Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much does a Pittsburgh Airbnb earn, and can you run one out of a house you'll never live in?

Well, today the answer to the second half is yes. Pittsburgh has no short-term rental license. Its rental permit program does cover short stays on paper, since the city code counts a home used for short-term homestays as a rental unit, yet the Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections says on its own page that complying with it stays voluntary until further notice, and a county judge has barred the city from enforcing it until the court says otherwise. That leaves nothing in force that sorts an investor from a host who lives on site.

Two bills sitting with City Council would change that, and they split the work. The zoning bill would decide where a short-term rental can operate at all, keeping new ones out of the city's R1D, R1A, R2 and R3 residential districts and allowing whole-home rentals by right only in sixteen named districts, downtown and the riverfront among them, while the licensing bill would set the rules everyone left has to follow. Neither has passed, and until one does, you'd be buying into an open market inside the City of Pittsburgh, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Keep in mind that BNBCalc's Pittsburgh market reaches well past the city line: just over half of its listings sit inside it, and the rest are spread across dozens of Pennsylvania municipalities that write their own rules, including the mountain resort country an hour or so east and south of the city.

How Much Do Pittsburgh Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Across the whole market, the median listing brought in $23,361 over its latest twelve months. Inside the City of Pittsburgh the median came to about $25,000, against about $21,300 for the median listing outside it. Those are medians, the middle listing in each group, and they won't line up with an average from somewhere else.

Since the rules don't currently sort hosts by property type, the money sorts them by execution instead, and the spread inside each bedroom count shows it: strong one-bedrooms here out-earn the poorest-performing four-plus-bedroom houses, which means a small unit run well beats a big one run badly.

Gross yield, a year's revenue set against the purchase price, is flatter across sizes than revenue is. Set the studios aside, because theirs land at roughly half of what the other sizes reach, and everything from one bedroom to four-plus clusters in a tight band, two-bedrooms just ahead. That's good news if you're choosing a house, because you don't have to chase a particular size here to earn a return. Buy the one you can buy well.

Who would you be pricing against? Professional operators, for one, because they run a large share of everything listed in this market, alongside neighbors letting out a spare floor. If handing off the turnovers appeals, the Pittsburgh property management roundup runs through the local firms, although you'll want to read the rules section before hiring anyone, since no manager can undo a zoning problem.

At the top end, the strongest quarter of city listings starts at about $34,900 a year. Treat that as the figure to aim at, and budget on the median.

Is the Pittsburgh Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Aiming high gets harder as the field fills up, and Pittsburgh's field did fill up over the past year.

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

BNBCalc data across all listings BNBCalc tracks in this market, for September 2025 to August 2026 set against September 2024 to August 2025, with every change rounded. Booking lead time shows its direction only, because the size of that change isn't settled yet. Purchase price tracks home prices, and "roughly flat" means it moved less than 2% either way.

Yes, mildly. Active supply grew about 8% across the year while occupancy slipped about 6%, and more hosts sharing calendars that fill a little less often is what crowding looks like.

What keeps it from looking worse is the price line. Where supply really has run away, hosts discount to claw back the nights they're losing, yet Pittsburgh's went the opposite way and the average rate per night rose about 21%. For now the pressure is landing on calendars, not on price, and with home prices roughly flat over the same year, the cost of getting in didn't move either.

Guests also booked closer to arrival than the year before, with the average booking landing about 33 days before check-in over the last twelve months.

If you want to test whether this market is still absorbing its new listings, don't wait for a headline to settle it for you. Pull up ten or fifteen homes that compete with the one you're weighing, note how much of their calendars are booked, then check them again in three months.

When Is Pittsburgh's Peak Airbnb Season?

