Which US cities require a permit for short-term rentals?

A listing-platform page does not prove a government permit exists. Many US cities run official short-term-rental (STR) permit or registration programs. Here are the 54 cities in our raw data feed and a source-linked way to research a specific address.

Two things you have to clear (they're different)

Zoning decides whether STR is an allowed use at that location at all. A separate permit / registration decides whether you, at this address, are licensed to do it. You can be in an STR-friendly zone and still be fined for operating without the permit — and most cities publish their permit registry as open data, so you can verify a specific address before you ever sign a lease or list.

54 cities in the raw data feed, each with an STR permit or registration program

These jurisdictions run an official STR licensing program and publish the registry. (We track each one's live permit data.)

Free check in 18 cities. Permit Audit ($4.99) and raw data feed in 54. Pick any of them in the permit audit.

How to check a specific address

Before you list: (1) inspect the current zoning map and ordinance; (2) look the address up in the city's STR permit registry; (3) check HOA or condo restrictions; and (4) confirm the result with the responsible authority or qualified adviser. A published permit record is evidence, not a legal opinion or guarantee that every applicable requirement is satisfied.

Each city publishes this in a different place and format, which is tedious if you operate across more than one market. We normalize the 55 registries in the raw data feed (Honolulu publishes two) into one consistent schema — permit or source-record identity, status, address, publisher clocks, and expiration where published — so you can check any of them the same way.

How change monitoring avoids false alerts

Start with a small bounded lookup. For monitoring, select one jurisdiction, clear the record cap, enable snapshots, and set a run charge ceiling that covers the complete registry. The Actor compares only complete runs with the same city, status filter, and jurisdiction-resolution setting. It rejects capped monitoring inputs and paid-dataset ceilings below the fetched record count instead of calling omitted records "disappeared." Unhealthy source responses are quarantined and cannot replace the last healthy baseline. Every accepted comparison exposes hashed receipts and complete before/after change rows.