Denver, Colorado Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much can a Denver Airbnb earn, and can you legally run one in a home you don't live in?

Well, the second question decides the first, so I'll answer it straight away. The City and County of Denver only licenses a short-term rental in the host's own primary residence, meaning the home you live in and usually come back to. You only get one, though a backyard or garage accessory unit on the same lot can qualify too if you live in the main house. If you were hoping to pick up a Denver condo or house, rent it out by the night and never live there, then unfortunately that plan won't get you a short-term rental license inside the city limits, and it's a lot cheaper to learn that now than after closing.

If you do live in the place, the license runs $150 in its first year, and the market you'd be joining has thinned out. Across every listing BNBCalc tracks here, there are about 15% fewer than a year ago, and although occupancy slipped, average nightly rates climbed about 20%. I'm covering Denver, Colorado, where the city and the county are one government, although the market data below also reaches into the suburbs, and those write their own rules.

How Much Do Denver Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

When you break Denver's revenue down by bedroom count, the range inside each size matters more than the steps between sizes. A one-bedroom at the top of its range out-earns a four-plus-bedroom at the bottom of its range, and with that much overlap, I'd put most of the gap within any one size down to where the unit sits and how well it's run, both of which are choices you get to make.

When I switched to gross yield, the sizes ended up surprisingly close together. From one bedroom up to four-plus, the typical listing's yield sits within about a point of the others, with four-bedroom-plus homes narrowly on top, whereas studios manage roughly half that. I don't think Denver pushes you toward small units to get a return, which helps when the home you license also has to suit your own life.

Who will you be pricing against? BNBCalc counts roughly 5,000 active listings in this market, and stays there average under five nights, while a large share of those listings sit with professional hosts. That share looks high for a city that only licenses primary residences, but the figure covers the whole metro market, and the suburbs set their own rules. A local manager can take turnovers and guest messages off your plate, and the Denver property management roundup compares the options, but keep in mind the license still has to sit with whoever lives there.

At the top end, listings in BNBCalc's top performance tier earn almost twice what the average Denver-market listing does. BNBCalc benchmarks that group separately, and I'd aim for it without budgeting on it.

Is the Denver Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Denver's latest year didn't go the way I'd have guessed, starting with the listing count.

Metric	Year-over-year change
Average nightly rate	+20%
Purchase price	−2%
Booking lead time	Down
Occupancy	−5%
Active supply	−15%

BNBCalc data across all listings BNBCalc tracks in the market, for September 2025 to August 2026 set against September 2024 to August 2025, with every change rounded. Booking lead time carries its direction without a figure, since the size of that change isn't settled yet, and any measure is dropped when this year's data can't show which way it moved. Purchase price tracks home prices rather than listings.

No, Denver isn't oversaturated, and its listing count is shrinking: active supply fell about 15% over the year, so the crowd thinned out rather than piling in.

What surprised me is what happened after those listings left. You'd expect the hosts who stayed to fill more of their nights, yet occupancy still slipped about 5%, and over the same year Denver's average nightly rate went up about 20%. I can't tell from these numbers which of those moves caused the other, but either way it isn't what crowding looks like, because in a crowded market hosts cut their rates to win bookings, and Denver's hosts went the other way.

Bookings also moved closer to arrival over the year, and in the latest twelve months guests booked about 37 days before check-in on average, so keep your minimum-stay and pricing rules loose enough to catch the later bookers.

When Is Denver's Peak Airbnb Season?

Timing matters across the year as well, and Denver's peak season runs from May through August, when roughly half or more of all nights book and average nightly rates run from $289 up to $351.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	49%	$265
Oct 2025	46%	$265
Nov 2025	36%	$252
Dec 2025	37%	$286
Jan 2026	33%	$233
Feb 2026	32%	$222
Mar 2026	42%	$235
Apr 2026	42%	$242
May 2026	49%	$289
Jun 2026	55%	$335
Jul 2026	57%	$351
Aug 2026	51%	$305

BNBCalc market data across all listings in the market, one row per month for September 2025 through August 2026. Occupancy and nightly rate are averaged independently, so read each column on its own.

July tops that table on both occupancy and nightly rate, at 57% and $351, and February sits at the bottom on both, at 32% and $222. From November right through April, no month books even 43% of its nights, so if you budget on an average month, you'll overestimate the winter and underestimate the summer.

Still, December stands out on price, charging more per night than any month outside May to August, at $286, even though only about 37% of its nights book.

