St. Louis, Missouri Airbnb Market Data 2026

What does a St. Louis Airbnb actually earn, and is the city issuing permits for one right now?

The permit half has an odd answer, so let's start there. The City of St. Louis passed a short-term rental permit ordinance in 2023, and a court order stopped the city from enforcing it in April 2025. The most recent confirmations I could reach run to the middle of 2026, and the city still wasn't accepting applications, running inspections or issuing permits then. Check the Building Division's page for today's position before you rely on it. A separate ordinance that took effect on February 23, 2026 does bind, though: every short-term rental operator inside the city needs a short-term rental business license, and pays the License Collector a quarterly fee worth 3% of the rent it charges. The permit stalled. The license didn't, and people keep hearing the first thing and assuming it covers the second.

Then there's the map. Only about half the listings in BNBCalc's St. Louis market are in the city at all: 50.9% sit inside the city limits, while the remainder is scattered through St. Louis County's municipalities, out into St. Charles and Warren counties, and across the Mississippi into Illinois around Alton, Belleville and Edwardsville. St. Louis city is legally independent of St. Louis County, so the rules above stop at the city line and each of those other places writes its own. Take the figures as the whole metro's, except where a label separates the city out, and take the rulebook as the city's alone. One more thing is worth knowing up front, too: St. Louis is a weekend market that never really fills, and this year the money came from what hosts charged rather than from how often they were booked.

How Much Do St. Louis Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Market-wide, the median listing took about $23,235 over the last twelve months, at a median nightly rate of $211 and median occupancy of 30.9%. A quarter of listings cleared $35,036. Both figures are medians of the individual listings, taken from my own cut of the market's listing data rather than from an average, which matters in this market because a handful of lake houses and big rehabbed rowhouses pull an average a long way up.

Split them at the city line and the halves don't behave the same way.

Where	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
Inside the city limits	$21,405	$190	32.3%	$32,921
Outside the city limits	$24,626	$236	30.0%	$36,089
Whole market	$23,235	$211	30.9%	$35,036

The ring pays better, while the city fills better and charges less. You'd expect that shape when one side is mostly two-bedroom city homes and the other has room for houses that sleep eight, although the median listing is a two-bedroom on both sides of the line.

So size is where the real money question sits, and the steps between one size and the next aren't even.

Bedrooms	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
Studio	$15,173	$128	32.3%	$18,339
1	$15,455	$141	31.0%	$19,465
2	$21,233	$186	31.3%	$26,549
3	$29,695	$269	30.9%	$38,859
4+	$46,118	$422	30.4%	$59,881

Look at what happens between those first two rows, because it's the least intuitive step in the table. A studio and a one-bedroom land within $300 of each other, so the extra bedroom you paid for adds next to nothing at the bottom of the market, whereas the three steps after that are worth about $5,800, then $8,500, then $16,400 a year at the median. Occupancy, meanwhile, barely moves across the whole column. Big listings here don't fill more often than small ones, they charge roughly three times what a one-bedroom does, and that's the lever this market hands you.

The four-bedroom row carries one more twist, because that's the size where the city beats the suburbs. A four-plus-bedroom listing inside the city limits runs a median of $51,094 against $40,963 for the same size outside them, even though the ring is ahead at one, two and three bedrooms. Large city homes are scarce, central, and priced accordingly, so if a big house is what you're after, the city line works backwards from the way it does everywhere else in these numbers.

Keep in mind that the data module on this page carries the market-wide averages, the active listing count and the yield figures, and it refreshes on its own schedule. The medians and percentiles above are mine, built from the individual listings, and the two won't agree because an average and a median never do in a market with a tail like this one.

Is the St. Louis Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Not a question I can settle from this data, and I'd rather say that than hand you a number I don't trust. Here's why. The listing-count trend comes out positive on the twelve-month view and slightly negative when it's recomputed on the cleanest stretch of comparable data, and a metric that changes sign depending on which window you use isn't telling you anything about competition. So it's left out below.

Metric	Change
Average nightly rate	+20%
Booking lead time	+11%
Occupancy	−8%
Active listings	Not published
Purchase price	+3%

Those rows put January through August 2026 beside the same stretch of 2025, the longest window this market's stored history supports without reaching back past the point where its own numbers changed definition.

