Night caps on short-term rentals by city

What the limits cover

Greater London allows a home to be used as temporary sleeping accommodation for up to 90 nights in a calendar year without the use counting as a material change of use under planning law, provided the person offering the stay is liable for council tax on the home¹.

Limits of this kind are set by cities, regions and national governments. Most apply to a whole home that is the host’s main residence, let while the host is away. Letting a room while the host stays at home is often treated separately, as in Paris, Berlin and Ireland, and second homes are often excluded or need a permit of their own²⁷⁹.

The figures below come from each authority’s own pages, laws or official gazettes, written in the unit the authority uses. Some count days and some count nights; Japan counts one night as one day¹⁶. The tables group the places into Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America, and a fourth table lists places that use minimum stays or licences instead of a yearly limit.

London

The 90-night rule is section 25A of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1973, inserted by section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015, which came into force on 26 May 2015¹.

Two conditions apply. The nights of short-term use in a calendar year, added to any earlier nights of such use that year, must not exceed ninety, and earlier nights count whoever let the home. For each night, the person providing the accommodation, or at least one of them, must be liable to pay council tax on the premises¹.

The local planning authority or the Secretary of State may direct that the exception does not apply to a particular home or area where that is necessary to protect the amenity of the locality. Section 44 sets no fine of its own. Outside the exception, the 1973 Act treats providing temporary sleeping accommodation in residential premises in Greater London as a material change of use¹.

Paris

Paris limits the letting of a main residence as a furnished tourist rental to 90 days a year. The limit took effect on 1 January 2025, replacing the 120 days allowed until then, under a law of 19 November 2024 that lets tourist municipalities tighten the rules³².

A main residence is a home occupied at least 8 months a year, with exceptions for work obligations, health reasons and force majeure. Every host must declare the rental, which produces a registration number at once, and the number must appear on every listing².

A second home cannot use the 90-day route; it needs a change-of-use authorisation, with compensation, before it can be registered. Letting a single room in one’s own main residence needs no prior authorisation or declaration, except for chambres d’hôtes².

The city lists fines of up to €10,000 per year of excess for letting a main residence beyond 90 days, up to €5,000 for failing to register, and up to €100,000 plus up to €1,000 a day per square metre for a second home let without change-of-use authorisation². In December 2024 the city said more than 95,000 furnished tourist rentals had been declared, 78,000 of them main residences³.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam allows a resident who lives at the address and is registered there to let the whole home to tourists for up to 30 nights per calendar year. In parts of Centrum and De Pijp the limit is 15 nights⁴.

The 15-night limit has applied since 1 April 2026 in eight neighbourhoods: Haarlemmerbuurt, Jordaan, Grachtengordel-West, Grachtengordel-Zuid, De Weteringschans, Burgwallen-Nieuwe Zijde, Nieuwmarkt/Lastage and Oude Pijp. A host there who had already let 15 nights or more between 1 January and 1 April 2026 may not let to tourists for the rest of 2026⁵. The areas were designated under article 3.7.3, fourth paragraph, of the Huisvestingsverordening Amsterdam 2024, the city’s housing ordinance²⁸.

Hosts need a registration number, which must appear in every advertisement and listing, and a holiday rental permit, which costs €76 and is valid until 1 April of the following calendar year. Every rental period must be reported to the city before the guests arrive, no more than 4 guests may stay at a time, and a new resident inherits any nights the previous resident used in the same calendar year⁴.

A holiday rental means the host is not there during the stay. Letting part of the home while staying there is a bed and breakfast, and one address cannot offer both²⁹.

For a private host’s first offence, the city’s fine list sets €2,500 for letting up to and including 5 extra nights and €5,000 for 5 or more extra nights, as the list words the bands. Failing to report a rental, letting without a permit and offering a home without a registration number cost €1,500 each⁶.

Berlin and Vienna

Berlin limits holiday letting of a second home (Nebenwohnung) to at most 90 days a year, as a rule, and only with a permit. A permit is normally not granted to an applicant who has another main or second residence in Berlin⁷.

A main residence may be let as a holiday flat during the owner’s absence with a permit, as long as it keeps its character as a main home. A room covering at most 49% of the home’s floor area can be let without a permit after a free prior notification⁷.

Berlin’s ban on the misuse of housing took effect on 1 May 2014. Since 1 August 2018 every offer and advertisement, especially on internet portals, must show a registration number⁷.

