Can you still make money with Airbnb in Copenhagen?

See what went wrong for property buyers in Copenhagen

Can you still legally Airbnb your home in Copenhagen?

Yes. Copenhagen residents can still legally make money on Airbnb today, but whole-home rentals are generally capped at 70 days a year when bookings go through a platform that reports the income to Danish authorities.

That 70-day ceiling applies to the resident's own full-year home. If the rental happens without a qualifying reporting platform, the limit is normally 30 days. Danish law allows municipalities to raise the platform-based ceiling to 100 days, but Copenhagen has chosen to keep it at 70.

The distinction matters more than it sounds. Someone renting their Copenhagen apartment while travelling for six or eight weeks is operating squarely within the model lawmakers intended. Someone buying a residential apartment and planning to fill it with tourists most of the year has a completely different legal problem.

Private rules can also be tougher than Copenhagen's public limit. The municipality tells residents to check their lease, condominium association or cooperative-housing statutes because these can restrict short-term letting further. A theoretical 70-day allowance therefore does not guarantee that every Copenhagen apartment can actually be Airbnb'd for 70 days.

Copenhagen whole-home setup	Public annual limit	Main condition	Could the building impose less?
Reporting platform such as Airbnb	70 days	Own full-year home	Yes
Direct/non-reporting rental	30 days	Own full-year home	Yes
Maximum allowed if municipality changes policy	100 days	Municipal approval	Yes
Copenhagen currently	70 days	Existing city policy	Yes

Why are people questioning Copenhagen Airbnb profits now?

Copenhagen Airbnb is being questioned today because enforcement is getting tougher while the city has explicitly refused to give ordinary hosts more rental days.

Copenhagen has spent the past few years pushing for better oversight of short-term rentals, especially where residential apartments appear to operate more like permanent tourist accommodation. The problem for the city has been surprisingly basic: authorities have not always had enough booking-level data to identify homes systematically exceeding the legal limit.

That is starting to change. A national political agreement announced in 2026 proposed higher fines, stronger access to platform information and new ways to force illegal listings off platforms. European short-term-rental rules are also moving toward more standardized registration and data sharing.

At the same time, Copenhagen was given an obvious opportunity to liberalize the market. A proposal asked the city to raise its whole-home limit from 70 to 100 days. The City Council rejected it by 50 votes to three.

That vote tells us more about Copenhagen's direction than vague speculation about a future Airbnb crackdown. Legal home-sharing still has political space. Expanding it into a more intensive business model clearly does not have much support right now.

Is there still enough demand for Airbnb in Copenhagen?

Yes. Copenhagen currently has plenty of tourist demand, so weak bookings are not what makes Airbnb economics difficult.

Wonderful Copenhagen reports 13.1 million overnight stays in Copenhagen in 2025. Tourism spending in the city was estimated at DKK 42.4 billion. The broader capital destination also continued to grow, helped especially by international visitors.

We see the same thing in aviation. Copenhagen Airport handled 32.4 million passengers in 2025, its highest annual figure on record. American tourism has also become particularly strong: Wonderful Copenhagen reported that US overnight stays jumped 17% year over year in the first quarter of 2025 after already reaching a record the previous year.

Demand has also become less concentrated in the obvious summer months. Wonderful Copenhagen has been actively pushing year-round tourism, and recent growth has increasingly come outside the traditional peak season. That gives residents more attractive dates to choose from when they only have a limited number of legal Airbnb nights.

So if a Copenhagen host struggles to make money, the first suspect should probably be the apartment, pricing, permissions or cost structure rather than a lack of visitors.

How much can a legal Copenhagen Airbnb actually make?

A normal Copenhagen resident can plausibly gross around DKK 40,000 to DKK 100,000 a year from whole-home Airbnb, depending mainly on how many of the 70 legal nights are actually sold and at what price.

AirDNA's latest Copenhagen data shows an average daily rate of about $208 across roughly 11,700 active short-term rentals. Airbtics has recently put the Copenhagen average in a broadly similar range once converted into euros and kroner. For a simple working estimate, around DKK 1,350 to DKK 1,450 per booked night is reasonable for citywide calculations, although individual apartments can sit far above or below that.

At DKK 1,400 per night, 30 booked nights produce about DKK 42,000. Fifty nights generate DKK 70,000. Filling all 70 available nights produces roughly DKK 98,000 before fees, cleaning and tax.