Crowding also lands unevenly through the year, and Pittsburgh's calendar is lumpier than its annual averages let on.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	35%	$207
Oct 2025	39%	$239
Nov 2025	34%	$234
Dec 2025	31%	$232
Jan 2026	32%	$228
Feb 2026	30%	$220
Mar 2026	31%	$182
Apr 2026	36%	$289
May 2026	39%	$255
Jun 2026	40%	$249
Jul 2026	46%	$255
Aug 2026	42%	$244

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

July is the peak, booking 46% of its nights at $255, and June through August all fill at least 40% of theirs at rates between $244 and $255. February is the weakest month on occupancy at 30%, and from November right through March no month books more than 34% of its nights, so if you underwrite on an annual average you'll be disappointed five months in a row.

October is worth flagging if you assume this is a summer-only market, because at 39% it fills a bigger share of its nights than any month from September through April, on a $239 rate, with football season and the fall color both landing then, and you'll want it in mind when you set a shoulder-season floor.

April is the odd one. Its $289 average nightly rate is the highest any month reaches, one month after March bottoms the table at $182, and a $107 swing between neighboring months isn't normal. The obvious candidate is the NFL Draft, which the league held on Pittsburgh's North Shore from April 23 to 25 this year. My guess is that those three days carried the month's rate, yet April booked just 36% of its nights, about five points above March, which suggests whatever the draft did showed up in what hosts charged more than in how often they filled. Make sure you don't build next April into a budget at this April's rate.

The week has a sharp rhythm too. Taking BNBCalc's latest figures across every listing, Saturday books about 42% better than an ordinary day and Friday about 35%, whereas Tuesday sits 25% behind and Monday 24%. Rates lean the same way without leaning nearly as hard, with Friday and Saturday about 21% to 22% above average. Pittsburgh is a weekend market before it's anything else, and if I could only tune one price here, I'd tune Friday and Saturday.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Pittsburgh?

Picking a street comes later. First, work out how much of this market is Pittsburgh at all.

The city limits hold just over half of the market's listings, and the median listing inside the city earns more than the median outside it. That's close to an even split, so the city's own neighborhoods get the first table and the municipalities around it get the second; they sit on different boundaries, so compare within a table, not across.

Inside the City of Pittsburgh

The city keeps 90 official neighborhood boundaries, and every listing I could measure inside the city went into one of them. These fifteen came out on top on median annual revenue.

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Point Breeze North	$38,086	$307	33%	$73,995
2	Shadyside	$33,604	$260	38%	$46,232
3	Manchester	$31,690	$274	35%	$39,139
4	East Liberty	$29,523	$209	37%	$33,406
5	Allegheny West	$29,414	$249	31%	$31,528
6	East Allegheny	$29,369	$266	32%	$37,386
7	Perry South	$28,232	$263	36%	$41,990
8	Central Northside	$28,226	$273	30%	$34,501
9	Brighton Heights	$27,507	$245	33%	$41,242
10	Upper Lawrenceville	$26,965	$267	30%	$41,500
11	Strip District	$26,793	$211	37%	$28,535
12	Mount Washington	$26,694	$245	32%	$39,053
13	Troy Hill	$26,344	$249	33%	$32,533
14	Duquesne Heights	$26,067	$225	31%	$31,475
15	South Side Flats	$25,882	$219	32%	$38,980

BNBCalc 2026 listing data inside the City of Pittsburgh's official neighborhood boundaries, trailing twelve months. Revenue, rate and occupancy are medians, and the last column shows the 75th percentile, the point where a neighborhood's strongest quarter of listings begins. Each column is worked out separately, so they don't multiply, and neighborhoods with too little data to measure reliably are left out.

Those occupancy medians won't reconcile with the monthly seasonality figures, because each belongs to one middle listing, whereas the monthly figures average everything BNBCalc tracks. Use them to set one neighborhood beside another, and leave it at that.

Point Breeze North tops the list, but be careful with it. It rests on a thin sample where the typical home has three bedrooms, and its 75th percentile runs to nearly double its median, which is the shape you get when a handful of large houses carry a small row. Brighton Heights, the Strip District and Troy Hill sit on samples about as thin.

