How much can you make on Airbnb in London?

Most answers to this question are a nightly rate multiplied by 365. In London that calculation is wrong before you start, because an entire home can only be let on a short-term basis for 90 nights a year without planning permission. Everything else follows from that one number.

This guide works through what a London property grosses, what comes off it, and what is left. Market benchmarks first, then a full worked example on a two-bedroom flat in Zone 2, priced line by line from named sources.

What the average London Airbnb earns

Two trackers, two very different answers.

AirDNA puts the average London listing at $20.8K in gross revenue over the trailing twelve months, at 58% occupancy and an average daily rate of $234, across 113,132 active listings (AirDNA, data to June 2026). Airbtics reports a median of £42,000 across 49,166 listings, at a £152 daily rate and 74% median occupancy (Airbtics, February 2025 to January 2026).

Those two figures are more than twice apart. The gap is methodology, not error: the trackers define an active listing differently, cover different windows, and one reports a mean where the other reports a median. Our occupancy guide sets out the difference in full.

One thing neither figure does is filter for compliance. Both describe a mixed pool of entire homes and private rooms, and neither is adjusted for London's 90-night cap on entire-home short lets. Use them for order of magnitude. Then do the arithmetic on your own property, which is what the rest of this guide does.

What drives the number: rate, occupancy and nights available

Three things multiply together to produce gross revenue: the nightly rate you can charge, the share of available nights that get booked, and the number of nights the property can legally be let in the first place.

Rate is set mostly by location, size and finish. How much a specific postcode moves it is a separate subject, covered in our guide to the best areas for Airbnb in London. Occupancy depends on demand, pricing and how tightly the calendar is run; the seasonal swings behind it sit in the occupancy guide linked above.

The third factor is where most online calculators quietly go wrong for London. They assume a property is available for something close to 365 nights. For a whole flat let short-term in Greater London, it is not.

The 90-night ceiling most calculators ignore

An entire home in Greater London can be let on a short-term basis for a maximum of 90 nights per calendar year without planning permission for a change of use. Past that point the property either sits empty or moves onto a letting model the rule does not cap. Our 90-day rule guide covers the mechanics, the exceptions and the penalties.

That changes the arithmetic completely. Using a benchmark daily rate of £237 for a managed two-bedroom London property (Houst, 8 June 2026):

£237 × 90 nights = £21,330

That is a ceiling, not an average and not a forecast. It uses an ADR from managed properties rather than the whole market, and it assumes all 90 nights are booked, which is optimistic. It is worth stating anyway, because a calculator that multiplies a daily rate by 365 and an occupancy percentage will hand you a number two to three times higher and never mention the cap at all. Plug your figures into one of those tools and the disappointment that follows has nothing to do with demand.

Gross vs net: what actually reaches your account

Gross revenue and net income are different numbers, and the distance between them is wider than most first-time hosts expect.

Airbnb's host fee. Most hosts are now on the single host-only structure at 15.5%, deducted from the payout before it reaches you (Airbnb Help Centre, 2026).

Cleaning between guests. This scales with the number of stays, not with revenue. A property let on short stays at a modest rate can carry more cleaning cost than one let on long stays at a high rate.

Linen, consumables and restocking. Recurring, and it scales with turnover the same way cleaning does. There is no reliable London-wide benchmark to quote, so treat it as a variable cost you size against your own stay length.

Management fees, where the property is managed. Staymo's commission starts from 12% for full-time management and 18% for part-time, calculated on gross booking revenue (Staymo pricing). Structures vary widely between providers, and so does what sits inside the percentage. Our guide to Airbnb management fees breaks down what is usually included and what gets billed separately.

Council Tax or business rates. A self-catering property in England moves onto business rates only if three conditions are met in the same 12 months: it was available for commercial letting for at least 140 nights, it was actually let for at least 70, and you intend to keep offering it for at least 140 nights over the following year (GOV.UK). Nights lost to repairs or site access do not count towards either threshold. Under the 90-night cap the 70-night test is reachable; whether the 140-night availability test is met depends on how open your calendar was, not on how many nights you sold.

Utilities, broadband and insurance. These vary too much by property and policy for a single London figure to be meaningful. Price them from your own bills rather than a market average.

Income tax. The Furnished Holiday Lettings regime, which previously gave short-let income favourable treatment, was abolished from 6 April 2025. Airbnb income is now taxed under standard property income rules. Our UK Airbnb tax guide has the detail.

Void periods and cancellations. Every occupancy figure quoted anywhere is an average. Individual months run above and below it, and a cancelled peak-season week is expensive in a year capped at 90 nights.

Worked example: a two-bedroom flat in Zone 2

Take a two-bedroom flat at the £237 managed benchmark rate (Houst, 8 June 2026), with an average stay of 5.8 nights for Greater London (AirROI, 2026). That works out at roughly 16 turnovers across a 90-night year.

Scenario A: short-let only, capped at 90 nights

Utilities, insurance, laundry, consumables and income tax all still come off that £14,424. Two things are already clear: it sits well below the £21,330 headline, and the flat has spent roughly nine months of the year earning nothing at all.

