St. Paul, Minnesota Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much does an Airbnb in St. Paul, Minnesota bring in, and is it legal to rent out the house or duplex you've got your eye on? The median short-term rental inside St. Paul's city limits took in $22,139 over the 12 months to October 2026, going by BNBCalc's listing data, and yes, the city licenses short-term rentals citywide, including homes the owner doesn't live in, although zoning limits how many units on one lot you can rent by the night.

There's one thing you need before any of those numbers make sense. BNBCalc doesn't give St. Paul a separate market. Instead, it counts the city as part of its Minneapolis market, which spreads across the Twin Cities metro, and only 16.4% of that market's listings sit inside St. Paul's city limits. BNBCalc Markets does have a page under St. Paul's name, but what it shows is that same Minneapolis market. So whenever I describe "the market" in this article (trends, seasons, amenity values), I mean the whole metro, and whenever I describe St. Paul, the figure comes from my count of the listings inside the city line, all of which sit in Ramsey County.

That split turns out to be the most useful thing I found. St. Paul listings fill roughly the same share of their calendars as listings across the rest of the metro, yet they charge noticeably less for each one, so if you buy here, you're betting on what lets a place charge more rather than on whether guests show up. Make sure you check the zoning before you fall for a duplex or a triplex, too, because unless you live in the building, the city's caps can leave you renting one unit by the night instead of all of them.

How Much Do St. Paul Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Inside the city limits, the median St. Paul listing earned $22,139 in the year to October 2026, charging a median $200 a night with about 32% occupancy. Everything else in the Minneapolis market, taken together, comes in at $25,948 with a median rate of $245 and 31% occupancy, so a typical St. Paul listing takes in about 15% less than its counterpart in the rest of the market. Minneapolis itself sits between the two, and the suburbs and outlying towns around both cities are what pull the metro's numbers up.

Area	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
St. Paul (city limits)	$22,139	$200	32%	$32,423
Minneapolis (city limits)	$24,415	$215	33%	$34,437
Outside both cities	$28,488	$286	29%	$42,341
Everywhere outside St. Paul	$25,948	$245	31%	$38,749

BNBCalc listing data for the Minneapolis market, each listing's past 12 months as of October 2026, with city limits following US Census place boundaries and occupancy counted as booked nights over all 365 days of the year.

Start with occupancy, which hardly changes from row to row: St. Paul books its share of nights the same way Minneapolis and the suburbs do. The nightly rate is where St. Paul falls behind, trailing everywhere outside the city by about $45 at the median, and since occupancy barely differs, I'd put most of the revenue gap down to that lower rate.

One more thing before you compare: the figures in this page's data panel describe the entire Minneapolis market, and they measure a typical listing in their own way, so don't expect them to match the St. Paul medians in my tables.

Does buying a bigger place close the gap? Partly. At every size I could measure, St. Paul's occupancy stays within a point or two of the rest of the market's while its nightly rate trails, although studios inside the city are too thin to measure reliably, so I've started the table at one bedroom.

Bedrooms	St. Paul median revenue	St. Paul median nightly rate	St. Paul median occupancy	St. Paul top quartile	Outside St. Paul median revenue	Outside St. Paul median occupancy
1	$15,333	$135	33%	$19,280	$17,781	33%
2	$18,514	$174	31%	$23,652	$22,406	32%
3	$27,345	$278	31%	$35,788	$31,120	29%
4+	$43,007	$399	31%	$62,433	$45,625	29%

BNBCalc listing data, each listing's past 12 months as of October 2026. "Outside St. Paul" is the rest of the Minneapolis market.

That said, from two bedrooms up the discount shrinks as homes get bigger. A St. Paul two-bedroom earns about 17% less than a two-bedroom outside the city, while a four-bedroom earns about 6% less, and from three bedrooms up, St. Paul's occupancy runs a point or two ahead of the rest of the market. In dollars, the median four-bedroom's $43,007 is more than twice the two-bedroom median of $18,514, so if you're choosing between sizes here, I think the bigger home is the one where St. Paul gives up the least to its neighbors.

Minneapolis has its own post, and if you're weighing the two cities against each other, our Minneapolis market data breakdown goes into the city across the river in more detail.

Is the St. Paul Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

The data can't settle it yet. Across the metro, BNBCalc's count of active listings shows no clear rise or fall over the past year, and BNBCalc doesn't count St. Paul's supply separately, so I can't tell you whether a wave of new competition arrived. What I can tell you, though, is how guests behaved over the year.

Minneapolis market, all sizes	October 2025 to September 2026, against the 12 months before
Average nightly rate	Up about 19%
Occupancy	Down about 6%
Active listings	No clear direction

BNBCalc market data for the whole Minneapolis market. The changes are relative, meaning a share of the earlier year's figure, not percentage points.