Those numbers are much more useful for a resident than the giant annual revenue estimates shown on some Airbnb analytics websites. A resident cannot simply keep selling nights once the legal whole-home allowance has been used.

Nights sold	Illustrative ADR	Gross Airbnb revenue	Percentage of 70-day limit used
30	DKK 1,400	DKK 42,000	43%
40	DKK 1,400	DKK 56,000	57%
50	DKK 1,400	DKK 70,000	71%
60	DKK 1,400	DKK 84,000	86%
70	DKK 1,400	DKK 98,000	100%

Why does AirDNA show Copenhagen hosts making much more than that?

AirDNA's current Copenhagen revenue figure is far too high to use as the expected income of a normal 70-day resident host because its dataset covers a much broader short-term-rental market.

The latest AirDNA dashboard shows roughly 11,700 active Copenhagen listings, 68% occupancy, an ADR around $208 and average annual revenue of $37,200. A 68% occupancy rate across a full year corresponds to roughly 248 occupied nights if availability were year-round.

An ordinary Copenhagen resident renting their entire home cannot legally reproduce anything close to 248 tourist nights under the standard 70-day regime.

The data therefore reflects a mix of very different inventory: rooms, professionally operated accommodation, serviced units, listings with different regulatory status, properties available for only parts of the year and potentially some listings whose compliance cannot be inferred from the dashboard itself.

The latest year-over-year movements make the mismatch particularly obvious. AirDNA currently shows active listings down about 51%, average annual revenue per active listing up 182%, ADR up only around 5% and RevPAR virtually flat. Revenue per listing did not suddenly triple because tourists started paying three times more. The composition of the listings being measured changed dramatically.

For us, the useful AirDNA signals are the nightly rate, demand and market depth. Its $37,200 annual revenue number belongs nowhere near a basic 70-day resident-host budget.

Do Copenhagen Airbnb hosts really need high occupancy?

No. A legal Copenhagen Airbnb host can make decent money without anything close to 70% full-year occupancy because only a limited number of whole-home nights can be sold anyway.

Imagine that a resident has 70 legal nights available but only wants to rent the apartment while travelling. Selling 50 of those nights means filling 71% of the allowance. That can generate around DKK 70,000 at our illustrative DKK 1,400 nightly rate.

The smart target is high occupancy during the dates the apartment is actually available. Annual occupancy across all 365 days tells us very little about the economics of that host.

Copenhagen's tourism calendar helps. Summer remains strong, while international visitors, conferences, events and growing winter tourism create useful demand outside July and August. A flexible resident can choose when to leave the apartment rather than accepting every low-value night.

Pricing discipline becomes unusually important when there are only 70 nights to monetize. Sacrificing DKK 300 on a night that could have sold for more stings a lot more under a hard annual cap.

Where in Copenhagen can Airbnb make the most money?

Indre By is still the obvious Copenhagen Airbnb hotspot, with Vesterbro and Nørrebro also carrying heavy short-term-rental activity, but central locations become much less impressive once we compare Airbnb income with the price of buying the apartment.

Copenhagen Municipality's own review found the highest short-term-rental intensity in Indre By. Vesterbro and Nørrebro also contained large numbers of advertised properties, while central Copenhagen generally showed heavier use.

For someone who already lives there, that is excellent. A resident in a well-located apartment can concentrate a limited number of Airbnb nights into periods when visitors are willing to pay strongly for walkability and proximity to Copenhagen's main attractions.

Buying that location specifically for Airbnb is another story. Boligsiden's latest Copenhagen Municipality asking-price data puts one-room owner-occupied apartments around DKK 75,000 per m², two-room units around DKK 77,600, three-room units above DKK 80,000 and larger apartments around DKK 83,600.

Central neighbourhoods can be considerably more expensive than those municipality-wide averages.

The same location advantage therefore works very differently depending on who owns the home. Existing residents get to monetize a scarce central asset. New investors have to purchase that scarcity first.

Does Danish tax still leave enough Airbnb profit?

Yes. Denmark's current tax treatment remains fairly generous for occasional Copenhagen Airbnb hosts, especially when the rental goes through a qualifying reporting platform.

The Danish Tax Agency currently gives qualifying short-term hosts a standard deduction of DKK 35,100 per home. Above that allowance, only 60% of the remaining rental income enters the taxable-income calculation because another 40% is excluded.