For a host who lives in the home, that shape has a nice side effect, because the months you'd most like to travel are the ones that pay best. Just don't let the time away turn into most of the year: Denver's test is whether the home is your usual place of return, and the city reads "usual" as more often than not.

The week has its own rhythm too. In BNBCalc's current all-listing figures, Fridays and Saturdays both run 21% ahead of a typical day on occupancy, while Mondays and Tuesdays trail by 17%. Rates follow the same pattern but move a little over half as far, peaking 13% above average on Friday and Saturday, and if I were setting prices here, the weekend premium is what I'd push on before touching anything else.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Denver?

Before you pick a street, you'll want to know how much of this market is Denver itself.

Most of this market's listings sit outside Denver's city limits, spread through suburbs such as Arvada, Westminster, Lakewood and Aurora. Taken together, those listings post a higher median than the city's, although Lakewood and Aurora on their own come in below Denver. I've built two tables from different boundary sets, Denver's neighborhoods first and then the cities around it, and they don't compare row for row.

Inside the City and County of Denver

Denver splits itself into 78 official statistical neighborhoods, so I placed each measurable listing in the city into one of them and ranked the 15 highest by median annual revenue.

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	University Park	$74,844	$566	35%	$88,376
2	Union Station	$37,338	$329	32%	$50,005
3	Five Points	$34,794	$310	34%	$51,212
4	Central Business District (Downtown)	$34,481	$284	36%	$48,448
5	Cherry Creek	$34,268	$317	30%	$47,369
6	Highland	$34,156	$268	37%	$45,759
7	Washington Park West	$33,664	$274	35%	$40,346
8	Jefferson Park	$32,965	$301	34%	$44,855
9	West Colfax	$31,495	$314	33%	$44,906
10	Virginia Village	$31,183	$243	35%	$43,877
11	North Capitol Hill	$29,854	$275	33%	$44,276
12	Civic Center	$29,434	$221	39%	$33,539
13	Sloan Lake	$29,199	$246	38%	$43,265
14	City Park West	$28,359	$218	35%	$40,336
15	Central Park	$28,077	$229	32%	$39,112

BNBCalc 2026 listing data inside Denver's official statistical neighborhood boundaries, trailing twelve months. Revenue, rate and occupancy are medians, and the final column shows the 75th percentile, the point where a neighborhood's top quarter of listings starts. Each column is calculated separately, so they don't multiply, and neighborhoods with too little data are left out.

Don't set those occupancy figures against the monthly table, though: each one is the middle listing's own figure, not an average across the market, so they're for comparing one neighborhood with another.

I wouldn't take the top row at face value, either. University Park, just east of the University of Denver, rests on a thin sample, and its typical listing has four bedrooms, so that $74,844 median mostly tells you what a big home earns there rather than proving the neighborhood pays double.

Below it, rows two through eight all land between roughly $33,000 and $37,000, and that's where I'd spend my attention. The Union Station neighborhood takes in the rail station, Larimer Square and much of the historic district people call LoDo, and it posts the second-highest median rate in the table at $329. Five Points reaches from Coors Field up into RiNo, and apart from University Park it has the highest 75th-percentile revenue on the list at $51,212, which tells me a strong operator there can pull well clear of the median.

Highland is the one I'd look at hardest if I were buying my own home with a rental in mind, because its figures rest on the largest sample of any Denver neighborhood and at 37% it has the best median occupancy in the top ten. Cherry Creek shows the opposite trade, charging a $317 median rate but filling only 30% of its nights, the lowest in that group.

What the table can't show is what it's like to live in each place, which matters when the license requires it, and the best Denver neighborhoods for Airbnb covers that side.

The Rest of the Denver Market

Do the suburbs really earn more? These are the places around Denver with the most listings, mapped by city.

Rank	City or area	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Centennial	$45,492	$377	35%	$57,866
2	Arvada	$38,877	$341	33%	$51,161
3	Westminster	$35,851	$329	34%	$47,771
4	Berkley (unincorporated Adams County)	$35,758	$293	37%	$54,578
5	Golden	$34,511	$264	37%	$43,014
6	Wheat Ridge	$32,326	$263	35%	$44,979
7	Denver	$27,794	$229	35%	$40,252
8	Lakewood	$25,685	$223	35%	$40,275
9	Aurora	$23,748	$222	34%	$33,385

BNBCalc 2026 listing data inside US Census place boundaries, trailing twelve months, for the places with the most listings. Columns are medians except the 75th percentile, each calculated separately, and Berkley is a Census area in Adams County rather than Denver's Berkeley neighborhood.

