About £7,900 a year: the median active Bristol Airbnb grossed £7,854 in the 12 months to June 2026, and the median entire home £10,416, according to Inside Airbnb's June 2026 snapshot of 2,154 listings with at least one review in the past year. The median listing was booked about 60 nights, an occupancy of roughly 16% across the full year, at a median nightly price of £130.
The detail
The median hides a very wide spread. The bottom quarter of active entire homes grossed under £4,240 — mostly owners letting a flat while away — while the top quarter cleared £21,816 and the top tenth £38,448. 165 entire homes hit Inside Airbnb's 255-night ceiling, which is the profile of a full-time, professionally managed let. If you are underwriting a purchase, the upper-quartile figure is a more honest benchmark for a full-time operation than the median, which is dragged down by part-time hosts.
Size matters less than you would expect. The median one-bedroom entire home grossed £9,240, a two-bedroom £12,339 and a three-bedroom £13,240. Bristol demand is driven by the universities, the hospitals and weekend city breaks, which favour one- and two-bed flats rather than larger family houses. Supply clusters accordingly: the Ashley, Central, Clifton and Clifton Down wards hold 762 of the 2,154 active listings, about 35%.
England has no short-let licence or registration scheme in force yet, and Bristol does not cap nights, so the rules that bite are tax rules. Since the furnished holiday lettings regime was abolished in April 2025, mortgage interest gets only basic-rate relief, as for any rental. A let that is available 140 nights and actually let 70 nights in a year moves from council tax to business rates, where small business rate relief often brings the bill to nil.
The numbers that matter
Where this stops holding
These are gross figures before platform fees, cleaning, utilities, management and tax, and they come from Inside Airbnb's review-based model, which assumes a fixed review rate and caps any listing at 255 booked nights. That understates the best-run listings and overstates neglected ones. Treat the median as a market description, not a forecast for a specific flat.
Sources
- Inside Airbnb — Bristol data snapshot
- GOV.UK — business rates for self-catering and holiday let accommodation
- GOV.UK — abolition of the Furnished Holiday Lettings tax regime
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A HostPal Invest report runs the real occupancy, nightly rate, RevPAR, regulation risk and a buy / wait / avoid verdict for one specific property or drawn area, in any of 117 markets — not a national average. Street-Level reports from £29.