How Much Can You Make on Airbnb? Real Income Data by Market in 2026

The national median short-term rental earned approximately $29,000 in gross annual revenue in 2025, based on StaySTRA data tracking 2,455 active U.S. markets. That is a real number, pulled from real data. It is also the single most misleading figure I could hand you if you are making a six-figure purchase decision.

Here is the thing the single-number headline never tells you: the distribution behind that median runs from under $12,000 per year in saturated urban submarkets to well above $130,000 in premium coastal destinations, and the spread within a single market can be just as wide. In Sedona, Arizona, the bottom-quartile listing earns $27,840 per year while the top-quartile listing in the same city earns $95,208. Same permit rules. Same guest pool. Completely different outcomes.

I have a small Pueblo pottery bowl on my desk here in Santa Fe that I bought at the market on the plaza back in 1994. I mention it because every time I sit down with a spreadsheet that is supposed to tell someone what a property is worth, I think about the artisan who made that bowl. She did not price it based on what the average piece of pottery sold for. She priced it based on what that specific piece was worth in that specific market. That is exactly the discipline STR investors need when they ask how much they can make on Airbnb. What I want to give you in this piece is the actual distribution, market type by market type, so you know what you are actually buying into before you sign anything.

What Gross Revenue Actually Means (and What It Does Not)

Before we get into the numbers by market type, let me spend a moment on definitions because this is where most STR income comparisons go sideways.

Gross revenue is the total amount guests pay before any deductions. It is the number platforms report, the number you see in listings, and the number most market data tools track (including StaySTRA). It is not what lands in your bank account. Think of it like the gross sales line on a small business income statement: the top number, before all the costs that actually determine whether the business is worth owning.

Operating expenses for a typical STR run 35-55% of gross revenue, depending on market, property size, management structure, and cleaning protocol. A property earning $60,000 gross might net $27,000 to $39,000 before debt service, depending on how it is managed. That net number is what determines whether the investment works, and it is what a DSCR lender will underwrite.

So when I give you these market comparisons, read them as gross revenue benchmarks. The question of whether a specific property’s gross revenue supports your debt is a separate calculation, and the right tool for that is the StaySTRA Analyzer, where you can run the numbers for any market you are considering before you commit to a purchase.

The National Baseline: What the Data Shows Across 2,455 Markets

StaySTRA tracks rolling revenue metrics across 2,455 U.S. short-term rental markets. The national distribution for 2025 looks like this:

The average ADR across these 2,455 markets is $237 per night. Average occupancy sits at 49.2% annually. Those two numbers together produce a monthly revenue figure that, across all property types and all market sizes, lands right around that $2,400 midpoint.

Now I want to be direct about something before we move on. That national distribution covers everything from a studio apartment in a secondary urban market to a six-bedroom oceanfront home. It includes markets with 50 active listings and markets with 5,000. When you are buying a 3-bedroom property in a demand-driven destination market, the relevant number is not the national median. The relevant number is the median for your specific market type, at your specific price point. That is what the section below addresses.

Revenue by Market Type: What Beach, Mountain, Urban, and Lake Markets Actually Produce

Market type is the single biggest variable in STR income. The same property, transplanted from a premium Gulf Coast barrier island to a mid-tier urban submarket, could earn three to four times less. Here is what StaySTRA data shows across market categories.

Beach Markets

Premium coastal markets produce the highest gross revenue of any STR category in the country. The Gulf Coast of Florida, the Hamptons, and the Oregon coast all cluster at the top of the national distribution. Here is what the data shows for representative beach markets:

What stands out here is that two very different paths produce high annual revenue. Anna Maria Island gets there with a combination of high ADR ($629) and exceptional occupancy (90%). The Hamptons (Water Mill) commands $1,320 ADR but books far less frequently (35% occupancy) because it prices primarily for peak summer. Either way, the annual gross revenue lands in the six-figure range for typical listings.

Don’t let the Hamptons numbers throw you off if that market isn’t on your radar. Beach markets at more accessible price points, like Cannon Beach, OR or Fort Walton Beach, FL, still produce $60,000 to $65,000 annually at median. That is a very different conversation than the national $29,000 average.