Below it, rows two through fifteen all sit inside a band of roughly $26,000 to $34,000. Don't spend months agonizing over which of those neighborhoods to buy in, because your choice of house matters more here than your choice of street.

Seven of those fifteen are North Side neighborhoods: Manchester, Allegheny West, East Allegheny, Perry South, Central Northside, Brighton Heights and Troy Hill. That's the side of the rivers the stadiums sit on, and you'll want each address's zoning district in front of you before you judge any of those rows on returns alone.

Shadyside deserves the closest look, and it's where I'd start. It pairs the table's second-best median revenue with a 38% median occupancy that no other row in the top ten matches, and it's the best-sampled row in the top five, which makes its figure less likely to jump between refreshes. Mount Washington cuts the other way. More listings sit up there than in any other neighborhood in the city, which suggests a well-understood market with the famous view, yet its median lands mid-table at $26,694.

A table can't tell you how a street feels on a Tuesday evening, so for that half of the question, try the best Pittsburgh neighborhoods for Airbnb.

The Rest of the Pittsburgh Market

Does the money get better once you leave the city? These are the eleven Pennsylvania municipalities whose median beats Pittsburgh's, and then Pittsburgh itself.

Rank	Municipality	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Saltlick Township, Fayette County	$53,375	$625	26%	$62,247
2	Stewart Township, Fayette County	$38,398	$305	34%	$41,597
3	Lower Turkeyfoot Township, Somerset County	$33,247	$305	35%	$44,221
4	Wharton Township, Fayette County	$32,458	$356	28%	$43,523
5	Middlecreek Township, Somerset County	$31,905	$362	26%	$40,204
6	Sewickley Borough, Allegheny County	$30,299	$293	32%	$37,350
7	Henry Clay Township, Fayette County	$29,517	$260	28%	$42,749
8	Donegal Township, Westmoreland County	$27,658	$289	29%	$35,775
9	Springfield Township, Fayette County	$26,621	$224	28%	$35,117
10	Jefferson Township, Somerset County	$26,327	$280	26%	$43,474
11	Mount Lebanon, Allegheny County	$25,509	$247	33%	$31,131
12	Pittsburgh, Allegheny County	$25,004	$225	32%	$34,875

BNBCalc 2026 listing data inside US Census county subdivision boundaries, trailing twelve months. In Pennsylvania those are the municipalities themselves, so every point falls inside exactly one city, borough or township. Columns are medians apart from the 75th percentile, each worked out separately, and counties are named because Pennsylvania reuses township names across the state.

Only those eleven beat the city, though. Across everything outside it, the median listing earns about $21,300, which is why the city still comes out ahead overall.

Nine of the eleven sit in Fayette, Somerset or Westmoreland counties, which together make up the Laurel Highlands. That makes the honest answer to "are the suburbs better" that most of the places beating the city aren't suburbs at all. They're resort country, and they behave like it: Middlecreek charges $362 a night and fills 26%, Wharton charges $356 and fills 28%, against Pittsburgh's $225 at 32%. Those are cabins and lodge houses sold by the weekend, not apartments sold by the night, and much of that revenue gap comes down to house size, since the typical listing out there has three bedrooms against the city's two.

Saltlick Township heads the list with a $53,375 median, but it gets there on a $625 median rate and a thin sample where the typical house has four bedrooms, and I wouldn't move on that row by itself. Lower Turkeyfoot, Sewickley and Springfield rest on samples just as thin, and all four will shuffle between refreshes.

Even the deeper rows carry a real catch, since a cabin filling 26% of its nights needs its rate to hold in a way a city apartment doesn't.

The catch that matters more is legal. Pennsylvania's rules are mostly local, and its Joint State Government Commission, reporting to the General Assembly in March 2025, described them as a patchwork of primarily county and municipal zoning ordinances. Each township line marks a different rulebook, so look up the exact municipality before assuming any of it runs looser than the city does, and for anything inside Allegheny County, BNBCalc's Allegheny County guide is where I'd start on the county layer sitting above it.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Pittsburgh?