Take DKK 70,000 of Airbnb revenue from 50 nights. Subtract the DKK 35,100 allowance and DKK 34,900 remains. Only 60% of that, or about DKK 20,940, becomes taxable income under the standard method.

At DKK 98,000 of gross revenue from 70 nights, the corresponding taxable-income amount is around DKK 37,740.

That is taxable income rather than the final tax bill. The amount ultimately paid depends on the host's circumstances.

There is a trade-off. Hosts using the standard deduction cannot then separately deduct every electricity, heating, water and property expense against the same income. Even so, the structure keeps occasional home-sharing reasonably simple.

Gross rental revenue	Standard deduction	Amount remaining	Approx. amount entering taxable income
DKK 42,000	DKK 35,100	DKK 6,900	DKK 4,140
DKK 56,000	DKK 35,100	DKK 20,900	DKK 12,540
DKK 70,000	DKK 35,100	DKK 34,900	DKK 20,940
DKK 84,000	DKK 35,100	DKK 48,900	DKK 29,340
DKK 98,000	DKK 35,100	DKK 62,900	DKK 37,740

How much do Airbnb fees and management eat into Copenhagen profits?

Airbnb fees are manageable for a Copenhagen resident who self-manages, while full-service management can easily consume another DKK 10,000 to DKK 20,000 from a good 70-night year.

Airbnb currently uses different fee structures. Under its traditional split-fee model, most hosts pay around 3% and guests pay a separate service charge. Under its single-fee structure, the platform says most affected hosts pay roughly 15.5% from the host payout.

That difference is substantial. On DKK 98,000 of bookings, a 3% host charge costs around DKK 2,940. A 15.5% fee costs about DKK 15,190.

Professional management adds another layer. Copenhagen operators currently advertise fees in roughly the high teens to low twenties as a percentage of revenue or payout. Nordic Hosts, for example, advertises a 17% management fee including VAT on booking revenue, while Arnor advertises a 23% fee on the Airbnb payout. Cleaning, linen and some external expenses can sit outside those percentages.

A host paying a 15.5% Airbnb fee plus 17% management on DKK 98,000 of bookings would have roughly DKK 66,000 left before cleaning, other operating costs and tax.

Full-service management can still make perfect sense when the owner is abroad and the apartment would otherwise stay empty. Financially, though, self-management gives the Copenhagen resident a clear advantage.

DKK 98,000 annual bookings	Approx. amount left before tax and other costs	Revenue retained
3% Airbnb host fee	DKK 95,060	97%
15.5% Airbnb host fee	DKK 82,810	84.5%
15.5% Airbnb fee + 17% management	~DKK 66,150	~67.5%
Cleaning, linen and extra operating costs	Still to deduct	Varies

Can renters and cooperative owners make money on Airbnb in Copenhagen?

Sometimes, but renters and cooperative owners should treat permission as the first question because Copenhagen's 70-day public limit does not override the rules governing their particular home.

Copenhagen Municipality specifically warns tenants, condominium owners and cooperative-housing residents to check their contracts and association rules before listing.

Cooperative housing can be especially restrictive. ABF, Denmark's association for private cooperative-housing associations, explains that its standard statutes do not automatically allow short-term letting of the whole cooperative apartment or even an individual room. The association generally needs to have adopted rules permitting it.

Condominium owners face a somewhat different setup. Denmark's standard condominium-association guidance treats stays of up to 30 days as short-term letting. Under that standard framework, ordinary majority decisions cannot simply strip an owner below a baseline of four short-term lettings totalling 30 days, although the actual association statutes still need to be checked.

Tenants have less room to assume anything. Traditional subletting rights concern residential subletting and should not be read as an automatic licence to turn the apartment into tourist accommodation.

For these hosts, a spreadsheet projecting DKK 70,000 of annual revenue is pointless until the lease or association documents have been read.

Is renting out a room easier than Airbnbing the whole Copenhagen apartment?

Yes, room hosting can be more flexible than renting the entire Copenhagen home because the 70-day whole-home ceiling does not apply in exactly the same way, although room rental still has legal and building-level limits.

Denmark's Summer House Act treats short-term letting of the resident's full home separately from the letting of individual rooms. Someone who stays in the apartment and rents a spare bedroom therefore operates under a different structure from someone handing the entire property to tourists.