Guests across the metro paid about 19% more per night than they had a year earlier, while booking slightly fewer of the nights hosts left open. That combination reads to me like hosts pricing up and giving back a little volume, which is a pricing story more than a crowding one. Still, without a clean listings trend, I'd stop short of calling the market either open or crowded.

Is St. Paul itself crowded, then? I don't think so, although my count can only show how the city looks right now, not which way it's heading. The city holds 16.4% of the market's listings, against 38.5% inside Minneapolis, and its median occupancy of about 32% sits right alongside the 31% everywhere else. If St. Paul had more listings than its guests could fill, you'd expect its listings to book fewer nights than their neighbors, and they don't. That's a single snapshot, though, so build a habit of checking the occupancy of homes like yours on nearby blocks once a quarter, starting before you make an offer.

When Is St. Paul's Peak Airbnb Season?

July is the peak and February is the trough, and the distance between them is wide enough to shape how you finance a place. These are metro-wide figures for the Minneapolis market, which includes St. Paul.

Month	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
October 2025	41%	$245
November 2025	34%	$249
December 2025	31%	$258
January 2026	27%	$226
February 2026	24%	$210
March 2026	30%	$216
April 2026	35%	$225
May 2026	41%	$260
June 2026	50%	$302
July 2026	54%	$327
August 2026	51%	$297
September 2026	46%	$255

BNBCalc market data, Minneapolis market, all bedroom sizes.

The monthly figures only count nights a host left open on the calendar, whereas the 32% median in the earnings section spreads booked nights over the full year, including nights hosts blocked, which explains why most months come in above that median. December through March are the exceptions, because winter bookings drop far enough to pull even the open-night figure below it. Within this table, though, the months compare cleanly with each other. How much busier is summer? July's 54% occupancy is more than double February's 24%, and its $327 average rate runs about 56% above February's $210, so a summer night here is worth far more than a winter one on both counts.

Two smaller patterns are worth your attention. Rates hold up into December even as occupancy slides, which suggests holiday stays still command a premium, and the climb from April to June is steep, so if you're launching a new listing, you'll want it live and reviewed by the end of April. January through March is the stretch to plan your cash around, since none of those months gets above 30% occupancy.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in St. Paul?

St. Paul divides itself into 17 planning districts, each with its own district council, so the table keeps only the districts with enough listings for a stable median.

Planning district	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue	Typical size
Payne-Phalen	$35,718	$279	32%	$43,609	3 bedrooms
Highland Park	$24,434	$249	30%	$37,340	3 bedrooms
West Seventh-Fort Road	$24,243	$208	34%	$29,534	2 bedrooms
Union Park	$24,215	$200	35%	$32,335	2 bedrooms
Macalester-Groveland	$23,964	$215	33%	$38,341	2 bedrooms
Hamline-Midway	$23,372	$220	33%	$30,499	4 bedrooms
Summit Hill	$22,262	$198	31%	$34,997	2 bedrooms
Battle Creek-Conway-Eastview-Highwood Hills	$21,641	$212	31%	$55,518	2 to 3 bedrooms
West Side	$18,755	$157	34%	$24,877	2 bedrooms
Summit-University	$18,353	$180	31%	$25,934	2 bedrooms
Como Park	$14,918	$185	27%	$26,394	2 bedrooms
North End	$13,806	$140	31%	$20,693	2 bedrooms

BNBCalc listing data, each listing's past 12 months as of October 2026, inside the City of Saint Paul's planning district boundaries. Typical size is the median bedroom count.

Each row is the median listing in that district, so I'd read the typical-size column before the revenue column. Five districts, Dayton's Bluff, Downtown, Frogtown, Greater East Side and Saint Anthony Park, didn't have enough listings to measure reliably and aren't in the table, which matters if you were picturing a downtown loft: there isn't a deep enough pool there to say what one earns.

Payne-Phalen sits on top at $35,718, but it's one of the thinner rows, and home size doesn't account for the lead: Highland Park's typical three-bedroom and Hamline-Midway's typical four-bedroom both land near $24,000, and the city's three-bedroom median is $27,345. I'd treat it as a thin lead that the data can't explain yet. Below it, four districts bunch within a few hundred dollars of $24,000: Highland Park, West Seventh-Fort Road, Union Park and Macalester-Groveland. Where would I look first? Union Park, since it pairs a median right around $24,000 with the best occupancy in the table at 35%, while West Seventh-Fort Road isn't far behind at 34% and Highland Park reaches the same revenue with three-bedroom homes at a $249 median rate.

