Indianapolis, Indiana Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much does an Indianapolis Airbnb earn, and do you have to live in it to run one?

Well, for a house or an apartment you don't, and I think that answer is the whole story for an investor. Plenty of big American cities gate short-term rentals behind an owner-occupancy rule, meaning the home has to be your primary residence, whereas in Indianapolis that rule reaches one kind of rental and no other: a backyard cottage or garage apartment, where the zoning standard the unit has to meet says the owner must live on the lot. Indiana's statute would've let the city demand extra zoning approval for any rental its owner doesn't live in, and Indianapolis never used that option. Nor does it cap permits or set a minimum distance between one rental and the next.

What you do need is the permit, and that's where owners slip. Every short-term rental unit inside the consolidated city has needed its own annual permit from the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services since January 1, 2025, costing $150 the first time and nothing to renew, and skipping it turns each booking into its own violation. In Marion County your guests also pay 17% in tax on top of whatever you charge. This market reaches well past the county, though, out to Lafayette, Muncie and Terre Haute, and each of those places writes its own rulebook.

How Much Do Indianapolis Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

With the rules doing so little to narrow the field here, what you buy matters more than where you're allowed to buy it. On BNBCalc's September 2026 data, the median listing across the whole market took $22,730 over the latest twelve months, and the median listing inside Marion County took $23,275, while a listing needs about $33,465 to reach the market's top quarter.

Bedroom count decides how much a home brings in, but it barely changes how hard the home works for its price. Gross yield divides a year's revenue by the purchase price, and it moves by barely a point between a one-bedroom and a four-plus, so a bigger Indianapolis house earns more roughly in proportion to what it costs. Studios are the exception, yielding a bit over half what the larger homes do, and unless a studio's asking price is unusually kind, I'd leave it alone.

Within any one size, the spread is where the money is. At every bedroom count from studio to three, the gap between the weakest listings and the strongest runs more than twice the step up to the next size, so most of the distance between two identical floor plans comes down to where they stand and how they're run. You get to decide both.

A large share of these listings belong to professional hosts, which means the calendar next door may well be run by somebody who does this for a living. You can hire that out yourself, and the Indianapolis property management roundup covers who does it locally, though the permit stays in the owner's name whoever handles the day to day.

The prize for beating them shows up in BNBCalc's performance tiers, where the strongest tier fills better than half its nights against under 40% for the market at large. Aim at that tier, but run your numbers on the median. Keep in mind, too, that a home open all year crosses 180 rented days once it's booked more than half its nights, and that puts it on the city's landlord registry as well, a second registration that's cheap but easy to miss.

Is the Indianapolis Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

More competition would make that top tier harder to reach, so I went looking at whether Indianapolis has been gaining listings or losing them.

Metric	Change, January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025
Active supply	+6%
Occupancy	Roughly flat
Average nightly rate	+16%
Booking lead time	+15%

Every listing BNBCalc tracks in the Indianapolis market, comparing January through August 2026 with January through August 2025, each figure rounded to a whole percent. Occupancy reads as roughly flat because it shifted less than 2% either way, and any measure this year's data can't pin a direction on is left off. Each row is averaged on its own, so no two of them multiply together.

No, I don't think Indianapolis is oversaturated, and the reason sits in the first two rows. Supply across the market ran about 6% higher through the first eight months of this year than it had through the same stretch of 2025, yet the typical listing still booked roughly the same share of its nights as before. Crowding shows up as a slide in occupancy, and there wasn't one.

Better than that, hosts charged about 16% more per night over those eight months while holding that occupancy, which to me is what a market looks like when demand turns up faster than supply does.

Guests also booked further out, by about 15%, landing at an average of roughly a month before check-in. That's a quieter finding than the rate rise, yet it's the one I'd act on first, because a calendar that fills earlier gives you more room to hold a price instead of discounting into the gap.

Two cautions, though. The comparison leaves September through December out, and a 16% jump in nightly rates is no annual event.

So make sure the property you're weighing still works if rates hold flat next year while more listings keep arriving, and pull up the occupancy on homes like yours every few months to see whether their calendars start thinning.

When Is Indianapolis's Peak Airbnb Season?