What survives says something, even without the supply line. Guests paid about 20% more a night across those eight months than they did across the same eight of 2025, while the average listing sold about 8% fewer of its nights, and they booked about 11% further ahead. That combination is the signature of a market where pricing is doing the work: rates up, calendars thinner, the money roughly holding. Whether those thinner calendars mean new competition arrived, or simply that hosts raised prices past what some guests would pay, this data genuinely can't tell you.

So here's what I'd do instead of waiting on a trend line. Go and get the occupancy of comparable listings, the ones you'd really be up against, matched on bedroom count and on the part of the metro you're buying in, then write it down. Check it again in three months, and again three months after that. If they're filling fewer nights on each pass while their rates hold steady, you're watching competition arrive in the only place it shows up honestly, which is on the calendars of homes exactly like yours.

A large share of the listings across this metro belongs to professional operators, and if you'd rather hand the operating side over to one of them than learn it yourself, the St. Louis property management companies that serve this market are worth reading up on before you buy rather than after.

When Is St. Louis's Peak Airbnb Season?

July, and it isn't close. The market averaged 49.3% occupancy that month at $274 a night, against 23.7% and $188 in January, so the busy end of the year fills roughly twice as often as the quiet end and charges about 46% more while doing it.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	37.0%	$214
Oct 2025	36.9%	$218
Nov 2025	36.3%	$229
Dec 2025	31.2%	$217
Jan 2026	23.7%	$188
Feb 2026	25.3%	$187
Mar 2026	40.0%	$223
Apr 2026	39.7%	$221
May 2026	40.9%	$243
Jun 2026	46.7%	$262
Jul 2026	49.3%	$274
Aug 2026	38.6%	$246

Read down the rate column and you'll see the year has two gears rather than four seasons. January and February sit at $188 and $187, everything from March onward sits above $220, and the summer premium on top of that is real but smaller than the winter discount below it. Unfortunately, if you came looking for a summer business, a St. Louis listing has to earn through March, April and May as well, because the two genuinely dead months at the start of the year will take a bite out of any annual figure you model.

The sharper pattern isn't seasonal at all, though. It's weekly.

Night	Occupancy index	Nightly rate index	Revenue index
Monday	0.75	0.90	0.68
Tuesday	0.77	0.90	0.69
Wednesday	0.83	0.90	0.75
Thursday	0.99	0.95	0.94
Friday	1.37	1.22	1.67
Saturday	1.40	1.21	1.70
Sunday	0.88	0.93	0.82

Each figure is that night measured against an average night in the market, so 1.40 means Saturday runs 40% above the week's own average. A Saturday fills about 1.9 times as often as a Monday and charges about 35% more when it does, which compounds into roughly two and a half times the revenue. Add Friday and Saturday together and those two nights produce about 47% of what a St. Louis listing earns in a week.

That number should change how you think about the midweek. Two nights are paying for almost as much as the other five put together, so a Monday booked at a steep discount still beats an empty Monday, although it counts for almost nothing next to getting Saturday's price right. If you do decide to discount into the middle of the week, make sure the discount can't bleed into the weekend rate, because weekend nights are where this market's year is actually won.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in St. Louis?

Weekend demand concentrates in places people want to walk around in, and that pulls the answer toward the older city neighborhoods first. The two tables below use different boundary sources at different geographic levels, so don't read them as a single ranking. The first uses the City of St. Louis's own neighborhood polygons; the second uses US Census places across Missouri and Illinois. Areas too thin to measure reliably were dropped from both, and the rows built on the fewest homes will still move a little between refreshes.