Vienna allows a flat to be let short term for up to 90 days per calendar year without a permit, where the stay is subject to the city’s tourist tax and the host does not give up the residence for good. The city describes this as home sharing for extra income. Legal persons cannot use the 90-day exemption because they have no residence⁸.

Since 1 July 2024, flats outside the city’s residential zones (Wohnzonen) have also needed an exception permit under section 129(1a) of the Vienna building code to be let short term beyond 90 days a year. The permit runs for at most 5 years, is not available inside a residential zone, and requires that no more than 50% of the units in the building are used commercially for short stays⁸.

Dublin and Ireland

Irish planning rules let a host use a house that is their principal private residence, the house where they ordinarily reside, for short-term letting without planning permission as long as the house is let short term on no more than 90 days in aggregate during a year. The exemption came into operation on 1 July 2019 and at first applied only in rent pressure zones⁹.

An amendment signed on 4 April 2026, S.I. No. 130 of 2026, deleted the references to rent pressure zones, so the exemption applies nationwide¹⁰.

The host must notify the planning authority in writing at least 2 weeks before letting starts and file a start-of-year form within 4 weeks of the start of each year. A further form is due 2 weeks after the 90th day of letting, and an end-of-year form within 4 weeks after the year ends, each with a statutory declaration. Letting up to 4 bedrooms in the home, with no more than 4 people per bedroom, is a separate exemption with no day limit in the regulation⁹.

A national register is planned. The government published the Short Term Letting and Tourism Bill on 6 October 2026 and said the register will open on 1 December, covering stays of up to 21 nights. Hosts will need a registration number on every advertisement and listing and must confirm they are planning compliant to register; online platforms face financial sanctions of up to 2% of annual worldwide turnover for serious breaches. On that date it was a Bill, not law¹¹.

Copenhagen and Denmark

Danish law limits owners and users to letting their whole year-round home for holiday purposes on at most 30 days per calendar year. The limit rises to 70 days when the letting is handled only by a business that reports the rental income under section 43 of the Danish tax reporting act. If rooms in the home are also let that year, they must go through such a business as well, or the 30-day limit applies¹².

A municipal council may raise the 70-day limit to up to 100 days per calendar year and must publish that decision on its website¹². On 21 May 2026 Copenhagen’s city council rejected a motion to raise its limit from 70 to 100 days, by 50 votes to 3¹⁴.

The limits sit in sections 5 and 6 of the act known as sommerhusloven. A 70-day limit first came in with amending act no. 368 of 9 April 2019, in force from 1 May 2019¹³.

Japan and Kyoto

Japan’s Private Lodging Business Act (Act No. 65 of 2017) allows a registered home to take guests on no more than 180 days a year. The year runs from noon on 1 April to noon on 1 April of the next year, and each night counts as one day¹⁶¹⁵.

The registration system has applied since June 2018. Local ordinances may limit when and where homes operate, and the act also regulates outsourcing to a manager when the host is absent. Hotels and inns licensed under the Inns and Hotels Act face no limit on operating days¹⁵.

Operators report to the prefectural governor every two months, by the 15th of February, April, June, August, October and December, giving the days with guests and the number of guests, with a breakdown by nationality¹⁶.

Kyoto adds a season. In exclusive residential zones, homes where the host does not live on site may operate only from noon on 15 January to noon on 16 March, with an exception for traditional Kyoto townhouses (kyomachiya)¹⁷.

A draft put to the city’s review meeting on private lodging in fiscal 2026 proposes a so-called zero-day rule in exclusive residential zones and industrial zones, whether or not the host lives on site, which would not apply to existing facilities. The city plans to propose an ordinance amendment at a February session of the city assembly. Kyoto counted 1,216 registered private lodging facilities at the end of March 2026¹⁷.

Sydney and New South Wales

In Greater Sydney, non-hosted short-term rental accommodation is limited to a maximum of 180 days a year. The same limit applies in the Ballina area and on certain land in Clarence Valley and Muswellbrook¹⁸.

The days are counted within a registration annual period, the 12 months from the property’s first registration on the state’s short-term rental accommodation register. Every short-term rental property must be on the register, which costs $65 to join and $25 a year to renew¹⁸.

