Methodology
The source
Inside Airbnb is an independent project that captures, city by city, the public content of rental listings and shares it under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (insideairbnb.com). The observatory uses the snapshots for Brussels (captured on 20 September 2026, 4,850 listings), Antwerp (23 September 2026, 2,463 listings) and Ghent (22 September 2026, 1,367 listings). These dates are those of the data, not of the publication of the pages. The observatory has no connection with Airbnb.
Scope: active entire homes
- Only entire homes are kept (flat or house rented in full). Private, shared and hotel rooms are counted in the stock but left out of the series.
- A home is active if it received at least one review in the twelve months before the snapshot and shows a nightly rate above zero and below €2,000. That last filter removes outlier rates.
- Areas are those supplied by Inside Airbnb: the 19 municipalities for Brussels, statistical neighbourhoods for Antwerp and Ghent.
Indicators
- Nightly rate: the rate shown on the listing at snapshot time, excluding cleaning and service fees.
- Nights booked per year: the Inside Airbnb estimate over the last 365 days, based on the number of reviews, an assumed review rate per stay and a typical stay length, capped at 255 nights. It underestimates homes whose guests leave few reviews.
- Gross annual revenue: the Inside Airbnb estimate over the last 365 days, i.e. nightly rate times estimated nights booked. It is a figure before platform fees, cleaning, laundry, energy, upkeep and any other cost.
- Median and quartiles: computed by linear interpolation between the two surrounding values. Median revenue is not median rate times median nights: each indicator is ranked separately.
Seasonality
Without a calendar of past bookings, seasonality is read through review dates: reviews are counted for each month over the last 24 full months (September 2024 to August 2026), the two years are added month by month, and each month is expressed as a share of the total. The index shown is that share times 12: 100 means an average month.
Publication thresholds
- A home size is only shown if it has at least 10 homes in the area concerned.
- An area is only ranked if it has at least 20 active homes (30 for the overall ranking); between 20 and 49 it is flagged “small sample”.
- Annual amounts are rounded to the nearest €100, nightly rates to the euro.
What the series do not measure
Homes rented outside the observed platform, bookings without a review, cancellations, negotiated discounts, the costs actually borne by the host. Cross categories (amenities, ratings, minimum stay, host size) describe associations within the stock, never cause and effect.
Reproducing the figures
The aggregated tables are published as CSV on the open data page. With the Inside Airbnb files of the same dates and the filters above, every median on the site can be recomputed.