Whichever municipality you settle on, some features inside the house shift revenue more than others, and in Pittsburgh one of them leads by a distance.

That one is the hot tub. In BNBCalc's current amenity model, a hot tub goes with roughly 27% more revenue across the market, and the model runs the same comparison by bedroom count: about 25% at one bedroom, 33% at two, 16% at three and 15% at four-plus, with no hot-tub signal at all for studios. Because the market-wide figure mixes every size together, the per-size figure is the one to use when you're pricing a hot tub into a particular house. The case is strongest for a one- or two-bedroom. On a three- or four-bedroom house the lift runs about half the two-bedroom figure, although it applies to a bigger revenue base, which is reason enough not to write a hot tub off for a cabin.

Seven more amenities show up strongly enough for the model to keep tracking them in Pittsburgh: a gym, a sauna, a TV, an EV charger, allowing pets, lake access and a barbecue.

Then there's the cleaning fee. As of September 2026, 47.7% of the listings BNBCalc tracks here charged one, at about $101 on average where they did. Keep in mind that most of that money leaves again the moment someone cleans the house, so book it as a cost you're recovering. Lifting the Friday and Saturday price, by contrast, costs nothing.

Is Airbnb Legal in Pittsburgh?

Yes, and for a city this big it's a surprisingly short answer, because almost nothing stands between you and hosting right now. How long that holds isn't something anyone can promise you, since a court decides when the permit program can be enforced and City Council decides whether the two pending bills pass. That makes the useful question what's law today and what's coming.

Today's rule is the Residential Housing Rental Permit Program, at Chapter 781 of the city code, which PLI launched on December 19, 2024. It applies to every rental unit in the city, and the definition names your listing directly, since homes used by owners as short-term homestays and experiences count as rental units under the chapter.

The odd part is what the city then does with it. As of September 2026, PLI's own rental registration page still says compliance remains voluntary until further notice, and that the department will publish revised rules and tell City Council at least 30 days before it starts enforcing. The page doesn't say why, but the reason is in court. Landlord groups have fought the city's registries for years, and in 2023 the Commonwealth Court threw out an earlier version as beyond the city's authority. This one is being challenged by the Apartment Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, and in May 2025 the Allegheny County judge hearing that case, John T. McVay, ordered that registration stays voluntary and that the city can't enforce it until the court orders otherwise.

In practice, then, a program that legally covers your listing isn't being applied to it, and PLI's 30 days' notice isn't the only thing standing between you and a mandatory registry, because the court has to let enforcement go ahead first and the case could still end with this version thrown out too.

I'd register anyway, and it's cheap. You submit through the OneStopPGH portal or the counter at 412 Boulevard of the Allies, and the current schedule runs $16 to register, $5.50 for the inspection and $14 per dwelling or sleeping unit, so a single unit costs $35.50 and a four-unit building costs $77.50 in the city's own worked example. If you live in one of the units yourself, you skip the $14 fee on that unit while the $16 and $5.50 still apply, and only if you own the building in your own name, since a company doesn't qualify.

Once PLI accepts a complete registration it issues a provisional permit, you then have 90 days to request the inspection, and passing it gets you a non-provisional permit that lasts three years. The registration still renews every year inside that permit, at $16 in the city's example. Work through the city's published inspection checklist first, because a failed inspection means fixing every deficiency and asking for another visit before the permit comes through.

Once enforcement starts, renting a unit without that permit is a summary offense, and the code caps the fine at $500 per unit per month.

What's coming is a pair of bills that do different jobs. Council Bill 2026-0009 is the zoning half, the one that decides where you can operate at all, whereas Council Bill 2026-0008 would set how everyone operates once they're allowed to. That licensing bill would add a short-term rental chapter to the city's business licensing code, with an annual license through PLI, a 28-day cap on stays, guests who are at least 18 or accompanied by a parent or guardian, a daily guest register, and someone responsible for a whole-home rental based within 25 miles of it.