Most of Byron Shire has had a 60-day limit for non-hosted letting since 23 September 2024, except two mapped precincts near Byron Bay town centre and Brunswick Heads where 365 days are allowed. The rules sit in the State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing) 2021, and the planning framework came into effect on 1 November 2021. The department’s page gives no penalty amounts¹⁸.

Toronto

Toronto defines a short-term rental as all or part of a home rented for less than 28 consecutive days and permits short-term rentals only in principal residences. Operators registered for entire-unit rentals may rent the property for a maximum of 180 nights per calendar year²⁰.

Operators must register with the city, pay a registration fee of $390 and post the city-issued registration number on every advertisement and listing. The bylaw is Chapter 547, Licensing and Registration of Short-term Rentals, and its amendments came into effect in three phases on 30 June 2024, 30 September 2024 and 1 January 2025²⁰.

An operator summoned to court and convicted may be fined up to $100,000, or up to $10,000 for each day a violation continues²⁰.

San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, DC

San Francisco allows a host to rent their residential unit for up to 90 un-hosted nights within a calendar year. A stay is hosted when the host is in the unit overnight with the guest. To host at all, the host must spend at least 275 nights a calendar year in the unit²¹.

The rules are in Chapter 41A of the San Francisco Administrative Code. Hosts have been able to register since February 2015, the application fee is $925, and a notice of violation can carry penalties of $484 per day per residential unit²¹.

Los Angeles lets a registered host share all or part of their primary residence, where they live for more than six months of the year, for up to 120 days in the calendar year. A host who has held a regular registration for at least six months, or has hosted for at least 60 days, can apply for an extended registration that allows more than 120 days. The registration number must appear on all advertisements and listings²².

Washington, DC limits vacation rentals, where the host is away, to 90 nights in total in any calendar year. Stays with the host present have no annual limit, and every stay is limited to 30 or fewer continuous nights. A primary residence is a property for which the owner is eligible for the homestead tax deduction, and the rules come from the Short-Term Rental Regulation Act of 2018²³.

Places that use minimum stays or licences instead

New York City has no yearly night limit. Hosts may not rent out an entire apartment or home for fewer than 30 days, short-term rentals are legal only when the host lives in the same unit with the guests, and there is a limit of two guests, not counting children under the age of 4²⁵.

Local Law 18, adopted on 9 January 2022, requires hosts to register with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement and bars booking platforms from processing transactions for unregistered short-term rentals. The office’s first phase of enforcement began on 5 September 2023. Rentals of 30 consecutive days or more are exempt from registration²⁴.

Singapore treats a stay of less than three consecutive months in a residential property as short-term accommodation, which is illegal under the Planning Act. The Urban Redevelopment Authority says an individual found guilty “will minimally face a fine of up to $5,000”, and that repeat or multi-property offenders are taken to court¹⁹.

Barcelona works through licences. On 21 June 2024 the city council said it would fully apply Decree-Law 3/2023, under which existing tourist-flat permits expire within four years and no new ones are issued, so that the city’s ten thousand holiday flats become homes by November 2028²⁶.

Why the limits count nights and how they are enforced

Most limits are written in nights or days because they rest on a definition of residence or of change of use. London’s limit is an exception to planning law: within it, letting a home is not a material change of use¹. Paris defines a main residence as a home occupied at least 8 months a year². San Francisco requires a host to spend at least 275 nights a calendar year in the unit²¹, Los Angeles defines a primary residence as the home where the host lives for more than six months of the year²², and Ireland uses the house in which the host ordinarily resides⁹.

Counting rules differ. Japan counts days with guests, with each night counted as one day, over a year that starts at noon on 1 April¹⁶. New South Wales counts within the 12 months from a property’s first registration¹⁸. London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Denmark, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, DC count by calendar year^{1481220212223}.

How the limits are enforced

Registration numbers are the common tool. Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Toronto and Los Angeles require the number in listings^2472022, New South Wales requires every property to be on its register¹⁸, and New York City bars platforms from processing transactions for unregistered rentals²⁴.

Several places count the nights through reports. Amsterdam hosts report each rental period before guests arrive⁴, Irish hosts file a form after the 90th day and another at the end of the year⁹, and Japanese operators report the days with guests every two months¹⁶. Denmark ties its 70-day limit to letting through a business that reports the rental income for tax purposes¹², and its 2019 amending act lets the authorities obtain a home’s total utility consumption over a period of at least 1 month and visit households, up to the door, when investigating a suspected breach¹³.