The spread inside a district can matter more than the median, too. Battle Creek-Conway-Eastview-Highwood Hills has a middling median of $21,641, yet its top quartile clears $55,518, the widest gap in the table, and Macalester-Groveland's top quartile runs $14,377 above its median. In districts like those, I think the listing you build decides more than the address you buy. At the other end, Como Park and North End both sit under $15,000 at the median, and Como Park's 27% occupancy sits below every other row.

For the feel of each area beyond the numbers, our St. Paul neighborhood guide walks through where to look, while this table stays the numbers side of that decision.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in St. Paul?

Across the Minneapolis market, an EV charger carries the biggest openly published revenue lift: listings with one earn about 29% more than comparable listings without one. That's a metro-wide value, so it describes St. Paul and its suburbs together rather than the city alone.

Six more amenities show a positive link with revenue across the market, and BNBCalc keeps their values inside BNBCalc Markets: a hot tub, a sauna, lake access, a barbecue grill, a gym and allowing pets. The openly published data doesn't rank those six against each other, and I'm not going to guess at their figures. If I were adding one feature to a St. Paul rental, it would be the EV charger, with one caveat: its 29% is a link between chargers and revenue across similar listings in the whole metro, not a promise for any one house. Most of the list can be added after you buy, although lake access comes with the address or not at all.

Is Airbnb Legal in St. Paul?

Yes. St. Paul has allowed short-term rentals throughout the city since December 2, 2017, under Chapter 379 of its Legislative Code.

Anyone who rents out a dwelling, or a piece of one, for stays shorter than 30 days needs a Short-Term Rental Host license, whether they own the place or rent it, and it's unlawful even to advertise a short-term rental in the city without one. The license runs for one year and has to be renewed every year, and the city's fee table lists it at $45 per unit as of October 2026. Before it's issued, the city's safety and inspections director and the police chief both review the application. If the home won't be your residence, you'll also need a Fire Certificate of Occupancy, or proof you've applied and paid for a provisional one.

Hosts have to carry at least $300,000 of liability insurance for the rental or book only through a platform with equal coverage, and the city accepts booking only through Airbnb or Vrbo as meeting that requirement. Your license number goes on every listing, and a platform has to take a listing down once the city tells it the host's license is missing, expired or revoked. Inside the unit, you'll need working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in every bedroom and on every floor, a charged fire extinguisher, and posted emergency contacts, an exit floor plan and the maximum occupancy.

Zoning is where the real limits sit, and it's the part of the code I'd read twice. Section 65.645 of the zoning code allows one rental of a unit per day, bans commercial and social events, and caps occupancy at the code's definition of a family unless a conditional use permit allows more for a large house on a large lot. It also caps how many short-term units a lot can hold:

• RL and H1 residential districts: one short-term unit per lot, unless the duplex, triplex or fourplex is owner occupied and the owner is in residence during the rental, in which case every unit can be one.
• Every other district: one unit, or up to half the units on the lot to a maximum of four, with the same owner-occupied exception, and more than four only with a conditional use permit.

What does that mean if you won't live on site? You get one short-term unit in a duplex or triplex anywhere in the city, and one or two in a fourplex depending on the district. The city's own summary page still uses district names from before a 2023 zoning update, so make sure you look up your lot's current district before you model more than one unit.

Taxes work differently, because every one of them lands on the guest's total at checkout and nothing is taken out of your revenue. A St. Paul stay carries 9.875% in general sales tax (6.875% state, 1% for the two metro-area taxes, 1.5% city and 0.5% Ramsey County transit), plus the city's 3% lodging tax for places with fewer than 50 rooms, for 12.875% in all. Minnesota requires a booking platform that handles the payment to collect sales tax and send it to the state unless you've agreed to do it yourself, and St. Paul's code puts any tax the platform doesn't handle on the host, so check what your platform covers, and our Minnesota short-term rental tax guide goes deeper on the state side.

The city does act on its licenses, too: the City Council voted in April and May 2025 to direct the revocation of several short-term rental licenses, both owner-occupied and not. That's reason enough to get the application right the first time, and our St. Paul short-term rental regulation guide covers every step.

How Does BNBCalc Track the St. Paul Airbnb Market?

A license tells you whether you can host, while the numbers I've quoted tell you what hosting tends to earn, and those numbers come from two places. The yearly changes and the monthly seasons draw on every Minneapolis-market listing in BNBCalc's data, the same data BNBCalc Markets uses to help investors size up whole rental markets before they choose a city, whereas I built every St. Paul median myself out of BNBCalc's listing data, keeping only homes inside the city limits. Markets opens on a market's average earners, so its own numbers differ from these all-listings ones, but it also covers something I haven't: how many nights guests stay at each bedroom count, which matters in St. Paul because the four-bedrooms earn more than twice what the two-bedrooms do, and a bigger home that also holds guests longer means fewer turnovers eating into that lead.

