the caps by building type, the excluded zones, the tax breakdown, and how hard the city enforces it.

Where Does This Chicago Airbnb Data Come From?

That guide covers the rules, while the numbers in this one come from BNBCalc Markets, the research side of BNBCalc, and it goes further than any article has room for. Remember that one-bedrooms answer to a hot tub rather than a pool? BNBCalc Markets puts a revenue figure on that, and on every amenity it tracks at each bedroom count, so if you're deciding how to fit out a specific unit, you'll want those numbers in front of you before you spend a dollar.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Chicago Property?

Everything to this point describes a market, and none of it underwrites a house, because a market can look strong while one address on the wrong block quietly loses money. I've watched that gap cost people more in Chicago than in most cities, since the blocks are small and demand shifts sharply between them.

So work in that order: start with the Chicago market page for current revenue, occupancy and seasonality, then check where it ranks among the best Illinois markets by gross yield if you're still open on location, and once you've settled on an address, run it through BNBCalc with your real purchase price, financing and expenses.

There are three thresholds I hold to here, and I'd hold you to them too. First, confirm the building can register at all, before anything else. Second, if the deal only works at July's numbers then it doesn't work, because January's coming, and in January the market fills 26% of its nights at an average rate of $206. And third, if the pro forma needs top-band performance to clear your hurdle, price it on the typical band and treat the rest as upside.

Every market has a version of that last rule, and the seasonal, tightly regulated ones just make you learn it faster.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much Does an Airbnb Make in Chicago?

Earnings depend more on how well a listing is run than on its size. Among Chicago two-bedrooms, the largest group, BNBCalc data shows the strongest listings bringing in more than five times the revenue of the weakest, and the best two-bedrooms out-earning the typical home with four or more bedrooms. Location matters as well: inside the city, neighborhood medians run from about $108K in Rush & Division to under $20K in several neighborhoods farther from downtown.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in Chicago in 2026?

It can be, and the latest year's trend has mostly favored hosts. Across every listing BNBCalc tracks, average nightly rates climbed about 23% in the year ending August 2026, occupancy slipped about 3%, and active supply fell about 4%. Purchase prices rose about 4% over the same period. Even so, a specific property still has to work at its own price and costs.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in Chicago?

July books the most nights, at 56% occupancy and a $396 average nightly rate, although June's average rate runs a little higher at $399. January is the weakest month at 26% occupancy and $206, with February close behind at 27% and $205. The strong season runs May through August, when occupancy ranges from 49% to 56% and average nightly rates from $346 to $399. Any Chicago investment should be underwritten across the full year rather than on peak-summer performance.

Do You Need a License to Run an Airbnb in Chicago?

Yes. Stays of 31 days or fewer require shared housing registration, costing $250 per year under the city's 2026 registration guide. Eligibility depends on the building: single-family homes and two-to-four-unit buildings may only register the host's own primary residence, one rental per building, while buildings of five or more units are capped at a quarter of their units or six, whichever is smaller. Over 2,400 buildings were excluded outright as of August 2026.

Can You Buy an Investment Property in Chicago and Run It as an Airbnb?

Often not, at least not the way investors do it elsewhere. Chicago restricts single-family homes and two-to-four-unit buildings to the host's own primary residence, so a non-owner-occupied purchase in that category generally cannot register without a Commissioner's Adjustment. Larger buildings of five or more units allow non-resident hosting within unit caps, provided the building isn't on the Prohibited Buildings List and isn't inside a Restricted Residential Zone. Verify eligibility for the specific address before making an offer.

Which Chicago Neighborhood Is Best for Short-Term Rentals?

By median annual revenue, Rush & Division leads at $108K on a $792 median nightly rate, followed by River North at $76K, the Loop at $70K and the West Loop at $69K. Among the residential areas profiled, Lincoln Park tops out at $49K with the steadiest occupancy, while Lakeview and Wicker Park sit near $35K to $39K. Figures are medians from BNBCalc listing data inside official City of Chicago neighborhood boundaries, as of September 2026.

How Many Airbnbs Are There in Chicago?

BNBCalc counts more than 5,000 active short-term rental listings in the Chicago market, which reaches into the suburbs as well as the city, and a large share of those listings are run by professional hosts. Across all listings, active supply fell by about 4% in the year to August 2026. Two-bedroom properties are the largest single group, followed by three-bedroom and one-bedroom properties.