The zoning bill sorts short-term rentals into two kinds: a whole home rented out by the night counts as a primary use, while a room or a backyard unit on a lot where the owner lives counts as an accessory use. Whole-home rentals would be permitted by right only in a named list of sixteen districts, among them multi-unit residential, mixed-use, commercial, downtown and riverfront ones. According to the city's planning department, short-term rentals wouldn't be permitted in the R1D, R1A, R2 and R3 districts at all, whereas an earlier draft of the same bill had at least let you apply for a special exception there. On top of that, buildings of 20 units or fewer would be capped at two short-term rentals and larger buildings at five, and a lot could hold only one accessory short-term rental.

Unfortunately for anyone hoping to time this, nobody can tell you when it lands. Both bills have sat in a standing committee since January, and council has spent the year voting to extend the Planning Commission's deadline to act on the zoning half, most recently on September 15. A week before that, at the hearing on September 8, the commission tabled its own vote while the city's law department reviews the bill. The licensing bill is on the agenda of council's land use committee for October 21, but the zoning bill still needs the commission's recommendation and then a council public hearing, with 21 days' notice, before council can vote on it. As of September 2026 neither ordinance has passed.

Existing rentals wouldn't be shut down if it passes. A listing with a valid certificate of occupancy could keep going, though it'd have to get licensed, and in a district where whole-home rentals aren't permitted it gets 12 months from the effective date to apply for a new certificate of occupancy as a legal non-conforming use, with the owner carrying the burden of proving the use came first. To my eye that 12-month window is the most important line in the whole package for an investor, because it rewards being already running, with a valid certificate of occupancy and your paperwork on file, before a zoning vote nobody can put a date on.

Tax is the simple part here, and every layer of it lands on the guest's bill instead of being carved out of what you charge. The commonwealth takes a 6% hotel occupancy tax on any stay shorter than 30 days, Allegheny County puts 1% of local sales tax on top through the state, and the county then charges its own 7% hotel room rental tax, which leaves the guest paying about 14%.

Act 109 of 2018 makes booking platforms such as Airbnb collect all three, and Airbnb's Pennsylvania page says it does, locally imposed occupancy taxes included. Even so, don't assume the platform has you covered, because Allegheny County's treasurer still wants every operator registered with its Special Tax Division, reporting what the property takes in and showing proof the platform paid. Anything under 15 rooms files quarterly, due April 20, July 20, October 20 and January 20, and the state filing itself is laid out in BNBCalc's Pennsylvania tax guide for short-term rentals.

The forms and contacts sit in the Pittsburgh short-term rental regulation guide, which is the page to watch as council moves.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Pittsburgh Airbnb Market?

That guide follows the rules as council moves. Every market figure you've read so far was pulled from BNBCalc Markets, which BNBCalc built for sizing up a market as a whole. It follows a market's listings month by month, through what they charge and how many of their nights they fill, and for a market like this one it also splits the supply between professional operators running several listings and hosts with just one, a split worth having in a city where council is deciding how much room investors get.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Pittsburgh Property?

Those figures fold a whole market into single numbers. What use are they once a particular house is on the table?

Open the Pittsburgh market page first, since its revenue, occupancy and seasonal figures keep themselves current. If more than one city is still in contention, Pennsylvania's markets ranked by gross yield will tell you where Pittsburgh ranks inside its own state. When you've got an actual address, feed BNBCalc the asking price, the loan you'd take and what it costs to run, then look at what falls out.

Then test whatever number comes back against what's particular to Pittsburgh. Zoning comes first: if the house sits in an R1D, R1A, R2 or R3 district and you won't be living there, price it as though the pending zoning bill passes, because that's the version of the future that costs you money. After that, check the winter, since five straight months book under 35% of their nights, and remember the 14% tax lands on the guest's total, above your nightly rate and your cleaning charge, so it can put guests off booking even though your nightly rate stays whole. Finally, don't underwrite another year like this one: nightly rates across the market rose about 21% while occupancy slipped, and I wouldn't bet on that happening twice.

