Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much does a Philadelphia Airbnb earn, and could you run one in a rowhouse you'll never live in?

Well, the rules answer the second half before the money means anything, so start there. Philadelphia sorts every short-term rental into one of two boxes, and which box you land in comes down to whether somebody actually lives in the unit. If you do, the city calls it limited lodging, treats it as an accessory use alongside ordinary residential living, and licenses it for $150 a year. If nobody does, what you're running is a visitor accommodation, which the Zoning Code counts as a commercial business and keeps out of the lower-density residential districts that cover most of the city's rowhouse blocks. So the investor path does exist here, though the zoning map decides where.

The market underneath that rule is centered on the City and County of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, which share the same borders, though the listing data reaches over the river into New Jersey, where towns write their own rules and none of the above applies. Count the listings BNBCalc has in this market and there are about 8% fewer of them than a year ago, while the hosts who stayed filled a bit more of the calendar and charged about 21% more a night.

How Much Do Philadelphia Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

The middle listing across the whole Philadelphia market earned $25,943 over a trailing twelve-month window of 2026 data, and it takes $37,159 to reach the top quarter of listings. Inside the city limits the median comes to $26,102, against $24,571 for the listings that fall outside them, which puts the city a little ahead of its edges rather than behind them.

The range inside one bedroom count matters more here than the step from one count to the next. Set the weakest four-plus-bedroom homes beside the strongest one-bedrooms and the one-bedrooms win, which tells me the size of the house decides less than how well it's run, and how well it's run is yours to choose.

Gross yield rearranges that picture, because it sets what a listing earns against what the house cost. In Philadelphia it rises with size: one-bedrooms sit at the bottom of the useful range, two- and three-bedroom homes land close together above them, and four-plus-bedroom homes come out on top. Studios are the outlier, landing under half the yield of every larger size. If a small center-city unit appealed to you because it's cheap to buy, this market doesn't reward that instinct.

The competition is the other half of the question. Listings in professional hands make up a large share of this market, and in a city that hands its cheapest license to ordinary residents renting their own homes, that tells you the full-timers have already worked out where the prices sit. A local manager can take the turnovers and the guest messaging off your hands, and the Philadelphia property management roundup compares what's available, although keep in mind that a limited lodging license is issued to the resident, never to the manager.

That $37,159 quartile line is the one I'd aim at. A listing clearing it is earning more than three in four listings across the market, and I'd treat it as a target rather than a budget, because a budget should start from the median.

Is the Philadelphia Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

So is the crowd getting worse? Start with what the past year actually did.

Metric	Year-over-year change
Average nightly rate	+21%
Occupancy	+6%
Purchase price	+3%
Booking lead time	Down
Active supply	−8%

BNBCalc data across every listing BNBCalc tracks in this market, comparing September 2025 through August 2026 with September 2024 through August 2025, each change rounded and expressed as a relative move rather than in percentage points. Booking lead time carries a direction without a figure, because the size of that move isn't settled, and any measure whose direction this year's data can't pin down is dropped. Purchase price follows home prices rather than listings.

No, Philadelphia isn't oversaturated, and the supply line is the first reason: active listings fell about 8% over the year, so fewer hosts are chasing the same guests than were a year ago.

What makes that easy to read is the occupancy line underneath it. When listings leave and occupancy sinks with them, you can't tell whether the market is thinning out or the demand is walking away. Philadelphia went the other way, with occupancy up about 6% across the market even as listings left, and hosts raised average nightly rates about 21% on top of that. Crowded markets don't behave like that, since hosts in a crowded market discount to protect their calendar rather than push their prices up.

Home prices stayed nearly still through all of it, up about 3%, which is a long way behind the 21% hosts added to their nightly rates. Bookings did arrive closer to arrival over the year, which means guests are deciding later than they used to, and you'll want your minimum stays and your last-minute pricing loose enough to catch them.

When Is Philadelphia's Peak Airbnb Season?