Those averages flatten a year that's anything but flat.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	35%	$196
Oct 2025	41%	$218
Nov 2025	36%	$215
Dec 2025	34%	$210
Jan 2026	28%	$166
Feb 2026	30%	$173
Mar 2026	35%	$200
Apr 2026	42%	$258
May 2026	41%	$279
Jun 2026	47%	$244
Jul 2026	51%	$304
Aug 2026	41%	$242

One row per month across every listing in the market, September 2025 through August 2026. Occupancy and the nightly rate are each averaged separately, so read one column at a time.

July leads the year on both counts, filling 51% of its nights at $304 on average, with June a few points behind it on occupancy. At the other end sits January, bottom on both counts at 28% and $166, with February barely above it. If you budget on an annual average, then, expect January and February to come in well short and June and July to make up the difference.

The pair I keep coming back to is May and June. June books more of its nights than May does, yet May charges about $35 more per night, which is what a month looks like when a few dates carry it.

Indianapolis has an obvious candidate for that, since the Indianapolis Motor Speedway runs the Indianapolis 500 in late May and its NASCAR Brickyard weekend in late July, and those happen to be the two months where the rate column peaks. Neither race is going anywhere, so if you buy within reach of the track, set those weekends by hand rather than leaving them to a default pricing rule. Check which town the house sits in first, though. The track itself is in the town of Speedway, which lies outside the consolidated city even though the track's own mailing address says Indianapolis. So the city's permit program doesn't cover a house there, while Marion County's 17% tax still does, and it's the town's own rules you'd need to read.

Autumn holds up better than winter does. Across September to November, October leads on both occupancy and rate, so don't write off the autumn shoulder season here.

Then there's the week itself. Taking every listing together, Saturday runs 36% above an ordinary day on occupancy and Friday 33% above, while Monday sits about 24% under and Tuesday about 22% under. Nightly rates lean the same way on a shorter leash, roughly 18% over average on both Friday and Saturday and about 10% under on Monday. Weekend rates climb about half as far as weekend occupancy does, which suggests there's room to push Friday and Saturday prices, and testing that costs a new owner nothing.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Indianapolis?

Before any street, it's useful to see how far this market runs past Indianapolis, and the answer is a long way. Marion County accounts for a shade under 57% of what BNBCalc measures here, and the rest scatters over 34 other Indiana counties, so Lafayette, Muncie and Terre Haute share a market with the northern suburbs. The county and everything beyond it sit within about $1,200 of each other on median annual revenue, at $23,275 against $22,070, so the arguments worth having sit inside each half. The two tables that follow rest on different boundary sets, so don't rank a row from one table against a row from the other.

Inside Marion County

Indianapolis publishes 99 official neighborhood boundaries that together tile the whole county, separate towns included, so dropping every measurable listing into whichever one contains it gives a ranking, and these are the fifteen strongest on median annual revenue.

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Valley Mills	$42,301	$324	34%	$48,876
2	Near Southside	$28,813	$296	30%	$42,679
3	Chapel Hill / Ben Davis	$28,299	$255	35%	$38,082
4	Mapleton / Fall Creek	$27,454	$274	32%	$49,197
5	Near NW - Riverside	$27,302	$269	30%	$31,348
6	Fountain Square	$26,613	$288	29%	$44,605
7	Downtown	$25,120	$231	32%	$36,918
8	Butler-Tarkington/Rocky Ripple	$24,817	$238	30%	$32,136
9	Near Northside	$24,565	$254	28%	$35,090
10	North Central	$24,147	$173	37%	$33,741
11	Fairgrounds	$22,148	$194	31%	$28,542
12	Garden City	$21,753	$215	34%	$23,195
13	Meridian Kessler	$21,182	$208	34%	$28,400
14	Snacks / Guion Creek	$20,926	$221	30%	$26,708
15	Speedway (separate town)	$20,286	$201	31%	$28,108

BNBCalc 2026 listing data placed inside the City of Indianapolis official neighborhood boundaries, trailing twelve months. Revenue, rate and occupancy are medians, and the last column is the 75th percentile, where a neighborhood's strongest quarter of listings begins. Every column is worked out separately, so they don't multiply. Neighborhoods under ten measurable listings are left out, and rows close to that floor can move between refreshes. Speedway is a separate town, outside the consolidated city and its permit program.

The occupancy column reports one listing per neighborhood, the one in the middle, so it won't agree with the monthly averages. Use it to set one neighborhood against another.

Several rows near the bottom sit under the county median of $23,275. That makes sense once you notice that Downtown, Near Southside and Fountain Square carry so much of the county's supply and all three earn above it.