Inside the city limits

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Central West End	$37,486	$314	32.5%	$59,569
2	Clayton-Tamm	$32,305	$245	33.8%	$39,343
3	The Gate District	$32,175	$366	31.9%	$47,963
4	Carondelet	$28,369	$243	34.8%	$33,432
5	Skinker DeBaliviere	$26,474	$241	33.3%	$41,137
6	Downtown West	$25,934	$280	30.2%	$35,109
7	Shaw	$25,378	$226	33.8%	$45,827
8	Fox Park	$25,033	$233	32.4%	$35,974
9	Lafayette Square	$24,422	$267	30.5%	$37,404
10	The Hill	$24,112	$188	35.6%	$29,208
11	Tower Grove South	$23,314	$223	32.2%	$43,868
12	Boulevard Heights	$23,193	$206	32.9%	$26,055
13	Tower Grove East	$23,188	$209	34.4%	$34,128
14	Forest Park Southeast	$23,058	$209	32.5%	$31,898
15	LaSalle Park	$21,898	$230	27.6%	$38,315
16	Soulard	$21,460	$167	32.6%	$28,475

Central West End tops the city not because it books more often than its neighbors but because it charges $314 a night while Soulard charges $167, and its 75th-percentile figure of $59,569 puts the ceiling there above anywhere else inside the line. The Gate District is the one I'd look at twice, since its median nightly rate is the highest on the table and the size that typically rents there is four bedrooms, which is exactly the combination the size table rewarded earlier.

Two names on that list deserve a caution, and they go wrong in opposite directions. Downtown proper runs a median of $19,438 on 25.6% occupancy, the weakest fill rate of any measurable neighborhood in the city, which is what happens when a lot of one-bedroom condo inventory competes with hotels for the same conference guest. Midtown does the opposite: 37.5% occupancy, the busiest in the city, on a $17,244 median, because it's small units near the universities booking often and cheaply. Neither is a bad neighborhood, though both are bad places to expect the city median without reading what kind of building you're buying into.

For the walk-the-block judgment on each of these areas rather than the medians, the companion piece on the best St. Louis neighborhoods for Airbnb goes street by street. This page is the numbers; that one is the local read.

The rest of the metro, across two states

Rank	City	State	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Innsbrook	MO	$37,712	$427	25.9%	$48,713
2	St. Peters	MO	$35,440	$261	36.3%	$43,229
3	O'Fallon	MO	$33,797	$265	34.4%	$36,621
4	Edwardsville	IL	$30,087	$279	34.3%	$39,524
5	Grafton	IL	$28,657	$316	25.2%	$36,867
6	Wentzville	MO	$28,356	$249	31.1%	$36,306
7	Maryland Heights	MO	$26,876	$222	32.8%	$34,697
8	Kirkwood	MO	$25,471	$199	39.6%	$30,228
9	St. Charles	MO	$25,254	$219	31.7%	$32,206
10	Pacific	MO	$25,033	$234	29.2%	$27,739
11	Washington	MO	$21,537	$211	28.7%	$30,350
12	Alton	IL	$20,761	$188	30.0%	$24,524
13	Belleville	IL	$20,640	$161	30.9%	$24,315
14	St. Ann	MO	$19,806	$149	29.6%	$21,477
15	University City	MO	$18,887	$182	29.8%	$23,530
16	Shiloh	IL	$16,591	$158	32.6%	$20,282

The top row is not a suburb. Innsbrook is a private lake and golf community about fifty miles west of the Arch in Warren County, and what it rents out is holiday cabins rather than houses anyone commutes from. It charges $427 a night, the highest figure anywhere on either table, on 25.9% occupancy, which is a resort business rather than a city one: you sell weekends and holidays at a premium and accept a quiet Tuesday in March. Grafton, up the Illinois river bluffs, runs the same model at a smaller scale.

Everything else on that table is a commuter suburb, and the St. Charles County run of St. Peters, O'Fallon and Wentzville is doing better than most people expect, while Kirkwood posts 39.6% occupancy, the highest of any place in this build. Careful with the Illinois rows, though. A river crossing means a different state's tax registration, a different county and a different municipal code, so budget for the extra paperwork before Edwardsville's $30,087 median talks you across the bridge.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in St. Louis?

One amenity in this market pays more than any other, and the pooled figure understates how much. Across all bedroom counts, a hot tub is associated with about 19% more revenue than the same listing would bring in without one. Split that by size, though, and the one-bedroom answer is +35%, the two-bedroom answer is +23%, and the three-bedroom answer is +19%. A hot tub on a one-bedroom is the single strongest amenity signal anywhere in this market, which makes a certain sense in a city where the one-bedroom median sits level with the studio median.