Seasonality in Philadelphia works through price far more than through how full the months get, which is the calendar those later bookers are arriving on.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	37%	$178
Oct 2025	42%	$197
Nov 2025	40%	$215
Dec 2025	35%	$190
Jan 2026	33%	$155
Feb 2026	31%	$153
Mar 2026	38%	$182
Apr 2026	42%	$199
May 2026	46%	$254
Jun 2026	42%	$332
Jul 2026	44%	$263
Aug 2026	40%	$209

BNBCalc market data across every listing in this market, one row per month from September 2025 through August 2026. Occupancy and nightly rate are averaged independently of each other, so read each column on its own.

Occupancy hardly moves compared with a resort market. February sits at the floor with 31% of its nights booked, and the top of the range is about 46% in May, with April, July and October only three or four points behind, so the worst month still fills about two-thirds of the best. The nightly rate is where the year actually happens, climbing from $153 in February to $332 in June.

June is the month to handle with care. Philadelphia hosted five World Cup group-stage matches between June 14 and June 27, 2026, with a 39-day fan festival running alongside them, and the city's average nightly rate for June came in at $332 while occupancy sat at 42%, under both May and July. Those two months, on either side of it, ran at $254 and $263, so the fair reading is that hosts priced hard for a couple of weeks and filled fewer nights doing it. July isn't a pure control either, since the city hosted a Round of 16 match on July 4, but it still came in $69 a night under June. Don't build next June into a purchase on the strength of this one.

Otherwise the year is a long shoulder rather than a spike.

March through July all book between 38% and 46%, October and November hold up better than you'd expect at 42% and 40%, and the real drop is January and February.

The week has its own rhythm. In BNBCalc's day-of-week figures for the whole market, Saturday books about 33% more of its nights than an average day does and Friday about 25% more, while Monday comes in roughly 20% under and Tuesday 18% under. Rates follow almost as hard, with Friday and Saturday each about 23% above average, which means the weekend premium is already built into what hosts here charge. If you're looking for the loose money, it's in what you do with Sunday through Thursday rather than in pushing Saturday higher still.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Philadelphia?

Before you shortlist a street, it's worth knowing how much of this market is Philadelphia itself, because pricing the week only matters once you've picked one.

About four listings in five sit inside the city limits, which makes this a tightly concentrated market and means the city's own rulebook governs most of what follows. The rest scatters thinly through the suburbs, out along the Main Line and over the river in New Jersey, and no place outside the city holds enough listings to rank reliably, which leaves one table here rather than two.

The city's own boundary file splits Philadelphia into 57 polygons, 55 of them named neighborhoods once the two land-use catch-alls come out, so I sorted every measurable listing into the one it sits in, then ranked them by median annual revenue and kept the top fifteen.

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Point Breeze	$34,339	$303	31%	$58,660
2	Powelton	$32,585	$266	43%	$62,528
3	Center City	$29,762	$256	34%	$43,311
4	Bella Vista / Southwark	$29,468	$269	32%	$40,909
5	Queen Village / Pennsport	$29,383	$293	33%	$45,168
6	Schuylkill / SW Center City	$28,157	$307	28%	$53,918
7	Manayunk	$27,849	$223	37%	$31,236
8	North Philadelphia / West	$27,027	$254	31%	$39,286
9	South Philadelphia / East	$25,848	$266	27%	$35,265
10	North Philadelphia / East	$25,801	$224	31%	$35,894
11	West Philadelphia / Cobbs Creek	$25,715	$232	30%	$26,814
12	Northern Liberties / Fishtown	$25,224	$195	39%	$34,159
13	Mantua	$24,112	$187	28%	$27,393
14	Kensington	$23,735	$219	33%	$35,362
15	University City	$22,006	$199	30%	$31,787

BNBCalc 2026 listing data placed inside the City of Philadelphia's named neighborhood boundaries, trailing twelve months. Revenue, rate and occupancy are medians, and the last column is the 75th percentile, the point where a neighborhood's strongest quarter of listings begins. Because every column is worked out on its own, they don't multiply together, and neighborhoods with too little data to measure are left out.

Those occupancy figures aren't the same animal as the monthly ones, since each belongs to a single middle listing rather than to the market as a whole, which is why thirteen of the fifteen sit below the market's average.

Use them to rank neighborhoods against each other, and for nothing else.

