Montana Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Montana and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is, the state itself won't stop you. Montana has no statewide ban on short-term rentals, no law that singles out an Airbnb listing for special punishment, and the general zoning authority it hands to cities and counties under MCA Title 76, chapter 2 doesn't carve short-term rentals out as a use to be restricted. So legally, you're starting from a fairly open position, at least once you get above the local level.

That said, three things complicate the picture pretty fast. Every city and county writes its own zoning, permitting and fee rules, so what's true in Whitefish or Big Sky won't necessarily be true two counties over. Then in July 2025, the Montana Supreme Court ruled in Brandt v. R&R Mountain Escapes LLC that a subdivision's own private covenants can bar short-term rentals outright, even where the city has no problem with them, once the covenants read together as barring commercial activity. And starting with tax year 2026, a second home or short-term rental pays a flat 1.90% property tax rate while a qualifying primary residence or long-term rental gets a tiered rate as low as 0.76%. None of that makes hosting illegal. It just means the paperwork and the math both got more specific this year.

So let's walk through what applies to you in 2026: the state license every Montana host needs regardless of city, the documents your county sanitarian will ask for, the tax layers that stack on a stay, how seriously any of this gets enforced, and who to call once your own city's rules stop being obvious. Every figure below comes from Montana's own agencies or its courts, checked as of July 2026. And if you're deciding between a Montana property and somewhere else entirely, run the numbers through BNBCalc first.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Montana

Before BNBCalc can tell you anything useful, though, you need an honest answer to a more basic question: is your specific address even allowed to do this? Montana state law doesn't preempt local control here, so cities like Bozeman, Whitefish, Missoula and Red Lodge each run a separate short-term rental ordinance, with their own permit types, caps and fees, and none of them are required to match the others. Our Billings guide walks through one fully worked city ordinance in detail if you want to see what that looks like up close, since Billings happens to be the one Montana city we've mapped city block by city block.

A 2025 attempt to standardize all this failed, which is worth knowing before you assume a fix is coming. Senate Bill 336 would've classified short-term rentals as a residential use statewide, stopping a city from treating an Airbnb any differently than a house full of long-term tenants unless it banned the use outright. It passed the Senate 36-14 on March 5, 2025, then was tabled in the House Local Government Committee a month later and is recorded dead as of May 23, 2025. So the patchwork holds, at least until the legislature reconvenes in 2027, and don't assume a neighboring county's rules apply to you just because the state line doesn't separate you from it.

None of that means Montana is hostile to hosts, mind you. Compared to a state that bans whole-home rentals outright, most Montana cities allow them; they each want their own paperwork first. Do read your subdivision's covenants before you read your city's ordinance, though, because a covenant, not a zoning code, is what shut down one host's business near Whitefish in 2025. Justice McKinnon's opinion in Brandt described the short-term rental there as "more akin to an apartment," a use the subdivision's 1990 covenants had already prohibited, and the court reached that conclusion by reading a "multitude of covenants" together rather than any single clause. If your property sits inside an HOA or a covenanted subdivision, don't skip that check just because your city or county cleared you first. And if you're still comparing Montana against other states before you commit to buying, our rundown of the best states for Airbnb investing in 2026 puts state-level rules like these side by side with the ones that move a return.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Montana

Assuming Montana still looks like the right call once you've weighed it against the alternatives, the first real requirement is a state one, and it applies no matter which city you're in. Under MCA Title 50, chapter 51, Montana treats a short-term rental as a "public accommodation establishment," the same category that covers hotels and motels. The Department of Public Health and Human Services says as much directly: public accommodations "include (but are not limited to) hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, and tourist homes/short-term rentals such as Airbnb's and VRBO's." MCA 50-51-201 then requires anyone operating one to "annually procure a license issued by the department," and that license has to be renewed every single year, not filed once and forgotten.

You don't apply to DPHHS directly, though, which trips up a lot of first-time hosts. The department's own application form says plainly that "DPHHS will not accept license applications directly from applicants." Your county's environmental health department, the "regulatory authority" on the form, reviews your plans, signs off, and forwards your paperwork and fee to the state. So the very first call worth making is to your county sanitarian, not Helena.