Valley Mills sits on top, but its sample is thin and its typical listing is a three-bedroom, so treat it as a lead to follow up.

Right under it sits Near Southside, which along with Fountain Square a few rows down is where I'd spend real time. Both charge close to $300 a night, both rest on samples big enough to believe, and both put their 75th percentile well clear of their median, which tells me a capable operator there can pull away from the field. Fountain Square books the smaller share of its nights of the two and sits near the bottom of the top ten on occupancy, so it rewards somebody willing to work the calendar.

Nothing else in the county comes close to Downtown for sheer volume of listings, and I'd expected that to show up in the money, yet it lands mid-table, with a median rate of $231 and a typical listing of two bedrooms. Pile that much supply into one place and the address stops setting you apart, so you end up competing on the listing itself. North Central is the reverse trade, with the fullest calendar in the table sitting on the cheapest rate of the fifteen.

Broad Ripple and Irvington, two of the city's better-known neighborhoods, both have enough listings to measure, yet both land outside the top fifteen. My read is that both earn less than their reputations promise, the usual fate of a neighborhood famous for a night out rather than a night in. None of that tells you what living beside either one feels like, which is the question the best Indianapolis neighborhoods for Airbnb picks up.

The Rest of the Indianapolis Market

Beyond the county line this market stops being a city and becomes a string of separate towns, so here are the fourteen of them carrying the most listings.

Rank	City or town	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Westfield	$38,140	$377	27%	$48,568
2	Greenwood	$26,605	$287	32%	$29,995
3	Greencastle	$25,864	$252	31%	$37,163
4	Carmel	$24,462	$300	26%	$40,980
5	West Lafayette	$23,815	$280	30%	$36,909
6	Whitestown	$23,217	$191	31%	$29,950
7	Noblesville	$23,124	$227	31%	$31,090
8	Fishers	$22,531	$231	32%	$34,826
9	Lafayette	$20,261	$192	32%	$25,346
10	Muncie	$18,094	$170	31%	$24,044
11	Kokomo	$16,844	$163	29%	$20,516
12	Richmond	$15,998	$141	30%	$21,771
13	Terre Haute	$14,986	$133	30%	$19,659
14	New Castle	$14,398	$142	27%	$18,107

BNBCalc 2026 listing data inside US Census place boundaries, trailing twelve months, covering the fourteen places outside Marion County with the most listings. Columns are medians apart from the 75th percentile, each calculated on its own.

The Hamilton County suburbs north of the city take four of the top eight rows, and Westfield and Carmel get there on price rather than bookings. Westfield charges the highest median rate in the table on one of its emptiest calendars, while Carmel has the emptiest calendar of any row and the second-highest rate. Before you read Westfield's lead as a better location, look at what's being sold, because its typical listing runs to three bedrooms where Carmel's runs to two, and I'd put much of that gap down to square footage.

Greencastle is the row that ought to make you look twice, because a Putnam County college town out-earns Carmel on median revenue with the same two-bedroom typical listing. DePauw University sits in the middle of it, and university towns bring a calendar that repeats every year whether or not anybody is racing.

Purdue does the same for West Lafayette, which clears Lafayette next door by a wide margin. Down at the bottom, Terre Haute sits second from last on revenue and last on rate, with Muncie a few rows above it on both, and while those are real markets with real demand, their numbers only work if the purchase price is low to match.

So if I were buying outside Marion County, I'd split the decision by house size. For a bigger house, Westfield and Carmel are where the nightly rates are, as long as you can live with emptier calendars. For anything smaller, look at Greencastle first, since its median listing out-earns every suburb in the table except Westfield and Greenwood, and West Lafayette lands mid-pack among them.

The biggest difference from the city, though, is legal. Chapter 852 stops at the edge of the consolidated city, so every town in that second table writes its own terms, and since each county sets its own innkeeper's tax, the 17% figure stops at the county line too. Indiana's statute puts a ceiling on those terms, because a town may regulate short-term rentals only for listed purposes, can't charge more than $150 for a permit and can't bar owners from renting out their own homes anywhere people are allowed to live. That ceiling only binds a town that hadn't already regulated short-term rentals before January 1, 2018, though, so find out when a town first wrote its rules before you assume the state's limits protect you there. BNBCalc has a guide for Carmel, so anyone shortlisting it should read BNBCalc's Carmel short-term rental guide first.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Indianapolis?