Point Breeze takes the top row, although the typical listing there has three bedrooms, so a fair part of that $34,339 is house size rather than location. Powelton comes second on a thin sample, which I'd treat as a signal rather than a promise, yet it holds the table's best median occupancy at 43% and the highest 75th-percentile revenue on it at $62,528, and that combination tells me a well-run listing beside Drexel and Penn can finish well ahead of the middle of this table.

Center City is the row I'd anchor on, because it rests on the deepest pool of listings in the city and still lands at $29,762 on a $256 median rate. Most of the table sits close to it, with rows two through ten all landing between about $25,800 and $32,600, which is a narrow band for a city this varied. Only the top row and the bottom few break out of it. That leaves your choice of block moving the answer less here than your choice of property does.

Northern Liberties and Fishtown are the exception worth studying, because the typical listing there is a one-bedroom and it still clears $25,224, on the second-best median occupancy in the table at 39% and a $195 median rate, well under Center City's $256. That's a neighborhood winning on how often it books rather than on what it charges. Schuylkill and the southwest edge of Center City make the opposite trade, holding a $307 median rate on 28% occupancy, among the lowest in the top ten.

What a table can't tell you is what it's like to live on the block, and that carries unusual weight in a city where the affordable license requires you to, so the best Philadelphia neighborhoods for Airbnb takes on that side of it.

One caution about the edges of this market. The listing data crosses the Delaware into Camden, New Jersey, where nothing you've read about Philadelphia licenses applies, so make sure to read the Camden short-term rental guide before you treat a river view as the same market.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Philadelphia?

Some fittings inside a unit carry far more revenue than others, and that holds whichever side of the river you end up on.

A hot tub is worth about 23% more revenue on a Philadelphia listing, which is the strongest single feature BNBCalc's current amenity model finds across the market as a whole.

Split by bedroom count, that pull shrinks as the home grows: about 25% on a one-bedroom, about 21% on a three-bedroom and about 16% on four or more, and my guess is that a hot tub is the whole evening for a couple and merely another feature for a group. The smaller the place, then, the more of the booking decision it carries.

Two-bedrooms break the pattern, since the model puts a gym first at that size and worth about 33%, and for studios the top slot goes to allowing pets, at about 7%. Below those leaders the model still picks up a signal from a sauna, bicycles and a TV, and their Philadelphia percentages are ones BNBCalc Markets keeps and the public page doesn't show. A few everyday basics sit outside the model altogether, since BNBCalc treats them as things guests assume rather than upgrades an owner pays for.

Is Airbnb Legal in Philadelphia?

Yes, and Philadelphia doesn't reserve short-term renting for people who live in the home. What it does instead is send you down one of two very different roads.

As of September 2026, the city treats a stay of no more than 30 consecutive days as a short-term rental, and all of them need a zoning permit before a license becomes possible. Which permit you need turns on a single test: does a primary resident live in the unit? The Zoning Code defines that resident as a natural person who either owns the home and holds the homestead exclusion on it, or rents it, lives there as their primary domicile for more than half the year, and holds the owner's written authorization to offer limited lodging.

If somebody does live there, you apply for a limited lodging use, which the code permits alongside household living, and then for a Limited Lodging Operator License from the Department of Licenses and Inspections. The license costs $150 and renews annually at $150, with the $20 you pay to apply counting toward it.

A few other things have to be in place before any of that, starting with a Commercial Activity License, which is free and never expires. Then there's a zoning use permit at $189, a certification from the Department of Public Health that the property is lead-free or lead-safe, and an L&I inspection you have to pass, which comes around again at every renewal. Fail that inspection and you get one re-inspection, but fail the second and the application is canceled outright. One local quirk catches people out too: in the Tenth Councilmanic District, only an owner who lives there qualifies, and a renter can't hold the license at all.

The good news on that road is that the annual night cap is gone, because the old code held limited lodging to 180 days a year and used a 90-day threshold to decide which permit applied, and Bill No. 210081 struck both, effective April 1, 2022. That leaves the 30-consecutive-day limit on any one guest, plus the requirement that all of it stays secondary to your actually living there.

