The Airbnb 90 day rule in London, explained

If you let your home as a short let in Greater London, you can do it for up to 90 nights per calendar year. Past that, you need planning permission. That is the 90 day rule in one sentence, and it is one of the most searched and most misunderstood pieces of short let law in the UK. It is not an Airbnb invention, it does not reset when you switch platforms, and going over it is a planning breach, not a terms of service problem.

What the rule actually says

In London, using a residential property as temporary sleeping accommodation counts as a material change of use, which normally needs planning permission. The Deregulation Act 2015 carved out an exception: no permission is needed as long as the property is short let for no more than 90 nights in a calendar year, and the person letting it is liable for council tax on it. That exception applies only in the London boroughs. It is why the cap exists in Camden and not in Cardiff or Manchester.

Two details in that sentence do the heavy lifting. The limit is per calendar year, so the counter resets on 1 January, not on the anniversary of your first booking. And it attaches to the property, not to the platform, the listing or the host.

How Airbnb enforces it

Airbnb enforces the rule automatically. Entire home listings in Greater London are capped at 90 booked nights per calendar year, and once you hit the cap the platform blocks further short stay bookings until January. The block lifts only if you confirm to Airbnb that you have planning permission, or that your situation is otherwise exempt, and you take responsibility for that declaration being true.

Here is the trap: the counter Airbnb runs only sees Airbnb. If you also take bookings on Booking.com, Vrbo or direct, those nights still count toward the same legal 90, but no platform adds them up for you. A host doing 60 nights on Airbnb and 60 on Booking.com is comfortably inside every platform's own limit and 30 nights over the law. Tracking the combined total across every channel is your job, and it is one of the easiest compliance jobs to get wrong by accident.

What counts toward the 90 nights

• Booked nights, across all platforms and direct bookings combined. The law counts use of the property as short stay accommodation, however the guest found you.
• Entire home stays are the clear case. The rule is aimed at whole properties being used as visitor accommodation while nobody is home.
• Stays of 90 or more consecutive nights do not count as short lets. A property let to one occupier for three months or more sits outside the definition entirely, which matters for strategy, as we cover below.

Going past 90: the planning permission route

If you want to run a full time short let in London, the lawful route is planning permission for change of use from your borough. Boroughs decide these applications locally and appetite varies a lot: some will consider it for certain property types and locations, while central boroughs with acute housing pressure refuse most applications. If you operate past 90 nights without permission, the borough can serve an enforcement notice, and ignoring one is an offence that can bring an unlimited fine. Boroughs increasingly use platform data and neighbour reports to find over limit properties, so treating enforcement as unlikely is a poor bet, and it is getting poorer.

Outside London, different rules apply

The 90 day rule is London only. Elsewhere the picture is different and moving:

• The rest of England has no blanket night cap today. A national registration scheme for short lets is confirmed in principle under the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023: operators will need to register with their local authority and display a registration number on listings. It was not fully operational as we published this, with government pointing to later in 2026, so check the current status before you rely on it either way.
• Scotland requires a short term let licence, with councils such as Edinburgh also running planning control areas.
• Wales uses a different lever: a self catering property must be available and actually let for minimum numbers of days to qualify for business rates rather than council tax.

Making 90 nights earn like a full year

Here is the part most guides skip. If your supply of nights is fixed by law, revenue is decided almost entirely by which nights you sell and at what price. A capped London host who fills 90 nights at strong event and peak season rates can out earn an uncapped host filling 200 nights at a flat rate. That reframes the rule from a ceiling into a selection problem:

• Spend the cap on the best nights. Concerts, conferences, sporting fixtures and school holidays are where London nightly rates spike. Those are the nights your 90 should be buying.
• Price every night deliberately. Flat rates waste a capped calendar faster than anything else. Each night you sell cheap is a better night you cannot sell later.
• Use longer stays for the rest of the year. Lets of 90 nights or more sit outside the rule, so a common pattern is short lets across the peak, then a medium term let to a corporate tenant or relocator for the remaining months. The property earns all year, and stays legal.