Whichever town you settle on, a handful of features inside the walls move revenue more than the others do, and pooled across the market, the amenity model BNBCalc runs today ties a hot tub to about 20% more revenue on an Indianapolis listing.

Break it out by bedroom count, though, and it gets more useful. A hot tub is worth about 29% on a one-bedroom, about 25% on a two-bedroom and about 20% on a three-bedroom, so its pull fades as the house grows. By four-plus bedrooms the hot tub has stopped leading altogether, and a pool takes over at about 21%. That makes sense to me once you picture who rents a five-bedroom house here: a group, in summer, at the top of the season. Buying big? That's where I'd put the money.

Ten others register strongly enough that the model tracks them across the market as a whole: a sauna, a barbecue, bicycles, an EV charger, lake access, a gym, a TV, internet, a pool and allowing pets. BNBCalc Markets carries their Indianapolis figures.

Cleaning fees are the other line to think through before you set a price. As of September 2026, roughly 42% of Indianapolis listings charged one, and those that did averaged about $111. Averaged over every listing in the market, cleaning brought in around $1,410 across the year, and since that money goes straight back into paying for the turnover, the fee is cost recovery.

Is Airbnb Legal in Indianapolis?

Yes, and unusually for a big American city, nobody is going to ask whether you live in the house or apartment you rent out. That surprised me enough that I read the ordinance twice.

The rule that governs you is Chapter 852 of the Revised Code, adopted as General Ordinance 25 of 2024 and in force since January 1, 2025. Under it, every short-term rental unit inside the consolidated city needs its own permit from the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, the permit runs out a year after it's issued, and you renew it each year.

The consolidated city is Marion County minus its excluded cities, and today those are Lawrence, Beech Grove, Southport and Speedway, which sit inside the county but outside the city and write their own rules. Cumberland is inside the city today and joins them on January 1, 2027, when a change to Indiana's code takes effect. Check the town before the street, then, since a mailing address that says Indianapolis doesn't settle it.

As for what counts as a short-term rental, Indiana's code defines one as renting a home, a unit inside one, or a condominium, cooperative or time-share unit for terms of under 30 days through a booking platform, and it sweeps in a detached guest house on a single-family lot.

One mismatch deserves a phone call before you pay anything. Chapter 852 permits each unit individually, whereas the state statute reads the other way, letting a city ask for just one permit per property an owner rents out and saying that permit then covers every unit and every detached outbuilding on it. If you're listing both halves of a duplex, ask the department which reading it applies rather than buying two permits on the assumption.

The money is small and it's front-loaded. You pay $150 for the initial permit, or for a replacement after one has been revoked, and state law both caps that figure at $150 and forbids the city from charging anything to renew. Once your application is complete, the city has 30 days to issue the permit.

Do budget for one wrinkle, though: as part of the annual registration an inspection may be required to confirm the unit is a safe, habitable, code-compliant dwelling, so an attic or basement conversion done without permits is the first thing to check before you apply.

I read all eight sections of Chapter 852 looking for the usual big-city conditions and found almost none of them. There's no cap on permits, no separation distance between rentals, no liability insurance minimum, no city-set guest limit, no 24-hour local contact rule and no development plan approval either. Nor does it require the owner to live in the home, as long as the rental is a house or a unit inside one.

What the city does ask for comes down to four things:

1. The unit has to be a legally built home that meets building code, either in a main building or in an accessory building that meets the zoning code's secondary dwelling unit standard. That standard allows one such unit per lot, caps it at 720 square feet and says the owner has to make the lot their permanent home, so if you rent out a backyard cottage or garage apartment, you live in the main house. It's the one kind of rental here where owner-occupancy applies.
2. It can't be a recreational vehicle, mobile home, travel trailer, car, shipping container or anything else nobody is meant to live in year-round.
3. Parking has to meet the zoning code sections the ordinance names.
4. So does any sign, which means that if you're adding a parking pad or putting a sign out front, you'll want to ask the city's planners which rule applies before you build it.

A second registration sits outside Chapter 852 altogether, and a busy calendar triggers it. The city's landlord registry, in Chapter 851, leaves a short-term rental alone only while it's booked in stays of under 30 nights and rented out no more than 180 days in a calendar year. Cross 180 rented days, or take a single booking of 30 nights or more, and the home counts as a rental unit, so you register it as a landlord too. That means naming a manager who lives in Indiana and an agent to receive legal notices, paying a $5 fee and renewing every year, and if you skip it, the city can fine you $500 once a warning and 30 days to fix it have passed. BNBCalc's strongest tier fills more than half its nights, so a home that performs like it and stays open all year is past that line.