There are conditions inside the house too, and they're where otherwise careful hosts trip up, starting with who's allowed in it. The code counts the people in the unit who aren't related to one another by blood, marriage, adoption, foster care or life partnership, and no more than three of them may occupy it, counting you. On top of that, guests of your lodgers are only allowed between 8 a.m. and midnight, and you can't put up a sign or carve out a separate street-facing entrance for the rental. On top of that you have to give every lodger your contact details for complaints and then act on them, tell them the trash and recycling days and provide the containers, and keep records for a year showing the home stayed your primary residence, along with the dates you rented and how many lodgers stayed.

One requirement is brand new. Since August 22, 2026, under Bill No. 260241, a licensed limited lodging operator has to notify the neighbors: in writing to the residents of every unit in the building and to every other unit owner in that building, planned unit development or co-op they know of, and to the unit's owner if they rent. That notice has to go out within 30 days of the license being issued, or seven business days before the first listing goes live, whichever comes first. The same ordinance makes a landlord disclose in the lease whether any unit in a multi-family building is licensed for limited lodging, and if they don't, the tenant can walk away from the lease without penalty.

Now for the other road. If nobody lives in the unit, what you're running is a visitor accommodation, which the Zoning Code treats as a commercial business rather than something accessory to a home, and it isn't permitted in the lower-density residential districts that cover most of the city's rowhouse blocks. Where it is permitted by right, you take the zoning permit and then a Rental License carrying a hotel designation, at $69 per unit. Where it isn't, L&I refuses the permit. Your only way through then is an appeal to the Zoning Board of Adjustment for a variance or a special exception, and that means posting a notice on the property, meeting the neighborhood's registered community organization, and giving the people who'd live next door a hearing at which to object. Unfortunately for anyone hoping to sort that out afterwards, the by-right question is one to settle before you make an offer.

On the limited lodging road you can only list through a booking agent holding its own Philadelphia license, you have to show that agent your license is active before the listing goes up, and your license number has to be visible in the advertisement. A visitor accommodation can list itself directly or go through a licensed agent.

Tax lands on the guest's bill rather than on your nightly rate, although filing it is still your problem. Philadelphia's Hotel Tax is 8.5% of the total the guest pays, due on the 15th of the month for the previous month's stays, and Pennsylvania adds its own 7% on top, which the city's Revenue department adds up to 15.5% in total. A stay that runs past that same 30-day line isn't a short-term rental and isn't taxed as one, and if your booking agent collects and sends the tax in for you, you don't file at all. Make sure you do file when it falls to you, though, because the city can fine you $2,000 for every monthly return that goes missing, and because the Business Income and Receipts Tax and the Net Profits Tax sit on top as separate obligations you handle yourself. The state layer gets its own treatment in BNBCalc's Pennsylvania short-term rental tax guide.

That's a lot of filing for a market where, on the city's own count, plenty of hosts never got the license in the first place. In June 2026 the City Controller reviewed 3,734 Airbnb listings from a single month and found 1,327 of them attached to licenses that were inactive, expired or the wrong type for what the property was doing. Her office called that one-third. L&I leans on the reports booking platforms file and on neighbor complaints rather than sweeping the listings itself, and once it flags one, the platform has five business days to pull the listing down and confirm it did. So the odds of being caught in a given month are modest, while the cost of being caught is your listing going dark with bookings already on the calendar.

Which form goes first, which tax account you open when, and who to call about each of them: the Philadelphia short-term rental regulation guide sets all of that out step by step.

Where Do These Philadelphia Airbnb Numbers Come From?

That guide has the forms and the filing order, whereas every market-wide figure above comes from BNBCalc Markets, measured across every listing in the Philadelphia market over the twelve months to August 2026. Occupancy and nightly rate are averaged apart from each other there rather than multiplied together. It also reports how big a part of a market the professional managers hold, and since Philadelphia's licensing system turns on whether an operator lives in the unit, that's the split I'd want in front of me before deciding which kind of operation I was joining.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Philadelphia Property?

A market figure is thousands of listings rolled into one number, some of them averages and some of them medians. So what does any of it tell you about one address on one block?