Scenario B: short-let for 90 nights, then mid-term for the rest of the year

The remaining 275 nights are around nine months. At a current furnished two-bedroom benchmark of £3,000 a month in Zone 2 (SabbaticalHomes, 2026 listings, not a London-wide average), that adds:

9 months × £3,000 = £27,000

Combined annual gross revenue: £21,330 + £27,000 = £48,330

For comparison, the average private rent for a two-bedroom property in Islington was £2,672 a month in June 2026 (ONS, 21 July 2026), which annualises to £32,064 in gross rent on a standard long-term tenancy.

Worth being direct about the result. The short-let-only scenario grosses less than a plain tenancy on the same flat. It is only once mid-term letting fills the rest of the calendar that the combined figure pulls ahead. This is an illustrative calculation built from named benchmarks, not a forecast for any specific property, and management fees apply to the mid-term portion too.

Airbnb income vs a long-term tenancy

Short letting on its own, capped at 90 nights, is not automatically the higher-earning option. The combination with mid-term letting is what changes the picture, and it brings costs and occupancy risk a fixed 12-month tenancy does not carry. If your priority is a predictable figure rather than the highest one, guaranteed rent is a different structure worth comparing before you commit either way.

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What happens after the 90 nights

Once the 90 nights are gone, an entire home has three options: sit empty, apply for planning permission for a change of use, or move to a letting model the cap does not touch. That last one is almost always mid-term rental, and in the worked example above it is what closed the gap to a long-term tenancy and then overtook it.

Mid-term stays run from one to six months, typically to relocating professionals, contractors and corporate tenants. Fewer turnovers, longer bookings, and no 90-night ceiling on any of it.

How income varies by property type and season

The most solid figure in this guide, the £237 managed ADR, applies to two-bedroom properties specifically. London-wide benchmarks for studios, one-beds and three-bed-plus properties individually were not available at the time of writing, and inventing them would defeat the point of the arithmetic above. As a general pattern, larger properties command higher nightly rates but face the same 90-night limit and the same fee structure, so the gap between gross and net tends to compress rather than widen as size increases.

Seasonality matters differently under a cap. The £21,330 ceiling assumes all 90 nights are booked, but nothing requires you to spread them evenly. Concentrating those nights in the strongest months and running mid-term through the quiet ones is a scheduling decision, and it is usually worth more than any single pricing tweak. Our article on maximising Airbnb income covers the rest of the levers.

Frequently asked questions

How much do Airbnb hosts make in London?

Trackers disagree considerably: AirDNA puts the average listing at $20.8K gross over twelve months, Airbtics at a £42,000 median, both before costs and neither adjusted for the 90-night cap. In the worked example above, a two-bedroom Zone 2 flat let for the full 90 nights grossed £21,330 and retained £14,424 after platform fee, cleaning and management, before utilities, insurance and tax.

Is Airbnb profitable in the UK?

It can be, but the gap between gross and net decides it, not the nightly rate. Airbnb's 15.5% host fee, cleaning that scales with turnover, management, insurance and income tax all come off the headline figure, and the Furnished Holiday Lettings tax advantages were withdrawn from 6 April 2025. In London, the 90-night cap on entire homes is the additional constraint that makes the letting model, rather than the property, the deciding factor.

Is Airbnb more profitable than renting long-term in London?

Not automatically. In the worked example, a two-bedroom flat let short-term for the maximum 90 nights grossed less than the same flat on a standard tenancy (£21,330 against £32,064). Adding mid-term letting for the remaining nine months pushed combined gross to £48,330, at the cost of more admin and less certainty.

How much can you make on Airbnb with the 90-night limit?

On a £237 managed two-bedroom benchmark rate, the arithmetic ceiling is £21,330 gross before Airbnb's fee, cleaning, management and tax. That assumes every one of the 90 nights is booked, which is a ceiling rather than a typical result.

How much does an Airbnb make a month in London?

No single monthly figure applies, because an entire home can only be let short-term for 90 nights across the whole year rather than a fixed number each month. What a property earns in an active month depends on the rate and occupancy achieved in that specific period, which is why hosts concentrate their permitted nights in the strongest months.

Do you pay tax on Airbnb income in the UK?

Yes. All letting income is declarable to HMRC, and since 1 January 2024 platforms report host earnings directly. The Furnished Holiday Lettings regime that previously gave short lets favourable treatment was abolished from 6 April 2025. Our UK Airbnb tax guide covers the current position; speak to an accountant about your own circumstances.

Where this leaves you as a London host

The honest answer to "how much can you make" is that it depends on the property, how it is priced and managed, and how the 90 permitted nights are placed across the calendar. Every figure here is a benchmark or an illustrative calculation from named sources. None of it is a promise about a specific flat.

What the arithmetic does show is that the 90-night rule is not a footnote. It is the single biggest reason a calculator multiplying a nightly rate by 365 will overstate London earnings, and the clearest argument for running short lets and mid-term letting as one strategy rather than choosing between them.

That is the part we manage for owners. Staymo runs more than 2,000 London properties at 85.3% average occupancy and has earned owners over £70M to date, moving properties between short-let and mid-term as the calendar demands. Your income, our growth. For a figure based on your actual property rather than market averages, the Staymo property calculator gives a personal estimate.

Disclaimer: This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Figures are illustrative, based on the named third-party sources and dates shown, and results vary considerably by property, location and management. Speak to a qualified accountant or financial adviser before making decisions about letting income or tax.