Indiana's statute explains part of why the Chapter 852 list is so short. It lets a city require a permit only through an ordinance setting out the requirements of that state chapter and nothing more, and it lets a city regulate short-term rentals only for listed purposes such as fire and building safety, noise, nuisance and an emergency contact. That still left Indianapolis room to ask for a contact number, for one, and it chose not to. The same statute makes renting out your own home a permitted residential use in any district where people are allowed to live, and it separately lets a city demand a special exception, special use or variance on a house its owner doesn't occupy, provided the city doesn't wield that to block or unreasonably restrict the rental. Indianapolis never took the second option, which is exactly why an investor buying a house here faces the same single permit as an owner-occupier.

Enforcement can mean an inspection, citations or revocation. Three or more citations for ordinance violations at a permitted property inside one calendar year let the city revoke the permit for up to a year, after notice and a hearing, and you can reapply only after the related fines are paid. Selling the house doesn't pass the permit along either, so a buyer applies fresh and pays the $150 again. And if anything you told the city on the application changes, you have 30 business days to update it in writing.

The part that bites is what happens with no permit at all. Renting without a valid one is a Class C infraction, carrying a judgment of up to $500, and each booking you complete counts as its own separate violation, so a busy summer of weekends isn't a single $500 problem.

Plenty of owners still haven't caught up, though. The registry the city published on September 17, 2026 carried 1,112 issued permits, another 22 waiting on renewal and 481 that had already expired. Some of those lapsed because a home sold or its owner stopped hosting, and for anybody still renting, a lapse costs nothing to fix, because renewing is free. The issued count also sits well below the number of listings BNBCalc measures inside the consolidated city, even with Speedway and the other separate towns left out.

The other boundary to check is your homeowners association, because Indiana's statute leaves association and condominium rules untouched, and a recorded covenant against transient occupancy beats a city permit every time.

Tax is something your guest pays on top of your rate. In Marion County, Indiana's 7% state sales tax on accommodations rented for under 30 days and the county's 10% innkeeper's tax come to 17% on top of what you charge. Outside the county the 7% stays, but each county sets its own innkeeper's tax, so the total differs once you're shopping in Hamilton or Tippecanoe.

In Marion County the state collects both, and because Indiana law counts a booking platform as the seller on that transaction, Airbnb and Vrbo collect and hand over both taxes on the reservations they process. Take a booking directly, though, and that job comes back to you, which Indiana's own short-term rental chapter warns about in its text. Neither tax applies to a stay of 30 nights or more, yet a stay that long also puts the home on the landlord registry, so read the Indiana short-term rental tax guide before you set a monthly rate.

You'll find the application screens, the portal and the department's contacts in the Indianapolis short-term rental regulation guide.

Where Do These Indianapolis Airbnb Numbers Come From?

Those rules belong to that guide, while this article's numbers came out of BNBCalc Markets, where BNBCalc does its research on whole markets rather than single houses. Its seasonality view lays out how Indianapolis fills and prices month by month, and since the race weekends in late May and late July shape so much of the year here, I'd open that view first whenever I set a calendar.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for an Indianapolis Property?

Every figure so far describes a whole market at once, so what gets you from there to a number you can trust for one house?

Open the Indianapolis market page first, since it carries revenue, occupancy and seasonality and refreshes on its own cycle. If you're still choosing between Indiana cities, the best Indiana markets by gross yield sets Indianapolis against the rest of them. Then take one for-sale home, feed BNBCalc its asking price, your loan terms and what you expect to spend running it, and read what comes out.

Hold that answer against five Indianapolis realities before you believe it:

1. The address. Make sure the house sits inside the consolidated city rather than in Speedway, Lawrence, Beech Grove or Southport (or, from January 2027, Cumberland), then budget $150 per unit and the chance of an inspection, and if it's a backyard cottage, plan on living on the lot.
2. Winter. January fills 28% of its nights at $166, and I've yet to see a budget built on an annual average survive a month like that.
3. The 180-day line. Fill more than half the year's nights and the home goes on the landlord registry as well, which costs $5 but needs a manager who lives in Indiana.
4. The tax. In Marion County your guest sees 17% added to the rate and the cleaning fee, and it changes what they're willing to hand over.
5. The rate. I wouldn't underwrite another 16% rate year, since a jump like that arrives when a market is catching up with itself, and it doesn't repeat on schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Average Airbnb Income in Indianapolis?

