Croatia Packs Five Times as Many Live Airbnbs per Resident as the U.S.
America has more live Airbnbs than any other country. Among nations of a million people or more, the one most crowded with them is Croatia, a small Adriatic country that ranks 16th by count.
The answer to how many Airbnb listings there are starts with a definition. About 4.9 million worldwide were live on Sept. 30, meaning open to book or booked in the prior 90 days, according to AirROI, a short-term-rental data firm. The U.S. held just over 1 million of them, one in five, in line with the roughly 982,000 counted a month earlier.
Croatia's 57,400 live listings work out to one for every 67 residents. The U.S. has about one for every 340, so Croatia packs in five times as many per person.
Airbnb gives a bigger number: the company says on its newsroom page, last updated in May, that it has 9M+ active listings worldwide.
The two numbers count different things. "We consider a listing of a home or an experience to be an active listing if it is viewable on Airbnb and has been previously booked at least once on Airbnb," Airbnb says in its annual report filed with the SEC on Feb. 12.
That definition doesn't require open dates, and it covers experiences too. Over the 12 months to Sept. 30, about 7.5 million listings appeared on Airbnb at some point, AirROI's data show.
Governments are starting to keep their own counts. Since May 20, new European Union rules have required registration numbers and monthly platform data on guest stays sent to public authorities, in the member states that apply them. Short-term rentals "now represent around one quarter of tourist accommodation offers" in the bloc, the European Commission said.
Those tallies matter to cities weighing caps and to residents fighting over rents. "Short-term rentals are a part of the problem in many cities," Dan Jørgensen, the EU's housing commissioner, said at a Sept. 9 news conference. George Mavros, Airbnb's head of EU government affairs, said the same day that affordability required a focus on "construction, renovation, and the homes standing empty across Europe today."
The live listings themselves are concentrated. Five countries, the U.S., France, Brazil, Italy and Spain, hold half of them, and the top 10 hold nearly two-thirds.
France is a distant second with about 581,000, and Brazil third, ahead of Italy, Spain and Britain.
Ranked by count, the table below reads like a list of big economies; the per-resident column reorders it, lifting Croatia, Greece, Portugal and Norway past countries many times their size.
| Country | Live listings | Per 1,000 residents | Entire homes |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 1,020,000 | 2.9 | 90% |
| France | 581,000 | 8.7 | 91% |
| Brazil | 381,000 | 1.8 | 89% |
| Italy | 273,000 | 4.6 | 87% |
| Spain | 214,000 | 4.5 | 91% |
| United Kingdom | 209,000 | 3.0 | 83% |
| Mexico | 171,000 | 1.3 | 80% |
| Canada | 114,000 | 2.8 | 85% |
| Germany | 110,000 | 1.3 | 85% |
| Australia | 103,000 | 3.8 | 90% |
| Greece | 83,200 | 8.4 | 93% |
| Portugal | 75,000 | 7.2 | 87% |
| Japan | 71,700 | 0.6 | 81% |
| Colombia | 69,800 | 1.3 | 83% |
| India | 62,100 | <0.1 | 73% |
| Croatia | 57,400 | 15.0 | 94% |
| Argentina | 57,300 | 1.2 | 93% |
| Philippines | 55,300 | 0.5 | 79% |
| Malaysia | 53,900 | 1.5 | 91% |
| Chile | 53,300 | 2.7 | 89% |
| Thailand | 50,700 | 0.7 | 77% |
| South Africa | 46,800 | 0.7 | 86% |
| South Korea | 42,500 | 0.8 | 72% |
| Norway | 40,300 | 7.1 | 92% |
| Indonesia | 39,000 | 0.1 | 76% |
France has about three times the U.S. density. Greece, Portugal and Norway follow, and the U.S. ranks 10th among the 25 countries with the most live listings, just ahead of Canada.
Some smaller places match or beat it: Malta and Montenegro rival Croatia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have about twice its density.
