Vienna and Berlin: When the Cap Depends on Where You Sleep
Ask how many nights you can let a flat in Vienna or Berlin and the honest answer is a question back: do you live there?
In both cities the first thing the law wants to know is not your calendar but your residence. Get that wrong and the night count is irrelevant. A perfect 89 nights on a flat you don’t live in is not “just under the limit” in Vienna. The allowance was never yours to spend.
Checked 28 September 2026. Short-term letting rules move fast, and both cities leave real questions open (we say which below). Verify against the authority before you act on anything here. This is general information, not legal advice.
Residence is the hinge
Most night caps are one number. Vienna and Berlin each have one rule for a home you live in and a different one for a flat you don’t. Paris works the same way, which we covered in Paris Is 90 Nights Now, Not 120: 90 nights a calendar year for a main home with registration, and no short-term letting of a secondary residence without change-of-use approval with compensation.
So before any counting, answer the residence question honestly. Everything else follows from it.
Vienna: 90 days, but only in a home you live in
The rule is in the Bauordnung für Wien, §119(2a), and the city’s building authority (Baupolizei) explains it in a guidance sheet from April 2025.
If the flat is your home (your Wohnsitz), you may let it short-term for up to 90 days per calendar year, 1 January to 31 December, without a permit. Two conditions attach: the local tourist tax (Ortstaxe) must apply, and you must not permanently give up your residence there.
Beyond 90 days, or for a flat you don’t live in, you have needed an exemption permit (Ausnahmebewilligung, under §129(1a)) since 1 July 2024. It runs for at most five years, and it is refused:
- in a Wohnzone (a residential zone)
- in subsidised housing
- where more than 50% of the building’s units would be short-term lets
All owners of the building must also consent in writing.
Companies can’t use the 90 days. A company (juristische Person) has no Wohnsitz, so the allowance for a home you live in cannot apply to it.
Advertising alone can cost you. The authority warns that merely offering a flat for more than 90 days can be fined up to €50,000. You don’t have to have taken the bookings.
What the sources leave open
Three points we could not settle from the authority’s own texts:
- whether “Tage” (days) means nights booked or calendar days
- whether the 90-day home-sharing allowance applies inside a Wohnzone at all
- whether a part-time second home you genuinely live in counts as a Wohnsitz
If any of those decides your case, ask the Baupolizei before relying on 90.
Berlin: a permit for the main home, 90 days for a second one
Berlin regulates through the Zweckentfremdungsverbot, the ban on using housing for other purposes. The Land’s service portal and the Senate’s FAQ describe it this way.
Your main home (Hauptwohnung). Letting up to 49% of the floor area needs no permit. You file a free notification, which gives you a registration number to show in your listings. Letting more than 49%, or the whole flat while you’re away, needs a permit (€100). There is no statutory day cap on a main home.
A second home you use yourself (Nebenwohnung). This needs a permit (€150), and as a rule it is granted only for letting on at most 90 days a year. As a rule there is no permit if you already have another main or second home in Berlin.
A flat you don’t live in. For holiday letting this is effectively not permitted.
What the sources leave open
Berlin’s “90 days a year” is written as im Jahr, and permits run for a year. The sources don’t say whether that means the calendar year or the permit year, or whether it counts days or nights. We could also only retrieve the Land’s own summary, not the statute text. Treat the 90 as the rule of thumb the city publishes, not a figure checked against the statute.
How to set it up in Airflow
The letting limit lives in property Settings → Block Dates → Letting limit. For these cities, pick the rule first. A second selector, “This property is”, then appears with two options: “My main home” or “A second home”.
| Rule | “This property is” | What Airflow does |
|---|---|---|
| Vienna (90 days, own home) | My main home | Counts nights booked against 90, calendar year |
| Vienna (90 days, own home) | A second home | Refuses to save and explains why |
| Berlin (by residence) | My main home | Becomes “Berlin (main home — permit, no day cap)”: counts nights, no annual cap |
| Berlin (by residence) | A second home | Becomes “Berlin (second home you use yourself — 90 days)” |
| Paris (90 nights, main home) | A second home | Refuses to save: needs change-of-use approval with compensation |
The older preset “Berlin (90 days, second home you use yourself)” is still there if you already use it.
Why some combinations are refused
We could have let you pick “Vienna” with “A second home” and shown a gauge counting up to 90. It would look reassuring, and it would be wrong. The 90 days is not available to that flat at all. A green bar there would be a meaningless number dressed up as compliance.
So Airflow refuses the combinations the law doesn’t allow and tells you why, instead of showing a number that doesn’t apply. If you hold an exemption permit or change-of-use approval, choose Custom… and set the rule your permit gives you.
Why Berlin’s main home has no number
For a Berlin main home, the gauge still counts every night you let, but there is no line to stay under. The legal obligation is the registration number or the permit, not a night total. The count is there because it is your record: if the district asks what you let and when, you have the answer for every night.
Showing you a made-up cap would be worse than showing none. So we don’t.
Calendar year, or something stricter
Both city presets count the calendar year. For Berlin, where the sources don’t say whether “a year” means the calendar year or your permit year, you can choose Custom… and set the window to Rolling 365 days. That is the cautious reading: if no rolling 365-day stretch goes over 90, no permit year can either.
For Vienna’s days-versus-nights question, the preset counts nights booked. If you want a margin, choose Custom and set the limit a little under 90.
Where there is a number, the gauge also forecasts the date you would cross it “on the calendar as it stands”, calendar-year rules included. You see the date before you reach it, not after.
What to do this week
- Create an account. Every plan starts with a 7-day trial.
- Import your booking history from every channel, direct bookings included. Paste your iCal links or upload a CSV, and past bookings come in too, so the count is right from day one.
- Answer the residence question honestly. Then open Settings → Block Dates → Letting limit, choose the Vienna or Berlin rule, and set “This property is”.
- Add your registration number (Berlin) once, so it shows wherever Airflow publishes the listing.
- If a question is still open for you (Wohnzone, calendar vs permit year, days vs nights), ask the authority now, before the busy season decides it for you.
After that, you can leave it. It counts every night across every channel, forecasts the date you’d cross, and won’t show a limit that doesn’t apply to your flat.
See how it fits with the rest of Airflow for short-term rentals, or get started →
Sources: Bauordnung für Wien §119 (RIS), Stadt Wien Baupolizei: Merkblatt Verwendung von Wohnungen für Kurzzeitvermietung (April 2025), Stadt Wien: Ausnahmebewilligung für Kurzzeitvermietung, Service Berlin: short-term letting under the Zweckentfremdungsverbot, Berlin Senate: Zweckentfremdungsverbot — Fragen und Antworten. Related: Paris Is 90 Nights Now, Not 120, A Night Cap Is an Accounting Problem, Short-Term Rental Rules by City, 2026.