On BNBCalc's September 2026 data, the median listing across the whole market took $22,730 over the latest twelve months, and the median listing inside Marion County took $23,275. A listing needs about $33,465 a year to reach the market's top quarter. Those are medians, which run below the market's average because a strong minority of listings pulls an average up. Homes of the same size land far apart, too, since at every bedroom count from studio to three, the gap between the weakest and strongest listings runs more than twice the step up to the next size.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in Indianapolis in 2026?

It can be, since the market has been absorbing new listings without choking on them. Measured over January to August 2026 against those same eight months in 2025, active supply rose about 6% market-wide, occupancy held roughly flat, and average nightly rates climbed about 16%. Indianapolis also sets no owner-occupancy rule for a house or a unit inside one, so an investor takes out the same $150 permit as a resident host. Whether a particular house pays you comes back to its purchase price and its running costs.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in Indianapolis?

July 2026 topped the year across all listings, at 51% occupancy and a $304 average nightly rate, and January sat at the bottom with 28% of its nights filled at $166. May is the one to watch, charging about $35 more a night than June even though June books more of its nights, which fits a month carried by a few very expensive dates. Across the year's pooled data, Saturday and Friday are the week's strongest nights.

Do You Need a Permit to Run an Airbnb in Indianapolis?

Yes, if the home is inside the consolidated city, which is Marion County minus Lawrence, Beech Grove, Southport and Speedway. Since January 1, 2025, Chapter 852 of the Revised Code has required an annual permit for each short-term rental unit there, issued by the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services. The initial permit costs $150, Indiana law bars any renewal fee, and the city has 30 days to issue a permit once an application is complete. An inspection may be required at annual registration, and the permit expires one year after it's issued. A home rented out more than 180 days in a calendar year also goes on the city's landlord registry, for a $5 fee.

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

Yes, as long as it's a house or a unit inside one, because Indianapolis sets no primary-residence condition on those, no cap on the number of permits and no separation distance between rentals, so a property you never live in takes the same permit as one you do. Indiana's statute lets a city demand a special exception or variance for a non-owner-occupied rental, and Indianapolis didn't take that option. The exception is a backyard cottage or garage apartment, which the zoning code allows only if the owner lives on the lot. Rent the home more than 180 days in a calendar year and it also needs a $5 landlord registration. Speedway, Lawrence, Beech Grove and Southport sit outside the city and set their own rules, as do the towns beyond Marion County, and a homeowners association covenant can still block you anywhere, because state law leaves association rules untouched.

Which Indianapolis Neighborhood Is Best for Short-Term Rentals?

It depends on the home. Near Southside and Fountain Square pair depth with price better than anywhere else in Marion County, at $28,813 and $26,613 in median annual revenue on nightly rates close to $300. Downtown holds the most listings and still lands mid-table at $25,120, while North Central has the fullest calendar in the top fifteen and the cheapest rate there. Every figure here is a 2026 median, drawn from BNBCalc listing data placed inside the official Indianapolis neighborhood boundaries.

How Much Is the Airbnb Tax in Indianapolis?

Guests on a short-term rental in Marion County pay 17% on top of the booking, which combines Indiana's 7% state sales tax on accommodations rented for under 30 days with Marion County's 10% innkeeper's tax. The Indiana Department of Revenue collects both. Because Indiana treats a booking platform as the retail merchant, Airbnb and Vrbo collect and remit both taxes on reservations they process, while a direct booking leaves that duty with the owner. Stays of 30 nights or more carry neither tax. Outside Marion County the 7% state tax still applies, but each county sets its own innkeeper's tax.

How Many Airbnbs Are There in Indianapolis?

The city's own registry held 1,112 issued short-term rental permits on September 17, 2026, plus 22 waiting on renewal. The Indianapolis market that BNBCalc tracks reaches well beyond the city, taking in Hamilton County's suburbs and towns as far out as Lafayette, Muncie and Terre Haute, and just under 57% of its listings sit inside Marion County. Supply across the whole market ran about 6% higher in January through August 2026 than over the same eight months of 2025. A large share of the listings are in professional hosts' hands, and the Indianapolis market page carries BNBCalc's current listing count.