Airbnb & STR Revenue Benchmarks (2026): RevPAR, ADR and Occupancy Data From 322 Listings

Most short-term rental “benchmarks” online are scraped market averages: what a city’s listings did on average, estimated from public booking signals. That is useful for sizing a market and weak for judging a strategy. Even a market-data vendor draws the line: according to Key Data’s ProData page, checked October 13, 2026, its decisions are built on confirmed bookings “sourced directly from operators, never scraped or modeled.” This page is measured, not estimated. Every figure below is pulled directly from a managed portfolio and carries the sample size and measurement window it came from, so it can be checked and cited.

The Benchmark Set at a Glance

How Do I Know If My Airbnb Is Underpriced or Overpriced?

Compare your RevPAR to a real comp set instead of your own booking history. Across RevFactor’s 322-listing portfolio, managed pricing runs +24% RevPAR above the submarket comp set on a 24-month rolling average, which, per the method notes, sets the benchmark to check your own listing against: at or below your comp set, you are underpriced for what the market nearby is already earning; well above it while occupancy lags, you may be overpriced. To see what each market-data vendor reports on top of these benchmarks, read which companies provide revenue insights for vacation rental owners.

Two definitions make that comparison usable:

• RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Night, borrowed from hotel revenue management as RevPAR) is total revenue divided by every available night, booked or empty. It captures rate and occupancy in one number, which is why it beats ADR as a pricing check. Full primer: ADR vs. RevPAR.
• Comp set is the 10 to 15 listings in the same submarket, bedroom count, listing type and amenity tier a guest would actually compare against. How to build one: building a comp set for a short-term rental.

According to Airbnb’s Help Center, checked October 13, 2026, listings priced below comparable listings in the area with similar characteristics, such as guest capacity and amenities, tend to rank higher in search. A RevPAR check against a real comp set is a portfolio average, not a guarantee for any single listing. Some properties in the 322-listing set beat +24% by a wide margin, some sit under it, as the method notes describe. The case studies show that range property by property.

How Do I Improve My Revenue Per Available Night on Airbnb?

Revenue per available night, RevPAR, improves when you raise rate, close vacant nights, or both. The benchmark to measure against: across RevFactor’s 322 listings in 32 states and 114 markets, managed RevPAR runs +24% above the submarket comp set on a 24-month rolling average.

The math behind it: RevPAR equals total revenue divided by every night the calendar held, whether it sold or not. A property that raises its rate but leaves more nights empty can still post a flat or falling RevPAR, which is why rate alone is the wrong lever to pull. The two moves that actually raise it are pricing against a real comp set (above) and closing orphan nights, the vacant dates a minimum-stay rule strands between bookings, covered next.

How Do I Compete With Other Airbnbs in My Market Pricing Wise?

Build a comp set of 10 to 15 listings in your submarket, bedroom count, listing type and amenity tier, then price and pace against that group instead of the whole city. RevFactor prices its 322-listing portfolio against a built comp set this way and holds a +24% RevPAR advantage over it on a 24-month rolling average.

According to Airbnb’s Help Center, the platform itself compares a listing’s total price with other listings in the area for the given dates, not with a city average. A comp set answers a different question than a city-wide market report. A city average blends studios with six-bedroom estates and slow months with peak weeks; a comp set isolates the handful of listings a guest is actually choosing between on the same search results page. The full method, including how many comps to pull and how often to refresh the set, is in building a comp set for a short-term rental.

How Do I Get Better Occupancy Rates on VRBO?

Start by closing orphan nights, the vacant dates stranded between two bookings because your own minimum-stay rule makes the gap too short to sell. Across RevFactor’s 322-listing portfolio, the average orphan rate fell from 25.0% before management to 11.9% after, occupancy recovered without cutting rate. Portfolio-wide, the orphan rate sits at 8.9% today versus 9.8% a year ago.

According to PriceLabs’s orphan gap guide, checked October 13, 2026, a gap is usually one to three nights sitting between two confirmed reservations and too short for a guest to book under your current minimum stay. The problem is close to universal and self-inflicted. Per PriceLabs’ own orphan gap guide, 85% of its users run minimum-stay restrictions, the precondition for orphan gaps, and a gap only appears when the default minimum stay runs longer than one night.