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

The BNBCalc Calculator is the right first step, because this article can only describe the city, and the Calculator works from your specific address. Give it the property and it studies as many as 50 similar listings within 10 miles to estimate what the place could book, how often and at what rate, then runs those numbers through expenses, financing and returns. A 10-mile radius around a St. Paul address can take in Minneapolis listings as well, so look at which comps it pulled, and once there are four or more comps to choose from, the AI Underwriter can pick the ones that most resemble your home, judging them on capacity, amenities and interior design.

After that, hold the result up against the market. The Minneapolis market page in BNBCalc Markets shows the metro's seasons and bedroom spread for its average earners. To see how that market compares with other markets in the state, the ranking of Minnesota markets by gross yield lines them up. If you haven't settled on St. Paul at all yet, BNBCalc Markets lets you compare US markets on gross yield before you pick an address.

Before I trusted any projection, I'd hold it up against three St. Paul numbers:

The zoning count. If your plan needs more than one short-term unit on a lot you won't live on, confirm the district before anything else, because in RL and H1 districts the answer is one.

The $200 median rate. That's what the typical St. Paul listing charges. If your deal only works at the $245 median from outside the city, you're counting on charging about $45 a night more than the typical St. Paul listing, which is possible but not something to assume.

February's 24%. That's the metro's weakest month, so make sure the mortgage and utilities still get paid when fewer than a quarter of the nights you leave open get booked.

If you already run a listing here, the Airbnb Listing Optimizer is the most direct way I know to chase St. Paul's rate gap: paste in your listing's link and it weighs your guest reviews (up to 100) and the competition around you (up to 50 listings) before ranking what to fix first. Lenders and investors screening many Twin Cities addresses at once can pull the same property analysis into their own software through the BNBCalc API, paying only for what they use.

Is a St. Paul Airbnb a Good Investment in 2026?

A St. Paul Airbnb can pay off, as long as you buy for the nightly rate rather than the occupancy. The median St. Paul listing earned $22,139 at $200 a night, about 15% behind the rest of the Minneapolis market, yet it books nights at the same pace, so I think a well-equipped, well-priced listing can close much of that gap. Zoning decides how many units you can rent before any of that matters, and February decides whether you can carry the place through winter. Before you put in an offer, test the address in the BNBCalc Calculator.

When a city sits inside a bigger market, the metro average blends in places that price differently, and here that blend hides a $45 gap in the median nightly rate. The number that tells you what your block can charge is the one drawn from inside the city line.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in St. Paul, Minnesota?

Counting only listings inside the city limits, BNBCalc's listing data shows the median St. Paul short-term rental earning $22,139 in the year to October 2026, with a $200 median nightly rate and about 32% occupancy. A top-quartile St. Paul listing cleared $32,423. Size matters most: the median four-bedroom earned $43,007, against $18,514 for a two-bedroom. For a number on one particular property, the BNBCalc Calculator works from that exact address.

Does BNBCalc have a separate market for St. Paul?

No. BNBCalc Markets tracks St. Paul as part of its Minneapolis market, which covers the wider Twin Cities metro, and the St. Paul market page shows that same Minneapolis data under St. Paul's name. In BNBCalc's listing data, 16.4% of the Minneapolis market's listings sit inside St. Paul's city limits, so metro-wide trends and seasons describe both cities and their suburbs together. City medians, like the ones in this article, come from listings inside the city line.

Is St. Paul cheaper per night than Minneapolis for Airbnb guests?

Yes, in BNBCalc's listing data. The median St. Paul listing charges $200 a night, against $215 inside Minneapolis and $286 in the part of the Minneapolis market outside both cities. Occupancy barely differs, at about 32% in St. Paul and 33% in Minneapolis. So St. Paul's lower earnings come from price rather than fewer bookings, which you can test for your own address in the BNBCalc Calculator.

When do St. Paul Airbnbs get the most bookings?

Across every listing in the Minneapolis market, St. Paul included, BNBCalc's market data puts July at the peak. Occupancy reached 54% at an average nightly rate of $327 in July 2026, while February was the low point at 24% and $210 a night. Those are metro-wide monthly figures from October 2025 to September 2026, so compare them with listings near your own address before you plan around them.

Does an EV charger help an Airbnb earn more in St. Paul?

BNBCalc Markets puts an EV charger at the top of the openly published amenity list for the Minneapolis market, with listings that have one earning about 29% more than similar listings that don't. Hot tubs, saunas, lake access, barbecue grills, gyms and pet-friendly listings also show a positive link, with their values inside BNBCalc Markets. These are metro-wide values, so they describe St. Paul and its suburbs together.