Economically, that can be useful. A room earns less per night, but the host may have far more usable dates and does not need to vacate their own home every time a guest arrives.

There is still no reason to assume unlimited commercial use. Danish authorities can treat sufficiently extensive holiday-room letting as professional activity requiring additional permission, and a condominium association, cooperative association or landlord may impose separate restrictions.

For someone with a genuinely spare room, though, the numbers can work surprisingly well because almost no additional property capital is required. It is one of the cleaner ways to make recurring Airbnb income in Copenhagen today.

Can you buy a Copenhagen apartment just to run it on Airbnb?

For a normal residential apartment, buying in Copenhagen specifically for Airbnb is currently a poor investment thesis.

The standard 70-day regime is built around someone's own full-year home. Copenhagen also has occupancy rules designed to keep relevant housing stock in residential use. Denmark treats more systematic commercial holiday letting separately and can require permission under the Summer House Act.

That creates an immediate problem for anyone browsing an apartment portal, looking at AirDNA's $37,200 annual revenue figure and calculating an Airbnb yield. Those two datasets describe incompatible assumptions.

A genuine hospitality property, serviced apartment operation or other properly authorized commercial accommodation may operate differently. But once we move into those categories, we are evaluating a hospitality business with different planning rules, safety requirements, taxes and operating costs.

For an ordinary residential buyer, we would assume a 70-night ceiling from day one and refuse to make the investment depend on anything beyond it.

Is Airbnb income high enough to justify Copenhagen apartment prices?

No. Copenhagen apartment prices are now so high that the legal Airbnb income from an ordinary whole-home host produces only around a 2% gross yield even before the major costs arrive.

Boligsiden's latest data shows asking prices of about DKK 77,574 per m² for a two-room apartment across Copenhagen Municipality. A hypothetical 60 m² unit at that level costs roughly DKK 4.65 million.

At DKK 1,400 per booked night, filling all 70 legal nights generates DKK 98,000. That equals around 2.1% of the purchase price in gross Airbnb revenue.

With a 15.5% Airbnb host fee, approximately DKK 82,800 remains, equivalent to about 1.8% of the property value. Add a 17% management fee and the figure falls to around DKK 66,000, or roughly 1.4%, before cleaning, tax, maintenance, mortgage interest, association charges and transaction costs.

The property-price backdrop has made that calculation worse. Boligsiden reported that Copenhagen apartment sale prices crossed DKK 70,000 per m² earlier in 2026 after rising 24.3% in a year. Its latest municipality data still shows the average sale price per square metre more than DKK 13,000 above the previous year's level.

There are early signs that the buying frenzy is calming: the average discount negotiated on Copenhagen apartments recently rose 61% year over year, to DKK 1,196 per m². That gives buyers slightly more negotiating power, but nowhere near enough to rescue a 70-night Airbnb yield.

Illustrative 60 m² Copenhagen apartment	Annual Airbnb amount	Yield on ~DKK 4.65m property
70 nights at DKK 1,400 gross	DKK 98,000	~2.1%
After illustrative 15.5% Airbnb fee	DKK 82,810	~1.8%
After Airbnb fee + 17% management	~DKK 66,150	~1.4%
After tax, cleaning, financing and maintenance	Lower again	Lower again

Could Copenhagen raise the Airbnb limit from 70 to 100 days?

Copenhagen could legally raise its Airbnb whole-home limit to 100 days, but the latest political evidence makes that look unlikely for now.

The financial difference would be meaningful. At DKK 1,400 per night, 70 fully booked nights generate around DKK 98,000. One hundred nights would generate DKK 140,000, adding DKK 42,000 of potential gross revenue.

That extra allowance would improve the economics considerably for residents who travel a lot. On our illustrative DKK 4.65 million apartment, maximum gross Airbnb revenue would rise from about 2.1% of the property value to roughly 3.0%.

Copenhagen has already been asked to make exactly that change. The City Council rejected the 100-day proposal by 50 votes to three.

With such a lopsided vote, building an investment case around future liberalization would be hard to defend. Seventy days is the number we would use today.

Will Copenhagen's Airbnb crackdown get much tougher?

Yes, Copenhagen Airbnb enforcement is likely to get tougher, although compliant residents can still keep using short-term rentals as intended.