On that table Denver lands seventh of nine. Does that make the suburbs the better buy? Not automatically, because the homes aren't the same size: the typical listing has four bedrooms in Centennial and Westminster, three in Arvada, and two in Denver. I'd bet a good part of that gap is house size rather than location, and Golden is the telling exception, with a typical one-bedroom listing that still clears $34,511.

The bigger difference is legal. Colorado has no statewide short-term rental regulations, so the rules are set city by city, and unincorporated areas like Berkley fall under their county. Some of those rulebooks may be looser than Denver's and others just as strict, so make sure you check the specific city before you assume a suburb is the workaround. Arvada has the most listings outside Denver, and BNBCalc's Arvada short-term rental guide is where I'd start if it's on your list.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Denver?

Whichever city you settle on, a few features inside the unit move revenue more than the rest.

BNBCalc's current amenity model puts a hot tub at about 23% more revenue for a Denver listing, which I'd guess has a lot to do with the city's cold winter evenings, and it's the one lift the public market page shows openly.

Seven more amenities carry enough signal for the model to track in Denver: a sauna, allowing pets, a gym, an EV charger, a barbecue, internet, and a TV. Their Denver percentages sit behind BNBCalc Markets, which is why I can list them here without the figures. A few everyday utilities are left out of the model on purpose, because BNBCalc counts them as basics every guest expects rather than investment choices.

Cleaning fees deserve a look too. As of September 2026, 52.7% of Denver listings charged one, averaging about $140 where they did, or about $2,450 a year spread across every listing. That money mostly pays for the turnover, so think of the fee as charging honestly for the cleaning, not as profit. Raising your weekend rates, on the other hand, costs you nothing.

Is Airbnb Legal in Denver?

Yes, as long as you live there, and for an investor that one condition decides whether any of the numbers above apply to you.

As of August 2026, under Denver's code, a short-term rental is a stay of less than 30 consecutive days, and every one needs a license from the city's Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection. The license only goes to the host's primary residence, which the city defines as the place where your habitation is fixed for the term of the license and your usual place of return. You can only have one, and calling a home your residence for tax purposes doesn't settle it on its own. If you live in the main house, though, you can also license a backyard or garage accessory unit on the same lot.

Within that rule, I'd call Denver fairly flexible. Owners and long-term renters can both apply, although a renter needs the landlord's permission. You can rent a single room or the whole home, and you don't have to be there while guests stay, but you can't book two separate parties under separate contracts at the same time. Zoning allows short-term rentals as an accessory use wherever residential use is allowed, though your HOA can still ban them through its own covenants.

What's left for an investor who won't live there? Unfortunately not a short-term rental license. The city points you to a lodging facility license instead, and I'd treat that as a commercial conversion. It's limited to certain zone districts and can mean a change of occupancy, with sprinklers, fire alarms and accessibility upgrades. Rentals of 30 days or longer need a separate residential rental property license.

If you do qualify, the costs are modest: a $50 application fee plus $100 a year for the license. You'll also need $1 million in liability coverage, either your own policy or one a hosting platform provides, and your license number has to appear in every ad.

Lodging taxes go on the guest's bill rather than coming out of your rate, but you're still responsible for them. Denver's lodger's tax is 10.75% of everything charged for the stay, cleaning fees included, and Denver's tax guidance adds 4% in state and special-district sales tax, so guests pay 14.75% on top. Airbnb's Colorado tax page says it collects the 2.9% state sales tax and Denver's lodger's tax on Denver bookings, but it doesn't name the 1% RTD or 0.1% cultural facilities district taxes, so check your payouts for those. Denver's occupational privilege tax adds $48 a year for each owner, and don't forget to file your own returns on time; the Colorado short-term rental tax guide explains how the state filings work.

I'd say enforcement has teeth, mostly because the rules reach the booking platforms too. Denver's code makes it unlawful for a platform to take payment for an unlicensed short-term rental, with a civil penalty of $1,000 per violation per day. If your license lapses, your platform may block new reservations, and even after you file the renewal it can take up to a week to sync with the city. The department also tracks listings, answers complaints and sends out inspectors, fines run up to $999 per incident, and it can deny or revoke a license once it decides the home isn't really your primary residence.