The fee scales with size, not with revenue:

Rooms or units	Annual license fee
1 to 10	$40
11 to 25	$80
26 or more	$160

A typical Montana Airbnb, one house or a handful of bedrooms, lands at the $40 tier. Just be aware that DPHHS doesn't publish a standard turnaround time on its own page, so ask your county sanitarian directly, and expect a plan review and a pre-opening inspection to add time if the building is new construction or a recent remodel.

Getting licensed and getting square with the state's tax office are two separate steps, and it's easy to do one and forget the other. Before you can legally collect Montana's lodging taxes, you need a seller's permit through the Montana TransAction Portal, and that's step two, not a substitute for the DPHHS license. On top of both, your city or county may layer its own short-term rental permit or business license, since state law doesn't stop them from doing so, so check with your specific planning department before you assume the state license is the only one you need.

Required Documents for Montana Short-Term Rentals

Since that license is renewed annually anyway, it's worth getting the file right the first time rather than chasing corrections every spring. Your county sanitarian's application, per DPHHS's own form, asks for a shorter list than most city zoning applications run:

• Your name as the licensee, plus your establishment's name, physical address and county.
• A mailing address, if it's different from the property itself, since that's where your annual renewal notice goes.
• Contact phone, fax and email.
• The type of establishment you're operating (hotel or motel, bed and breakfast, boarding or rooming house, or tourist home), with the number of rooms or units.
• Your water supply source: a public system with its PWSID number, or a private well with satisfactory test results attached.
• Whether the property was previously licensed, and if so, under what name and license number.

That water supply line catches out plenty of people running a place outside city limits, where a private well is the norm rather than the exception. If that's you, satisfactory test results become part of your file before licensing happens, not something you can supply later.

Separately, registering for your seller's permit through the TransAction Portal will ask for standard business registration details, your entity or Social Security number, your business address, and the kind of accommodation you're running. And if your city layers its own permit on top, expect to produce proof of ownership or a lease, a floor plan, or a parking plan, since those requirements differ a lot by jurisdiction and your own planning department is the only reliable source for what yours wants.

Montana Short-Term Rental Taxes

Once your license and your seller's permit are both in hand, the tax side is the more mechanical part of this, even though it stacks in layers. Montana is one of the few states with no general sales tax, which surprises a lot of new hosts, so the tax that does apply here is a carve-out specific to lodging rather than a slice of the state's usual sales tax.

Tax	Rate	Who collects it
Lodging Facility Use Tax	4%	State (Dept of Revenue)
Lodging Facility Sales Tax	4%	State (Dept of Revenue)
Local Resort Tax	up to 4% (10 designated towns only)	The resort community itself

The first two layers are administered together as a combined 8% tax, under MCA 15-65-111 for the use tax and MCA Title 15, chapter 68 for the sales tax, and it applies to the total amount the guest pays: nightly rate, cleaning fee and any guest fee included, not just the room charge. The third layer, though, only shows up in ten designated resort communities under MCA 7-6-1503: Red Lodge, Virginia City, West Yellowstone, Whitefish, Big Sky, Cooke City, Craig, Gardiner, St. Regis and Wolf Creek. Everywhere else in the state, you owe nothing beyond that 8%.

Platforms handle part of this automatically, but not all of it. Per Airbnb's own Montana tax page, it collects and remits the 8% statewide layer plus Big Sky's 4% resort tax for Big Sky listings, and Vrbo does the same. Neither platform collects for the other nine resort towns, so if you're hosting in Red Lodge or Whitefish rather than Big Sky, you're the one who has to register with that resort district and send that piece in yourself. Filing runs quarterly, due April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31, and timely filers earn a 5% vendor allowance on the sales tax portion, which is a small but real incentive not to let a deadline slide.

Keep in mind the property tax change too, since it isn't a transaction tax but it does raise your ongoing cost of holding the property. From tax year 2026 on, a second home or short-term rental pays a flat 1.90% of market value, while a qualifying primary residence or a genuine long-term rental, one leased 28 or more days at a time and occupied at least seven months a year, gets a tiered rate starting at 0.76%. That gap is exactly why some owners are quietly converting a nightly rental into a furnished mid-term lease instead: it sidesteps the lodging tax layer entirely and can qualify for the lower property tax tier, and our breakdown of short-term versus long-term rental economics walks through when that trade actually pencils out.