Wherever a city is still deciding what to allow, the numbers you're reading describe the hosts who got in before the decision, and the question worth answering first is whether the version of you who buys today would still be allowed to host tomorrow.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Average Airbnb Income in Pittsburgh?

The median listing inside Pittsburgh's city limits brought in about $25,000 over its latest twelve months in 2026, on a median rate of $225 and median occupancy of 32%, and the strongest quarter of city listings started at about $34,900. Across the wider market, which reaches into the surrounding counties, the median was $23,361. Execution matters as much as size, too, since BNBCalc's figures put the strongest one-bedrooms ahead of the poorest four-plus-bedroom homes.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in Pittsburgh in 2026?

It can be, though the past year cut both ways. Across all listings in this market, active supply grew about 8% while occupancy slipped about 6%, so calendars got a little harder to fill. Average nightly rates climbed about 21% over the same year, which means hosts raised prices instead of discounting to fill those calendars. Any individual house is its own arithmetic, though: the price on the deed, the running costs that follow it, and which zoning district it sits in.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in Pittsburgh?

Measured over every listing, July led the year by booking 46% of its nights at $255 a night on average, and February came last on occupancy at 30%. June through August all held at least 40% occupancy. April carried the year's highest rate at $289, most likely because the NFL Draft ran on the North Shore from April 23 to 25, and October topped every month from September through April at 39% occupancy and $239.

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

Not a short-term rental license, because Pittsburgh doesn't have one. What exists is the Residential Housing Rental Permit Program under Chapter 781, which explicitly covers short-term homestays, and PLI says compliance with it remains voluntary until further notice, while a county court order in a landlord group's lawsuit bars the city from enforcing it. Registration and inspection cost $35.50 for a single unit, and the permit lasts three years once you pass, though the registration renews every year. A dedicated license is proposed in Council Bill 2026-0008.

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

Today, yes. Pittsburgh has no owner-occupancy requirement and no zoning category for short-term rentals, so nothing in the code currently sorts an investor's listing from a resident's. Council Bill 2026-0009 would change that by permitting whole-home short-term rentals by right only in sixteen named districts, including multi-unit, mixed-use, commercial, downtown and riverfront ones, and by keeping short-term rentals out of the R1D, R1A, R2 and R3 districts. As of September 2026 the Planning Commission has tabled its vote on it.

Which Pittsburgh Neighborhood Is Best for Short-Term Rentals?

It depends on the house. Point Breeze North shows the top median revenue, $38,086, on a thin sample where the typical home has three bedrooms. Shadyside carries the strongest well-sampled row at a $33,604 median and 38% median occupancy, and Manchester, East Liberty, Allegheny West and East Allegheny sit between roughly $29,000 and $32,000. Each figure there is a 2026 median, computed from BNBCalc listing data sorted into the city's 90 neighborhood polygons.

How Much Is the Airbnb Tax in Pittsburgh?

Guests pay about 14% on top of a Pittsburgh booking: Pennsylvania's 6% hotel occupancy tax, a 1% Allegheny County local sales tax administered by the state, and the county's separate 7% hotel room rental tax. Act 109 of 2018 makes booking platforms such as Airbnb collect all three. Allegheny County still requires every operator to register with the Treasurer's Special Tax Division, report what the property takes in and show proof the platform paid on their behalf.

How Many Airbnbs Are There in Pittsburgh?

The current count sits on BNBCalc's Pittsburgh market page, which updates it as listings open and close. Just over half of the listings BNBCalc tracks in the Pittsburgh market sit inside the city limits, with the rest spread across the surrounding Pennsylvania municipalities, including the Laurel Highlands counties east and south of the city. Market-wide, active supply over the year to August 2026 sat about 8% above the twelve months before it. Professional operators run a large share of that supply.