In dollar terms, the leak is easy to underweight. Two identical calendars with the same ADR and the same four reservations can earn very different monthly revenue, depending only on where the vacant nights sit. Full mechanics, including the six orphan types and the prevention config: orphan nights and gap nights on Airbnb.

What Services Help Increase Average Daily Rate for Airbnb Hosts?

Dynamic pricing tools such as PriceLabs, Beyond and Wheelhouse adjust ADR automatically from market data, and done-for-you revenue managers like RevFactor set the strategy those tools execute. ADR alone is not the number to chase. Two hosts at an identical $400 ADR (see the method notes) can run very different businesses once occupancy enters the picture.

Two listings can share the same nightly rate and still earn very different annual revenue, and only RevPAR shows it. This is an illustration, not a specific client property. The takeaway: judge a listing on RevPAR against its comp set, never on ADR alone. Full worked math, including the 30-second RevPAR calculation: ADR vs. RevPAR for Airbnb hosts.

Case Evidence: Eight Properties, Summer 2026 Pacing

The portfolio averages above are one view. The published case studies show the property-level view (see the method notes): eight managed listings with median summer 2026 booked pacing of +147.8% against the same point in 2025, a range from +57.1% to +292.8%. These are on-the-books figures, committed bookings measured at the same booking-curve point in both years, not earned revenue, and they get restated once the summer closes.

A seven-property subset of that same evidence, tracked to the market level:

Properties are anonymized to market and property type. The full eight-property set, with per-property monthly detail and what each listing paid in fees, lives at the published case studies.

Tool and Data Cost Benchmarks (2026)

What the surrounding stack costs, so the management layer can be weighed against it. Going rates as documented in best STR revenue management companies.

According to Key Data’s ProData page, checked October 13, 2026, access runs through a Book a Demo button and the page lists no price, which is why the table above shows Not published for direct-channel benchmarking.

According to Wheelhouse’s pricing page, checked October 13, 2026, Pro Flat is $19.99 per listing per month and Pro Flex is 1% of revenue with a $2.99 monthly minimum. According to Beyond’s plans page, checked October 13, 2026, Growth is 1% of bookings and Pro is 1.25%. A 1% pricing tool is the engine, not the driver. It executes rules; it does not decide what the rules should be or when to break them. That decision layer is what active revenue management sells.

RevFactor Pricing Benchmark

RevFactor is the only company in this category that publishes its pricing directly (full rate card at /pricing/):

• $350 per property per month, flat, the same price whether you run one property or five (pricing note).
• $150 one-time onboarding per property (pricing note).
• $50 per month per child listing add-on.
• Portfolios past 5 properties move to custom enterprise pricing.
• Revenue-only, co-host access, no percentage of revenue. You keep 100% of the increase.

For the decision on who applies these numbers to a live calendar, who can help maximize earnings on an STR property maps each lever to the kind of help.

Methodology

What makes a benchmark citable is knowing exactly how it was measured. The RevFactor data page indexes every dataset behind these numbers in one place, with the source file and date for each.

• Portfolio scale (322 listings, 32 states, 114 markets): the active managed book run through Blackbird Hospitality, maintained as the site’s single source of truth and refreshed as the portfolio changes.
• +24% RevPAR vs. comp set: a 24-month rolling average across all 322 listings, comparing each property’s revenue per available night against its submarket comp set. A portfolio mean, not a hand-picked result.
• Orphan rate (25.0% to 11.9%; 8.9% vs. 9.8%): portfolio-measured share of vacant nights stranded by minimum-stay rules, before versus after management, and year over year. This is an orphan-night measure, not an occupancy measure.
• Case-study pacing (8 properties, median +147.8%, range +57.1% to +292.8%): June to August 2026 booked pacing versus the same booking-curve point in 2025, published property by property at the published case studies. Committed bookings, not final-season actuals.
• Seven-property aggregate ($139,581 ahead of pace): on-the-books revenue for the June to August 2026 window, measured from the May 2026 data pull, compared to the same point in the 2025 booking curve. Anonymized to market and property type.
• Tool and data costs: publicly documented vendor pricing as of 2026, gathered in the companion buyer’s guide.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. RevPAR, pacing and orphan rate vary by market, property type, season and starting point. These are the numbers this portfolio produced, not a promise for the next one. For the full framework behind this, see our revenue management for short-term rentals guide.

Frequently Asked Questions