Possible Write-offs and Deductions

Your rental income is still ordinary taxable income at the federal level, and the usual short-term rental deductions apply here the same as anywhere else: mortgage interest, property taxes (including the higher 1.90% rate a non-qualifying property now pays), depreciation, cleaning and maintenance costs, supplies, and the service fees your booking platform charges. If you're renting a room inside a home you also live in, you'll need to apportion shared costs like utilities and insurance between personal and rental use, which is fiddlier than it looks on a spreadsheet. Since the rules split depending on how many days you rent versus use the property yourself, it's worth having a CPA who's handled a short-term rental client look at your specific numbers before you file.

Does Montana Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Assuming you get through the tax setup and are able to start hosting, there's still the enforcement question, and the honest answer depends entirely on which authority you're asking about. Montana doesn't run one agency that polices short-term rentals; it runs at least four separate ones, and they don't coordinate with each other.

DPHHS and your county sanitarian treat an unlicensed rental as a public health matter, and no primary source here publishes a single statewide fine for operating without the license, so don't assume a specific number where none exists. What's clear is that it can block a renewal or trigger a correction order. The Department of Revenue applies its standard business-tax penalties and interest to a lodging tax account that files late, the same way it would for any other business, though a rate specific to lodging tax alone wasn't confirmed here either. Your city or county handles zoning violations on its own schedule, and those penalties vary by jurisdiction, so check your specific city's ordinance rather than assuming Billings' rules apply to Bozeman.

The sharpest enforcement story of 2025, though, didn't come from a government inspector at all. It came from a civil lawsuit. Brandt v. R&R Mountain Escapes shows that a homeowners' association or even a single neighbor can shut down a short-term rental through the courts, with no city involvement whatsoever, as long as the property's recorded covenants support it. The court noted that its own earlier ruling in the 2020 Craig Tracts case had created genuine confusion about what a covenant needed to say, and Brandt resolved that confusion in favor of the neighbors, not the host. Combined with the legislature killing SB 336 the same year, the direction of travel here points toward more restriction, not less, at least until the next legislative session in 2027.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Montana

Since enforcement comes from so many directions here, doing these steps in the right order saves you a wasted licensing fee or a covenant fight you could've avoided altogether.

1. Check your city or county zoning first. Montana sets no statewide standard, so call your local planning department before you assume your address qualifies.
2. Read your subdivision's covenants and any HOA bylaws. Brandt shows a covenant can bar hosting even where the city itself has no objection.
3. Apply for your DPHHS Public Accommodation License through your county sanitarian. Budget $40 to $160 depending on room or unit count, and expect a plan review if the building is new or recently remodeled.
4. Register for a seller's permit through the Montana TransAction Portal before you take your first booking, not after.
5. Confirm what your booking platform collects. Airbnb and Vrbo handle the statewide 8% and Big Sky's resort tax automatically; register directly with your resort district if you're hosting in one of the other nine.
6. Build a tax calendar around the quarterly deadlines: April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31.
7. Check the 2026 property tax reclassification, and file for the qualifying long-term-rental rate if that's a real fallback for your property, since that application window closes March 1.
8. List the property, and layer on whatever local permit, business license or local-contact requirement your specific city adds.
9. Watch the 2027 legislative session. Senate Bill 336-style bills tend to come back once the sponsors have had a session to regroup.

Who to Contact in Montana about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps trips you up, three state offices handle almost everything between them, plus whatever your own city hall adds on.

Public accommodation licensing

The Environmental Health and Food Safety Section of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services administers the license itself, though your application goes through your county sanitarian first.

• Address: 1400 Broadway, Helena, MT 59620
• Section phone: (406) 444-5309
• Fax: (406) 444-5055
• Email: [email protected]
• Public accommodations contact: Darryl Barton, R.S., (406) 444-2089, [email protected]
• Start here: DPHHS Public Accommodations program page, which links out to the county and tribal health department directory

State lodging and property tax

The Montana Department of Revenue handles the seller's permit, the 8% lodging tax, and the 2026 property tax reclassification.