Guests booking the biggest houses want something else, though. For listings of four bedrooms and up, a pool is associated with about 14% more revenue, and it's the pool rather than the hot tub that leads at that size. Big groups renting a whole house in a Missouri summer want somewhere to swim, and by then the tub has become table stakes.

BNBCalc measures several other amenities here with a real signal attached, among them lake access, a gym, on-site parking, a sauna, a barbecue, bicycles and EV charging, and their values sit behind BNBCalc Markets rather than on this page, so you won't find them quoted here. What I can say without them is that lake access turning up in that group at all tells you which half of this market the money is chasing, given what the Innsbrook row looks like.

Before you spend on any of it, remember the point the weekly table made: an amenity that wins you a Saturday booking is worth several times one that wins you a Tuesday.

Is Airbnb Legal in St. Louis?

Yes, and right now the city isn't checking for a permit, which is a stranger sentence than it sounds.

Here's the sequence. Ordinance 71729 became law in November 2023 and set up a permit system for every short-term rental in the city, with applications opening on November 6, 2024 and a compliance deadline of May 6, 2025. On April 22, 2025 a court ordered the city not to enforce it, a second order extended that in May, and the city responded by pausing the lot: applications, inspections, permit issuance, conditional use permits in single-family districts, and collection of the permit fees. The Building Division's own notice puts it plainly, saying that while the court's order is in effect the city will not be enforcing the permit requirements of Ordinance 71729, and that notice was still standing on the city's page when I checked the most recent archived copy of it, from May 2026. The city's website refuses connections from outside its own network, so treat that as the latest confirmed position rather than as this morning's.

What isn't paused is the money. Ordinance 72095 took effect on February 23, 2026, and the License Collector's office says that from February 26, 2026 short-term rental operators in the city must hold a short-term rental business license and pay a quarterly license fee of 3% of the rent charged, with the proceeds going to a dedicated affordable-housing fund. That's a cost the operator carries on the rent it collects, and it's separate from the room taxes below. Anyone who reads "the ordinance is paused" and files nothing is filing nothing for the one instrument that's actually running.

On top of that sit the lodging taxes, which have applied to home rentals for years. The city levies a 3.5% Convention and Sports Tax and a 3.75% Convention and Tourism Tax, a combined 7.25%, and the License Collector's own page names transient home rentals booked through online providers as covered. Both are filed quarterly and are due twenty days after the quarter ends, with 2% monthly interest and a 1% monthly penalty once payment runs more than thirty days late. Guests pay both on top of the nightly rate, so neither one is hiding inside the revenue figures on this page, and Missouri's state sales tax treats a room charge as a taxable sale under RSMo 144.020.1(6) as well. The full stack, including what the platforms collect for you, is laid out in the guide to how Missouri taxes short-term rentals.

Now the part that makes this market awkward. Every rule above applies inside the city limits and nowhere else, and about half of the listings counted here aren't there. In St. Louis County the room taxes are collected by the county's own Department of Revenue rather than the city, and each municipality in the county sets its own short-term rental rules, as do St. Charles County, Warren County and every Illinois city across the river. Check the jurisdiction before the address, and if you're shopping in the county, start with the St. Louis County regulation guide.

Plan for the frozen ordinance switching back on, too, because some of what it would ask for can't be retrofitted afterwards. A permitted unit would need a two-night minimum, a designated agent able to answer a complaint around the clock, posted house rules, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and extinguishers, and an applicant who is a natural person rather than an LLC. Non-owner-occupied permits would be capped at four per owner, with further caps by building size, and no permit at all would be issued for a parcel benefiting from tax increment financing or a tax abatement. That last one rules out a surprising number of downtown conversions, so make sure you know a building's abatement status before you make an offer. For the full current position, the forms and the contacts, the St. Louis short-term rental regulation guide tracks this as it moves.

How Does BNBCalc Track the St. Louis Airbnb Market?