Want to see the projected revenue for your specific beach market target before you put in an offer? Run any market through the StaySTRA Analyzer and pull the current occupancy and ADR distribution for properties matching your target property size and type.

Mountain and Resort Markets

Mountain markets split into two distinct categories with different revenue profiles. Ski resorts with strong winter and shoulder-season demand (Vail, Aspen, Steamboat Springs) produce solid annual revenue but through a different mechanism: high ADR compensates for moderate occupancy. Adjacent nature-tourism markets like Sedona, AZ work differently, with year-round or dual-peak demand that produces more consistent monthly income.

Notice the occupancy rates here. Where the Gulf Coast sees 65-90% occupancy, mountain markets often sit in the 47-50% annual range. A ski resort at $563 ADR and 47% occupancy produces roughly the same annual revenue as a beach market at $350 ADR and 75% occupancy. Think of ADR and occupancy like the two legs of a stool: a market can be strong with either high ADR or high occupancy, but the best markets have both working in their favor.

Within mountain markets, the within-market spread is particularly wide. Sedona’s top-quartile listing earns $95,208 per year while its bottom-quartile earner takes in $27,840. Sedona has 1,805 active listings and a fairly permissive regulatory environment, which means supply pressure is real. Your positioning within the market, not just your choice of market, drives the outcome.

Lake Markets

Lake destination markets are a quietly strong category that tends to get overlooked in favor of the coastal story. They benefit from captive summer demand that is not easily replaced by hotels, relatively accessible property prices compared to prime coastal markets, and dual-season potential where winter ice fishing or fall foliage extends the revenue window.

Lake markets tend to cluster in the $45,000 to $65,000 annual revenue range for typical properties. That positions them above the national median but below the premium coastal ceiling. The entry price for lakefront property in markets like Crosslake, MN or Lake Geneva, WI is also considerably lower than Gulf Coast beach towns, which can improve the investment math substantially. For a prospective buyer weighing options, the real budget breakdown for buying an Airbnb puts these revenue differences in the context of what you actually need to put down and carry.

Urban Markets

Urban STRs get more coverage than their revenue numbers probably deserve. The story of the Airbnb host in a city apartment generates more press than the story of the beach house in the Florida Panhandle, but the data tells a different story about where investor returns actually come from.

Miami is the outlier in the urban category, benefiting from international demand and high ADR that most U.S. cities cannot replicate. For the other urban markets, the story is more modest: Austin, Denver, and Atlanta all cluster in the $27,000 to $33,000 annual range, close to or below the national median.

Urban markets do have real advantages. They deliver more consistent year-round demand than seasonal markets, higher liquidity when you go to sell, and typically lower vulnerability to a single demand driver drying up. But they also have a ceiling on ADR and significant supply competition. The regulatory risk in cities is higher: Austin is removing unlicensed listings from platforms as of July 2026. Miami and Denver have permit requirements that can affect your ability to operate. Always check permit status in urban markets before any offer.

For a full look at where state-level regulatory environments rank for investors, the best states to buy an Airbnb in 2026 analysis puts the revenue data alongside regulation and market depth scores.

What Separates Top-Quartile Earners From Median Performers

This section is probably the most useful part of this piece for someone who already owns or is actively shopping for their first STR.

I described the Sedona market spread earlier: top-quartile listings earn $95,208 per year while the median earns $54,852. The difference is $40,356 annually on properties that are subject to the same market conditions, the same permit rules, and the same guest pool. That 74% gap does not come from luck. It comes from a small number of decisions made well.

ADR Discipline Matters More Than Occupancy

The single biggest driver of above-median revenue is ADR, not occupancy. Hosts who chase occupancy by undercutting rates consistently land in the bottom half of the distribution. The top-performing listings in any market command a rate premium of 40-80% over the market median ADR, and they do it through professional photography, amenity differentiation (hot tub, pool, kayaks, dock access), and pricing tools that identify demand spikes before the market catches up.

In Sedona, the overall market ADR is $440. The pricing gap between the top and bottom performers within that same market shows up directly in the annual revenue spread. The pricing tools and platform optimization that produce that gap are learnable, but they take time to build into a listing. A new listing without that infrastructure typically starts at the median or below.

