Short-Term or Long-Term Rental in Poland: Which Pays More?

On the same Warsaw flat, letting by the night can gross nearly twice what a twelve-month tenant pays and still leave the owner with less at the end of the month.

Our worked example is a two room, 43 m² flat on Krucza in Śródmieście, priced against listings collected up to 14 August 2026. By the night: PLN 8,300 gross a month, PLN 3,900 net. By the week: PLN 4,900 gross, PLN 3,200 net. On a twelve-month lease: PLN 4,300, nothing deducted, because the tenant pays the building fee and the owner does the letting.

Short-term here means stays under 30 days, sold through the booking platforms. Long-term is a lease of a year or more to one tenant. Mid-term sits between them: weeks, not nights or a year.

One thing to settle before you plan around a deadline. Poland's short-let registration law was still a bill on 2 September 2026, so no Polish flat has to be registered yet.

What the gap is made of

Model	Gross a month	Net to the owner	Range	Behind the number
By the night	PLN 8,300	PLN 3,900	PLN 3,500 to 4,700	71% occupancy measured across five homes, PLN 380 a night, 9 comparables
By the week	PLN 4,900	PLN 3,200	PLN 2,900 to 4,400	8 comparables on the mid-let platforms
Twelve-month lease	PLN 4,300	PLN 4,300	PLN 3,600 to 5,200	52 comparables, drawn from 96 reviewed

Five costs sit between that short-let gross and its net. Channel fees, PLN 1,273 a month, measured at 15.3% of gross. Cleaning and laundry, PLN 1,299. A management fee, PLN 818. Electricity and internet, PLN 330. The building fee, PLN 727. Together PLN 4,447, gone before the owner sees any of it.

The lease line carries none of those. The example prices the two short models with a manager at 8% of revenue, and prices the lease with the owner doing the work and the tenant paying the czynsz. Hire someone to run the lease, or leave the flat empty between tenants, and PLN 4,300 stops being the number.

Repairs land on the owner either way. Across seven Warsaw homes, our owner accounts hold 55 repair lines from December 2023 to August 2026: PLN 10,901.09 in total, median PLN 100. The smallest was PLN 4.92, a glass a guest broke while washing up. The largest was PLN 1,200 in August 2026, for a kitchen sewage pipe that meant taking the cabinets out and refitting them.

The work is a different shape, not a bigger pile

Hours a week is the figure owners ask for and the one nobody can source honestly. Here is what we can count instead. In the twelve months to 2 September 2026 the Warsaw homes took 663 reservations with a check-in in the period, cancellations included, across roughly 2,332 nights. Average stay: three and a half nights. Per flat, about 95 arrivals a year. A twelve-month lease has one.

The money arrives in the same shape. Our guest invoices in PLN number 325, median PLN 1,221, mean PLN 1,393, from PLN 350 to PLN 5,040. A tenant sends one transfer a month, on one date, for one amount.

Two platforms decide most of the short-let side: of every reservation on file, 60.3% came from Airbnb, 37.5% from Booking.com, 1.9% direct. Pricing is the other standing job. Our pricing engine's suggested nightly multiplier runs from 0.5x to 2.03x the base rate, and 73% of dates carry a discount signal rather than an uplift. Those are suggestions, not booked rates. They still show what most days are about: deciding how far to come down.

An investment that costs you attention is closer to a job. Two of those standing jobs have guides of their own: messages that arrive at night (/guides/guests-messaging-all-hours) and a cleaner who does not turn up (/guides/cleaner-no-show-turnover).

January and September are different businesses

The seasonality panel in the same report puts September 2025 at 97% occupancy, PLN 401 a night, PLN 11,904 gross for the month. January 2026: 45%, PLN 346 a night, PLN 4,694 gross. A tenant on a lease would have paid the same in both.

What our own books cover, and what they do not

Every figure above that comes from our records is short-let. We have no long-term or mid-term tenancies to report on. Nine homes are under management, seven of them in Warsaw, and all of them let by the night. The lease and by-the-week numbers here come from the example estimate report instead, built from listings that were live in Warsaw in August 2026. The short-let side is the exception: its 71% occupancy and PLN 380 a night come from what five homes earned, not from asking prices. The whole example, with every comparable behind it, is at resipilot.com/est/.

What is changing in Poland, and what you owe

Checked on 2 September 2026. General information, not tax or legal advice. These rules are moving: read the source before you act, and take your own numbers to a doradca podatkowy.

Registration

Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 has applied across the Union since 20 May 2026. It puts a registration number on every listing, and makes the platforms pass host and activity data to a national single digital entry point (eur-lex.europa.eu). For a Polish flat, nothing changed that day. Poland has not passed the law that makes the register work. The Council of Ministers adopted the bill on 14 July 2026, and on 2 September 2026 it was still before the Sejm (prawo.pl).

No start date has been set for the first numbers. The ministry's page still names 20 May 2026 for the main provisions, that date passed without a law, and the Sejm research service note gives no date either (gov.pl, sejm.gov.pl). As drafted, letting without registration would carry a fine of up to PLN 50,000 (prawo.pl). A government self-amendment has since restored two powers, both from 1 January 2028. A gmina could designate zones without short lets. A wspólnota or spółdzielnia could ban them in its own building, and owners would get six months to wind down (rp.pl, gazetaprawna.pl). None of it binds you today.

Tax

Private rental has been taxed by ryczałt alone since 2023: 8.5% of revenue up to PLN 100,000 a year, 12.5% above it, calculated on revenue with nothing taken off for costs (isap.sejm.gov.pl). Letting by the night as an organised business, with a clean and fresh linen between guests, is usually treated as an accommodation service instead, which carries 8% VAT (isap.sejm.gov.pl). The subjective VAT exemption threshold has been PLN 240,000 of annual sales since 1 January 2026 (podatki.gov.pl). Which regime covers your flat is a question for a doradca podatkowy, and the answer moves every net figure here.

Your real options

Option	What it costs, and what it asks of you	Fits you if
Twelve-month lease, run by you	Your time, plus a one-off agency fee if you use one. One changeover a year	You want one amount on one date, and will screen a tenant yourself
By the night, run by you	Your time, plus the channel fee, 15.3% of gross in the example. About 95 arrivals a year	Guest messages and a turnover every few days do not bother you
One specialist per model	Two fees, two contracts, and you coordinate the switch	You want help and do not mind two relationships
Season hybrid, nights in summer, a tenant in winter	Whatever each period's manager charges. Two model changes a year	The flat suits summer visitors and a winter tenant
Resipilot, all three on one flat	8% of revenue, no setup fee, no minimum, cancel any time	You want one system and no switching cost between models

Where Resipilot fits, and where it does not

Resipilot runs short, mid and long lets on the same flat, in Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk and Athens. Nine homes are under management today, seven of them in Warsaw. The fee is 8% of revenue, with no setup fee, no minimum, and cancellation at any time. Nothing that costs money happens without your approval: a repair quote, a price change, a new tenant. Nightly prices are adjusted every six hours, and guest messages are answered day and night. Every booking gets a turnover scheduled and texted to the cleaner in their own language, your own cleaner included if you keep them (/self-serve). The owner contracts are readable before you sign (/agreements).

A statement lands once a month. The August 2026 statement for a one-bedroom in central Warsaw covered about four weeks and 5,393.36 zł of gross income, listed booking by booking, with VAT and every expense set against its invoice before the net figure. Guests have left 4.9 out of 5 across more than 280 verified stays, from over 30 countries.

It is not for an owner outside those four cities. It is also not for an owner who wants a guaranteed rent, because a fee that moves with revenue means a January like the one above is your January too.