The Philadelphia market page is where I'd begin, because its revenue, occupancy and seasonality refresh as the data does, and if the city itself is still an open question, the best Pennsylvania markets by gross yield rank it beside everywhere else in the state. Then, once there's a real address to weigh, run its asking price, its financing and its running costs through BNBCalc.

Then hold that number up against a few Philadelphia realities before you trust it. Zoning comes first, because if the lot won't take a visitor accommodation and you won't be living there, those nightly numbers describe a business you can't legally run. Winter comes next, since February fills 31% of its nights at a $153 average rate, and a budget built on the annual average will flatter it. Price with the 15.5% in mind too, since it goes on what the guest pays on top of your rate and your fees. And don't underwrite another 21% rise in rates, because a year like the one behind us isn't one you get twice running.

Any market will eventually hand you a year that doesn't repeat, whether it arrives as a tournament, a convention or a building boom. The useful question to put to a run of numbers isn't how good they look, it's which parts of them will still be there once you own the place.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Average Airbnb Income in Philadelphia?

Across the whole Philadelphia market, the median listing earned $25,943 over a trailing twelve-month window of 2026 data, and the top quarter starts at $37,159. Inside the city limits, which hold four listings in five, the median is $26,102. Two homes of the same size can land far apart, and BNBCalc market data shows the best one-bedrooms beating the weakest homes of four bedrooms or more.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in Philadelphia in 2026?

It can be, and the past year improved the conditions for it. Across every listing in the market, active supply fell about 8% while occupancy rose about 6% and average nightly rates gained about 21%. Home prices rose about 3% over the same year. Whether a specific property pays still depends on its purchase price, its running costs and, in Philadelphia, on whether its zoning allows the use you have in mind.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in Philadelphia?

May posted the highest occupancy reading in the window at 46%, with April, July and October all within four points, while June carried the highest average nightly rate at $332, against $254 in May and $263 in July, in the month the city hosted five World Cup group-stage matches. February was the weakest month on both counts, with 31% occupancy and a $153 rate. Occupancy stays within a narrow band here, between 31% and 46% across the twelve months to August 2026, and the calendar fills hardest on Fridays and Saturdays.

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

Yes, and you need a zoning permit before the license. If a primary resident lives in the unit, that's a Limited Lodging Operator License from the Department of Licenses and Inspections, which runs $150 annually, with a $20 application charge credited against it. If nobody lives there, you need a Rental License with a hotel designation at $69 per unit. Both paths also need a Commercial Activity License, which is free, and both need the zoning permit first.

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

Yes, where the zoning allows it. A property with no primary resident is a visitor accommodation, a commercial use the Zoning Code doesn't permit in the lower-density residential districts that cover most of the city's rowhouse blocks. Where it isn't allowed by right, the only route is a variance or special exception from the Zoning Board of Adjustment, which involves a posted notice, a meeting with the neighborhood's registered community organization, and a hearing.

Which Philadelphia Neighborhood Is Best for Short-Term Rentals?

It depends on the home. Point Breeze posts the highest median revenue at $34,339, with three bedrooms in the typical listing, which leaves size doing part of that work. Powelton leads the table on median occupancy at 43% and on 75th-percentile revenue at $62,528, though on a thin sample. Center City rests on the deepest pool of listings and lands at $29,762. All of those are 2026 medians, built from BNBCalc listing data mapped to the city's own neighborhood boundaries.

How Much Is the Airbnb Tax in Philadelphia?

A guest on a Philadelphia short-term stay pays 15.5% in lodging tax, made up of the city's 8.5% Hotel Tax and Pennsylvania's 7%. The city's Hotel Tax is filed monthly and due on the 15th for the previous month's rentals, and stays of 31 consecutive days or longer are exempt. A booking agent that collects and remits it removes the filing obligation. The Business Income and Receipts Tax and the Net Profits Tax are separate and filed by the host.

Is There a Limit on How Many Nights You Can Rent in Philadelphia?

No. The Zoning Code used to cap limited lodging at 180 days a year, with a 90-day threshold deciding which permit applied, and Bill No. 210081 removed both, effective April 1, 2022. What remains is a 30-consecutive-day limit on any single guest's stay, and the requirement that limited lodging stays accessory to the operator genuinely living in the unit.