Platforms carry part of the load. Amsterdam fines a platform €5,000 per violation for publishing holiday-rental advertisements without a registration number, or for not blocking advertisements after an instruction from the city⁶.

Across the European Union, Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 of 11 April 2024 has applied since 20 May 2026⁷¹¹. Under the text the European Parliament adopted at first reading, platforms must make sure hosts give a registration number before a listing goes live where a registration procedure applies, show the number in the listing and make reasonable efforts to check numbers at random²⁷.

For units in areas a member state has listed, platforms must send that state’s single digital entry point activity data per unit every month: the number of nights rented and the number of guests per night with each guest’s country of residence, together with the registration number, the address and the listing URL. Small or micro platforms that did not reach a monthly average of 4,250 listings in the previous quarter report at the end of each quarter instead²⁷. Berlin’s Senate administration says the technical implementation is still being tested and that no registration numbers are currently being issued under it⁷.

Common questions

Sources

1. UK Government (legislation.gov.uk), Deregulation Act 2015, section 44: Short-term use of London accommodation (2015-05-26). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
2. Ville de Paris, La location meublée touristique : les règles à suivre (2026-03-25). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
3. Ville de Paris, Location limitée à 90 jours : Paris serre la vis sur les meublés touristiques (2024-12-19). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
4. City of Amsterdam, Apply for a holiday rental permit. Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
5. Gemeente Amsterdam, Regels vakantieverhuur deel Centrum en Pijp. Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
6. Gemeente Amsterdam, Boetes voor overtredingen van de woonregels. Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
7. Land Berlin (berlin.de), Zweckentfremdungsverbot. Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
8. Stadt Wien, Ausnahmebewilligung für Kurzzeitvermietung nach §129 Abs. 1a, Antrag. Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
9. Irish Statute Book, S.I. No. 235/2019, Planning and Development Act 2000 (Exempted Development) (No. 2) Regulations 2019 (2019-05-30). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
10. Irish Statute Book, S.I. No. 130/2026, Planning and Development (Short Term Letting - Planning and Development Act 2000) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (2026-04-04). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
11. Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (Ireland), Government publishes Short Term Letting and Tourism Bill (2026-10-06). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
12. Retsinformation (Denmark), Sommerhusloven, LBK nr 400 af 12/04/2024 (2024-04-12). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
13. Retsinformation (Denmark), Lov nr 368 af 9. april 2019, udlejning af egen fulde helårsbolig til ferie- og fritidsformål m.v. (2019-04-09). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
14. Københavns Kommune, Borgerrepræsentationen, møde 21.05.2026, referat: Medlemsforslag om ændring af regler for korttidsudlejning (2026-05-21). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
15. Japan Tourism Agency (MLIT), What is Private Lodging. Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
16. Japan Tourism Agency (MLIT), Private lodging FAQ (English). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
17. Kyoto City, 地域の実情を踏まえた民泊規制強化策（素案）, document 2, second review meeting on private lodging, fiscal 2026. Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
18. NSW Government (planning.nsw.gov.au), Short-term rental accommodation (2025-02-10). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
19. Urban Redevelopment Authority (Singapore), Short-term accommodation (2026-06-15). Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
20. City of Toronto, Short-Term Rental Operators/Hosts (2026-09-16). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
21. San Francisco Planning, FAQs on Short-Term Rentals. Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
22. Los Angeles City Planning, Home-Sharing. Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
23. DC Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, Short-term rentals. Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
24. NYC Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, Short-Term Rental Registration. Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
25. NYC Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, What is Local Law 18. Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
26. Barcelona City Council (Info Barcelona), Barcelona will not renew holiday flat permits (2024-06-21). Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
27. Council of the European Union, Regulation on data collection and sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services, outcome of the European Parliament's first reading (ST 7093/24) (2024-03-04). Primary source, read 2026-10-09.
28. Gemeente Amsterdam (Gemeenteblad), Kennisgeving Ontwerp-aanwijzingsbesluit 15-nachtencriterium vakantieverhuur Amsterdam 2026, Gemeenteblad 2026, 622 (2026-01-05). Primary source, read 2026-10-08.
29. City of Amsterdam, Holiday rentals. Primary source, read 2026-10-08.