Croatia's largest clusters are on the coast, in Split and Dubrovnik, and nearly all its live listings are entire homes. The government wants to know exactly which ones.
In February the tourism minister, Tonči Glavina, said the country was "declaring war on illegal renting and unregistered activity," according to Croatia Week.
On June 27 his government approved a draft Hospitality Act that would require a registration number for every room, apartment and holiday home advertised on digital platforms. It still needs Parliament's approval.
An association of Croatia's family hosts rejects the premise that rentals drive the housing squeeze.
"Before introducing bans, it's necessary to quantify how many specific apartments will actually be returned to the market, because if that cannot be proven, then the housing crisis is not being solved, instead, people are being harmed and corporate investors in resorts are being directly favoured," Hana Matić, vice-president of the association, Save the Small Family Hosts, said in an appeal published in mid-September.
Among big cities, Paris stands out, with about 36,400 live listings, about four times New York City's 9,200.
More than half of New York's live listings take only stays of 28 nights or more. Short-term hosts there must register with the city under Local Law 18, and hosted stays are capped at two guests.
"Local Law 18 is achieving what it set out to do," Christian Klossner, who runs the city's Office of Special Enforcement, said in a statement as the office released its annual report on Sept. 1.
Mercedes Narcisse, a Brooklyn council member, wants to loosen it. "There are homeowners in my district with a spare room and a mortgage that keeps going up," she said in comments published by amNewYork on Sept. 30. Her bill, which would raise the guest limit to four, sits in the council's committee on housing and buildings.
Paris is pushing the other way. The city estimates it has about 25,000 illegal furnished tourist rentals, and after a court fined the company that owned one studio €110,000, a ruling the city learned of on Oct. 5, Jacques Baudrier, the deputy mayor for housing, said a home in Paris should house people, not feed tourist speculation.
Some owners are leaving. Anne-Hélène Gutierres Requenne put her one-bedroom near Montmartre up for sale in March after two years of listing it on Airbnb. "The legal framework is more and more cumbersome," she told Fortune.
Worldwide, nearly nine in ten live listings are entire homes, but the mix differs sharply by country.
Private rooms are about a quarter of live listings in India and South Korea and a fifth in Mexico and the Philippines. Britain, at 17%, sits well above the U.S. and France, at about 9% each. In Croatia it is 5%.
Among the countries readers most often look up, Melbourne and Sydney have the most live listings in Australia. Canada's largest concentrations are in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary, and Britain's in London, then Edinburgh.
Mexico City leads Mexico, with Playa del Carmen and Tulum behind it. Cape Town, with about 13,300 live listings, holds more than a quarter of South Africa's.
In South and Southeast Asia, listings run thin against population. Quezon City and Cebu City lead the Philippines. India's largest clusters are in Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi, and the country has fewer than one for every 10,000 residents.
Croatia's draft law is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2027, pending a vote in Parliament. From that day, every room, apartment and holiday home its hosts advertise online would need a number of its own.
About the data: Live means listed on Airbnb as of Sept. 30, 2026, and open to book or booked at least one night in the prior 90 days. U.S. means the 50 states and D.C. Population: UN World Population Prospects 2024.
Frequently Asked Questions
The 50 states and Washington, D.C., had just over 1 million live Airbnb listings at the end of September 2026, more than any other country. About nine in ten of them are entire homes rather than private rooms.
The U.S. has the most live Airbnb listings, followed by France with about 581,000 and then Brazil. Measured against population, Croatia leads among sizable countries, with one live listing for every 67 residents.
Australia had about 103,000 live Airbnb listings at the end of September 2026, fewer than Canada's 114,000. Melbourne and Sydney have the most, and per resident Australia has more live listings than the U.S. or Britain.
Airbnb's annual report treats a home or an experience as an active listing if it can be viewed on the site and has been booked at least once; it does not require open dates. A stricter count of listings open to book or booked in the prior 90 days comes to about 4.9 million.
