Where does BNBCalc's data come from?
Last reviewed Oct 7, 2026 by Jeremy Werden
Short answer
BNBCalc's short-term rental numbers come from listing data on Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com. BNBCalc tracks each listing's details, nightly rates, booked and blocked nights, and past 12 months of earnings as BNBCalc market data. Home values come from Zillow, US for-sale market data from Redfin, and long-term rent estimates from Zillow and RentRange.
What BNBCalc tracks for each listing
Every revenue, occupancy and daily-rate figure in BNBCalc starts from individual short-term rental listings on Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com. For each listing, BNBCalc market data holds its details (bedrooms, bathrooms, guests, amenities, reviews and location), its nightly rates and cleaning fee, which nights were booked and which the host blocked off, and what it earned from bookings over the past 12 months.
Because blocked nights are tracked separately from booked ones, BNBCalc can tell a listing that couldn't find guests apart from one whose owner wasn't renting it out. That difference shows up all over the product, from how comps are picked to how occupancy is calculated.
How those listings become the numbers you see
The same listing data feeds both of BNBCalc's tools, though each one uses it differently.
In a property analysis, BNBCalc picks nearby entire homes with a similar bedroom count, works out what each one could earn in a full year, and turns that group into a revenue estimate. How does BNBCalc estimate revenue for a property? walks through it step by step, and How does BNBCalc choose comparable listings? covers which listings make the cut.
BNBCalc Markets, on the other hand, adds up the listings in a market to report revenue per listing, occupancy, daily rate and the rest, and lets you browse the listings themselves on a map. Each definition is in How does BNBCalc Markets calculate occupancy, ADR and annual revenue?.
Either way, revenue includes the cleaning fees guests paid. In a property analysis, BNBCalc then subtracts your cleaning costs and the host platform fee as expenses, further down the page.
Where the other numbers come from
Short-term rental listings aren't the only source, though. A few figures come from outside housing-data providers:
| What you see | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Revenue, occupancy, daily rate, comps and market statistics | BNBCalc market data (Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com listings) |
| Home value (the Zestimate box) and home-price forecasts | Zillow (US properties) |
| Buying conditions in US markets, such as days on market and sale-to-list price | Redfin |
| Long-term rent estimates | Zillow and RentRange (US properties) |
| Bedrooms, bathrooms and price on a new analysis | US property records; outside the US you enter them yourself |
| Operating expenses | BNBCalc's starting defaults, your own presets, or AI estimates (how expenses are estimated) |
| Market summaries and FAQs | Written by AI each month from the market's data |
What the data can't tell you
Listing data shows what comparable homes earned. It can't see your property's condition, design or photos, and it doesn't know how well the place will be run, so keep in mind that two homes on the same street can land far apart.
It also doesn't check whether short-term rentals are allowed at your address, so make sure to confirm the rules with the city or county before you buy. How accurate are BNBCalc's estimates? covers where the estimates hold up best and how to check one yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Does BNBCalc include Vrbo and Booking.com listings?
Yes. BNBCalc market data covers listings on Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com. When a property analysis finds the same home listed on more than one site, it usually counts it once in the comps and keeps the Airbnb copy.
Do BNBCalc's revenue figures include cleaning fees?
Yes. Revenue and daily-rate figures include the cleaning fees guests paid, because that's part of what a booking earns. In a property analysis, cleaning then comes back out as an operating expense, along with the host platform fee.
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Data & methodology
How does BNBCalc estimate revenue for a property?
BNBCalc estimates a property's annual revenue from up to 50 comparable Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com homes nearby, using what each could earn if it were bookable all year. The estimate benchmarks a well-run listing rather than the average, landing around the comps' 70th to 75th percentile, and it's gross revenue with cleaning fees included.
Data & methodology
How does BNBCalc Markets calculate occupancy, ADR and annual revenue?
In BNBCalc Markets, annual revenue is the market's total short-term rental revenue over the last 12 months divided by its average number of active listings, cleaning fees included, for the selected tier. Occupancy averages 12 monthly occupancy rates with host-blocked nights left out, and the average daily rate averages 12 monthly rates.
Data & methodology
How often is BNBCalc's data updated?
BNBCalc refreshes its market data once a month, adding the most recently completed month, so the newest month on a market page is usually last month or the one before. A property analysis keeps the comps it was created with: they don't refresh with new data, and only a bedroom-count change fetches new ones.
Data & methodology
How accurate are BNBCalc's estimates?
BNBCalc's estimates are built from what comparable homes nearby actually earned, so they're only as good as those comps. They're strongest for common home sizes in active markets, and weakest for very large or unusual homes, rural areas with few listings, and properties unlike anything nearby. Check the comps before you rely on any figure.
Data & methodology
BNBCalc data and methodology updates
A dated log of changes to where BNBCalc's data comes from and how its numbers are calculated, newest first. The latest, from October 2026: new property analyses take comps from BNBCalc's own nearby-listing data, open at the 70th percentile of those comps, and start with 8% cleaning and a 15.5% host platform fee.
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