• Phone: (406) 444-6900
• Hours: Monday to Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
• TDD: dial 711
• Mailing address (miscellaneous tax returns, including lodging tax): Montana Department of Revenue, PO Box 5835, Helena, MT 59604-5835
• Register online: Montana TransAction Portal

Your city or county planning department

Zoning, local STR permits, occupancy limits and any local-contact requirement all sit with your own city or county, not the state. Bozeman, Whitefish, Missoula, Red Lodge and every other Montana city set these independently, so call your specific planning office directly. Our Billings guide is the one we've mapped in full if that happens to be your market.

Local resort tax districts

If you're hosting in one of the ten designated resort communities, the resort tax itself is collected and paid locally rather than by the state, so contact your resort district's own administrative office directly for its current rate and filing process.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Montana on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Since so much of this comes down to your specific city and your specific subdivision, it's worth knowing what other Montana hosts run into once the paperwork's behind them. I couldn't pull a live Reddit thread for this pass, since Reddit blocks that kind of automated read, so what follows is my sense of the recurring themes from BiggerPockets discussion and local reporting rather than a formal survey.

• Investors generally rate Montana as workable, especially against states that ban whole-unit rentals outright. The consistent advice is to check zoning before you buy, not after, because the state's own permissiveness gives you no guarantee your specific city or subdivision shares it.
• City-by-city inconsistency is the most common complaint. Hosts who move a listing from one county to another describe having to relearn the whole process, since Bozeman's rules don't transfer to Gallatin County's, and neither transfers to Flathead County's.
• Since Brandt, resort-area hosts have gotten noticeably more careful about covenants. Threads increasingly recommend pulling the recorded declaration for a subdivision before closing, not just checking the zoning map, because the zoning map won't tell you what your future neighbors' HOA actually allows.
• The property tax overhaul is a live financial conversation, not just a legal one. Owners are running the 1.90% flat rate against the tiered rate a long-term rental would get, and some are weighing that math against markets in neighboring states before deciding whether Montana still pencils out for a pure short-term play.

Take that last point seriously if you're still deciding where to buy. Montana's regulatory openness is real, but it's no longer the whole picture once a flat property tax rate and a covenant ruling both landed in the same year. If the numbers are close, BNBCalc Markets is worth a look before you commit, since it lets you weigh Montana's actual revenue potential against the added holding costs rather than guessing at either one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Montana in 2026?

Generally, yes. Montana has no statewide ban on short-term rentals, and state law doesn't preempt city or county zoning either. You'll still need a Department of Public Health accommodation license, issued through your county sanitarian, plus whatever zoning approval your specific city or county requires, since those vary town to town. Check your subdivision's covenants too, since a 2025 court ruling lets private HOA rules block a rental even where the city has no objection.

How much does a Montana short-term rental license cost?

The state accommodation license runs $40 for a property with 1 to 10 rooms or units, $80 for 11 to 25, and $160 for 26 or more, renewed annually through your county sanitarian rather than the state directly. That fee doesn't include whatever separate permit or business license your specific city or county might also require, and city fees vary considerably, so check with your local planning department before you budget.

Do Airbnb and Vrbo collect Montana's lodging taxes automatically?

Yes, for the statewide 8% lodging tax and for Big Sky's 4% resort tax if you're hosting there. Neither platform automatically collects the local resort tax in the other nine designated resort communities: Red Lodge, Virginia City, West Yellowstone, Whitefish, Cooke City, Craig, Gardiner, St. Regis and Wolf Creek. If you're hosting in one of those, you'll need to register and remit that layer yourself.

Does Montana have a statewide short-term rental law?

Not a unified one. A 2025 bill, Senate Bill 336, would've made short-term rentals a protected residential use statewide, but it died in a House committee that April. What Montana does have statewide is a sanitation-focused public accommodation license and a set of lodging taxes; everything about where you can operate and under what conditions is decided city by city and county by county.

What happened to Montana's Senate Bill 336 on short-term rentals?

It passed the Senate 36-14 on March 5, 2025, then was tabled in the House Local Government Committee on April 8, 2025, and is recorded dead as of May 23, 2025. Had it passed, it would've classified short-term rentals as a residential use statewide, limiting how differently a city could treat them under zoning. Its failure means local governments keep full discretion, and similar bills could resurface when the legislature meets again in 2027.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.