The city has repeatedly argued that illegal short-term rentals are difficult to police without proper access to platform data. National lawmakers have now agreed on measures aimed at closing that gap, including stronger information access, larger penalties and easier removal of illegal listings.

The broader data environment is changing too. New European short-term-rental rules create a framework for registration systems and regular platform data sharing where national authorities implement them. Copenhagen has spent years asking for precisely this kind of visibility.

For anyone whose revenue requires quietly exceeding the legal number of nights, the risk calculation is getting worse. A host earning DKK 60,000 from 40 perfectly legal nights has little reason to panic. An operator modelling 150 or 200 whole-home nights in an ordinary residential apartment increasingly depends on enforcement failing.

Copenhagen also rejected the move from 70 to 100 days by 50 votes to three. Stronger enforcement combined with almost no appetite for a higher limit gives us a pretty clear policy direction.

Who can actually make good money with Airbnb in Copenhagen today?

Copenhagen Airbnb works best today for someone who already needs the home, travels regularly and can rent expensive dates without paying someone else too much to operate it.

Consider a Copenhagen homeowner who spends six weeks abroad each year. At DKK 1,400 a night, selling 40 of those nights produces around DKK 56,000 gross. The mortgage, association fee and property tax were already being paid because the person lives there. Airbnb is monetizing time when the home would otherwise earn zero.

A resident able to sell 60 nights reaches around DKK 84,000 before costs. That is serious household income for a few weeks of annual hosting, particularly with Denmark's short-term-rental tax deduction.

The economics become weaker as soon as extra capital has to be committed specifically for Airbnb. Buying a DKK 4-6 million apartment to capture less than DKK 100,000 of legally capped annual gross bookings leaves very little room for platform charges, financing, maintenance and operational mistakes.

Renters and cooperative owners sit somewhere in between. They may have little capital tied up and therefore excellent potential returns on the money actually invested, but only if their lease or association permits the activity.

Copenhagen Airbnb host	Economics today	Biggest advantage	Biggest constraint	Our view
Homeowner who travels often	Strong	Income from otherwise empty home	70-day limit	Attractive
Homeowner targeting peak dates	Strong	High revenue per available night	Requires flexibility	Attractive
Spare-room host	Potentially strong	More usable dates, little extra capital	Separate rules still apply	Attractive if permitted
Tenant	Potentially strong	Very little capital tied up	Lease restrictions	Check first
Cooperative owner	Potentially strong	Low incremental housing cost	Association rules	Check first
Resident using full-service management	Moderate	Easy to operate while away	Large fee drag	Convenience choice
Buyer purchasing mainly for Airbnb	Weak	Strong tourist demand	Price + 70-day ceiling	Usually unattractive

Can you still make money with Airbnb in Copenhagen?

Yes. You can still make good money with Airbnb in Copenhagen today if you are monetizing a home you already use, but buying a normal Copenhagen apartment primarily for Airbnb no longer makes much financial sense.

The resident-host numbers are genuinely attractive. Copenhagen has 13.1 million annual tourist overnight stays, airport traffic is at record levels, short-term-rental nightly rates remain around DKK 1,400 in our citywide working estimate, and Denmark still gives qualifying hosts a generous standard tax deduction. Selling 50 legal nights can bring in roughly DKK 70,000 gross. A host who fills the full 70-day allowance can approach DKK 100,000.

For someone who already pays for the apartment and would otherwise leave it empty, that is a good business.

The investment calculation looks much worse. Copenhagen two-room apartments are currently advertised around DKK 77,600 per m² on average. A representative 60 m² property therefore costs about DKK 4.65 million, while 70 fully booked Airbnb nights generate only around DKK 98,000 gross. That is barely 2.1% of the property's value before Airbnb fees, management, tax, cleaning, financing and maintenance.

Policy is also moving in the wrong direction for anyone hoping to stretch the model. Copenhagen rejected the move from 70 to 100 days by 50 votes to three, while Danish authorities are gaining better tools to find and punish systematic illegal short-term letting.

So the profitable Copenhagen Airbnb strategy these days is fairly narrow but still very real: live in a desirable home, rent it when you are genuinely away, choose your dates carefully and keep costs low. Trying to turn an ordinary Copenhagen apartment into a year-round tourist property asks the investment to do something the current rules were specifically designed to prevent.

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