Rules are that guide's department. The market figures on this page were built on BNBCalc Markets, which is the part of BNBCalc you open when the question is still which metro to buy in, not which house, and one of the things it keeps for a market is how each night of the week books and what it fetches. Given that two nights carry roughly half of a St. Louis week, that's the panel I'd open before setting a single rate here, and I'd pull it for any other city on your shortlist too, since a market whose Saturday works that hard is a different business from one that fills evenly.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a St. Louis Property?

Start from the size row rather than the city figure. A three-bedroom sits at a $29,695 median while a one-bedroom sits at $15,455, so an estimate that begins with a market-wide number is already wrong by more than the margin you're trying to measure. Work from the median for the size you're buying, shift it toward the city or the ring depending on which side of the line the address falls, and only then adjust for the neighborhood.

The second adjustment is occupancy, and this is where St. Louis punishes optimism. Median occupancy sits around 30% whatever the size, so a model built on 55% or 60% because that's what the listing photos suggest will overshoot by a factor you can't recover from. Take the occupancy of comparable listings as the starting number, not the one you think good management can reach, and if you believe you'll beat it, write down by how much and why, so you can check yourself in a year.

Then work in what the calendar actually looks like. Just under half a week's revenue lands on Friday and Saturday, January and February are genuinely thin, and lodging taxes ride on top of the guest's total rather than inside your nightly rate, while the city's 3% license fee comes off what you collect if the property sits inside the limits. Run the annual figure both ways, with the fee and without it, so you know how much of your margin one ordinance is holding. You can see where the metro sits against Branson, Kansas City and the rest of the state on the Missouri markets ranked by gross yield page, while the current levels and the seasonality for this metro live on the St. Louis market page.

None of that is really about St. Louis, though. Any market where a single number governs the year, whether that's a weekend, a season or a licensing rule that might switch back on, rewards the buyer who models the governing number first and reaches for the averages second, because an average describes a market while the place you're about to buy has a calendar of its own.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Average Airbnb Income in St. Louis?

The median listing in the St. Louis market takes about $23,235 a year, at a median nightly rate of $211 and median occupancy of 30.9%. Size drives most of the spread: a studio or a one-bedroom sits near $15,000, a two-bedroom near $21,200, a three-bedroom near $29,700 and a four-bedroom or larger near $46,100.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in St. Louis in 2026?

It can be, with the right size and location. Over January to August 2026, nightly rates across the metro sat about 20% above their 2025 level while occupancy fell about 8%, so returns turn on pricing, and on whether a property sits inside the city limits or out in the ring, more than on filling the calendar. Purchase prices rose about 3% over the year.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in St. Louis?

July, which averaged 49.3% occupancy at $274 a night. June and May follow. January is the weakest month at 23.7% occupancy and $188 a night, and February is barely better, so any annual model needs to carry two thin months at the start of the year.

Do You Need a Permit to Run an Airbnb in St. Louis?

Probably not inside the city, though confirm it before you rely on it. A court order barred the City of St. Louis from enforcing its 2023 permit ordinance in April 2025, and through the middle of 2026 the city was still not accepting applications, inspecting units or issuing permits. Its website can't be reached from outside its own network, so the Building Division's page is the place to check today's position. A short-term rental business license from the License Collector is a separate requirement that took effect in February 2026 and is not paused.

How Much Is the Airbnb Tax in St. Louis?

Inside the city, stays carry a 3.5% Convention and Sports Tax plus a 3.75% Convention and Tourism Tax, a combined 7.25% remitted quarterly to the License Collector, along with Missouri state sales tax on the room charge. Operators also pay a quarterly license fee of 3% of the rent charged under the 2026 business license ordinance. In St. Louis County the room taxes are collected by the county instead.

Which St. Louis Neighborhood Is Best for Short-Term Rentals?

By median annual revenue, Central West End leads the city at $37,486, followed by Clayton-Tamm at $32,305 and The Gate District at $32,175. Outside the city limits, the lake community of Innsbrook tops the metro at $37,712, and in St. Charles County, St. Peters reaches $35,440.

Can You Run an Airbnb in St. Louis County?

Yes, and under different rules. St. Louis city is legally independent of St. Louis County, so the city's permit ordinance and license fee don't apply in the county, where each municipality sets its own short-term rental rules and the county's Department of Revenue collects the room taxes.