Occupancy Rate: The 53% Impact of Going From 49% to 75%

The national average occupancy is 49.2%. Top-performing markets and listings routinely run 65-90%. The gap between 49% and 75% occupancy, all else equal, is about a 53% increase in annual gross revenue. That is significant.

High occupancy does not happen by setting competitive rates and waiting. It comes from instant booking enabled, fast response rates (under one hour is the Airbnb algorithm threshold), a portfolio of verified five-star reviews, and minimum stay logic calibrated to demand patterns in your specific market. Sub-one-hour response time alone correlates with roughly 25% higher conversion across large operator portfolios. Enabling instant booking removes the friction that causes search ranking to fall.

Review Velocity and Listing Age

A listing with 100 five-star reviews commands a different position in Airbnb search results than a listing with 8 reviews at the same ADR. The platform’s algorithm heavily weights conversion rate and review velocity, which is why established listings consistently outperform new ones at the same pricing level. This is also why Year 1 income almost always understates what a property is capable of producing at maturity.

The Year 1 Reality: What to Expect Before Your Listing Matures

Stay with me here because this is the part that trips up first-time STR investors more than any other single factor.

In Year 1, your listing has no review history. The Airbnb algorithm has no conversion signal to reward. You are likely pricing conservatively to earn those initial bookings. The result: most new STR listings earn 25-35% less in Year 1 than the same listing earns in Year 2 and Year 3, once reviews accumulate and pricing gets calibrated to actual market demand.

This is not a flaw in your property or your market selection. It is the predictable ramp-up curve of any listing-dependent marketplace. Think of it like a new coffee shop in a neighborhood: the first six months are about building the operation and earning initial reviews. The real revenue picture does not stabilize until Month 12 to 18.

What this means practically: if you are modeling DSCR debt coverage against Year 1 income projections, your underwriting needs to account for the ramp-up discount. A market that supports $55,000 annually in a mature listing might produce $36,000 to $40,000 in Year 1. The math should work at the lower number, or you need more capital reserves going in.

By Year 2, most well-managed listings reach 85-90% of their mature revenue potential. By Year 3, a listing with consistent management, a growing review base, and optimized pricing typically runs at or above market-median performance. The investors who exit in Year 1 or early Year 2 almost always sell before the property has demonstrated what it can actually do.

Before you make any offer, the most useful thing you can do is see the actual projected revenue for the specific property you are evaluating. The StaySTRA Analyzer lets you see projected revenue for any market before you buy, with data on current ADR distributions, occupancy rate spreads, and seasonal patterns that let you stress-test your assumptions before closing.

How to Run the Numbers for Your Market

For a prospective buyer working through the market selection question, the data above translates into a simple screening framework that I have watched sharpen investment decisions for four decades.

First, identify your market type: beach, mountain, lake, or urban. Each has a revenue ceiling and a revenue floor that no amount of management can fully overcome. A well-run property in an inland secondary urban market will not outperform a median property in a premium coastal market, regardless of how well the listing is optimized.

Second, look at the within-market spread for your target area. A wide spread tells you there is a large performance gap driven by host behavior, not just market conditions. Sedona’s top quartile earns 74% more than its median. That wide spread is both an opportunity and a risk: you can work your way into the top quartile, but you might start closer to the bottom. A narrower spread suggests a more commoditized market with less room to differentiate.

Third, stress-test the numbers at Year 1 revenue levels, not Year 2 to 3 projections. Apply a 25-30% ramp-up discount to your projected annual gross revenue. If the investment works at the discounted number, you have a reasonable margin of safety. If it only works at the optimistic three-year projection, you are carrying more risk than the underwriting reflects.

Fourth, check what a property matching your specific purchase criteria is actually earning in that market right now. Market-level medians are starting points. The property you are buying may be above or below that median based on size, amenities, location within the market, and current listing quality.

For the step-by-step process of evaluating, financing, and closing on a short-term rental property, the complete guide to buying an Airbnb property walks through each phase with the same data discipline applied here.

We do our best to keep our data accurate and up to date, but markets move fast and we are only human. Always verify current figures directly with local sources before making investment decisions.