The application steps, documents, tax accounts and contacts are all in the Denver short-term rental regulation guide.

Where Does BNBCalc Get Its Denver Airbnb Data?

The paperwork lives in that guide, but every trend in this article comes from BNBCalc Markets, which puts short-term rental markets in order by annual revenue and shows you where Denver ranks before you commit. Open any market there and you'll see how its nightly rates have moved over the past year, and since higher rates did most of the work in Denver this year, that's the number I'd watch before pricing a home here.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Denver Property?

Market figures describe thousands of listings at once, so how do you get from those to the one address you're weighing?

Start with the Denver market page to see revenue, occupancy and seasonality as they update, and if you haven't committed to Denver yet, the best Colorado markets by gross yield shows how it stacks up against the rest of the state. Once there's a specific home in play, put its actual price, loan terms and running costs into BNBCalc and see what comes out.

Before you trust whatever number comes back, hold it up against a few Denver realities. Whether you'll actually live there comes first, because if you won't, you should price the home as a 30-day-plus rental and forget the nightly numbers. The winter comes next, since February fills only 32% of its nights, at a $222 average rate. You'll also want to price with the 14.75% in mind, since it's added to the guest's bill on top of your nightly rate and cleaning fee. And don't assume rates keep climbing, because across the market they jumped about 20% in a single year even as occupancy slipped, and I wouldn't budget on that happening twice.

Wherever the rules decide who's allowed to host, the market averages only describe the people who cleared that bar, so the first question to ask of any city's numbers is whether you'd be allowed in.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Average Airbnb Income in Denver?

Inside the city, the median listing earned $27,794 over a trailing twelve months in 2026. Income varies widely even among homes of the same size: in BNBCalc market data, a one-bedroom at the top of its range out-earns a four-plus-bedroom at the bottom of its range. Listings in BNBCalc's top performance tier earn almost twice what the average listing across the Denver market does.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in Denver in 2026?

It can be, but only for hosts who qualify, because Denver licenses short-term rentals solely at a host's primary residence. For them the latest year brought thinner competition and higher prices: across all listings, active supply dropped about 15% and nightly rates gained about 20% on average, although occupancy slipped about 5%. Profit on a specific home still depends on its price and costs.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in Denver?

July 2026 was the peak across all listings, with 57% occupancy and a $351 average nightly rate, while February was the low point, at 32% occupancy and a $222 rate. May through August kept occupancy between 49% and 57%, with average rates between $289 and $351, and Friday and Saturday are the strongest nights of the week.

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

Yes. Any stay of less than 30 consecutive days requires a short-term rental license from Denver's Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, costing a $50 application fee plus $100 a year. It's only available for the host's primary residence, or an accessory dwelling unit on that lot. The license number must appear in every ad, and hosts need $1 million in liability coverage, which a platform's policy can supply.

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

Not as a short-term rental, unless you live in it. Denver licenses short-term rentals only at the host's primary residence, the place where the host's habitation is fixed and their usual place of return, plus an accessory dwelling unit on that lot. Any other property would need a lodging facility license, limited to certain zone districts, while rentals of 30 days or more need a residential rental property license.

Which Denver Neighborhood Is Best for Short-Term Rentals?

It depends on the home. University Park has the city's highest median revenue, $74,844, but on a thin sample whose typical listing has four bedrooms. Union Station, Five Points, the Central Business District, Cherry Creek and Highland sit between about $34,000 and $37,000, and Highland adds the best median occupancy in the top ten, 37%. These are 2026 medians from BNBCalc listing data inside Denver's statistical neighborhoods.

How Much Is the Airbnb Tax in Denver?

Guests on a Denver short-term rental pay 14.75% on top of the booking: Denver's 10.75% lodger's tax plus 4% in sales tax, which Colorado's Department of Revenue lists as 2.9% state, 1% RTD and 0.1% cultural facilities district. Airbnb's Colorado tax page says it collects the state sales tax and Denver's lodger's tax on Denver bookings. Hosts still file returns and owe a $48 annual occupational privilege tax for each owner.

How Many Airbnbs Are There in Denver?

BNBCalc's count for the Denver market is roughly 5,000 active short-term rentals, a figure that takes in the surrounding suburbs too, and a large share of them are in professional hosts' hands. In the year ending August 2026, active supply across the whole market fell about 15%. Most of the market's listings sit outside Denver's city limits, and Arvada has the most listings of any suburb.