Europe’s most visited city is brimming with accommodation options, including plenty for those preferring a ‘home from home’ over a hotel.
(Photo: Patrick Nouhailler via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)
One of the world’s most iconic tourist destinations, Paris continues to lure visitors with its famed gastronomic scene, distinctive architecture and sheer depth of culture. For people looking to spend anything from a few nights through to a few months in the City of Lights but want to avoid a hotel in favour of a cosier experience, there are a number of short-term apartment rentals to be found here. We’ve selected our five favourite online platforms for short lets below.
Booking.com
One of the largest international platforms for booking a hotel, Booking.com also has a large selection of short-term apartments in Paris and is our number one choice for anything from a few nights to two weekly rentals. On our selected dates, we found scores of apart-hotels available. Among them, we unearthed studios for rent in July in the 12th arrondissement at €150 per night and, for couples, an apartment at €350 per night in the 15th arrondissement. Unfortunately, with the exception of wine and baguettes, nothing comes particularly cheap in Paris.
The Homelike
Founded in 2015 by a pair of German entrepreneurs who were tired of staying in hotels while working abroad, Homelike is principally aimed at business travellers and foreigners looking for accommodation for a month or longer. The platform has a clean and easy-to-use interface with high resolution photography and icons that clearly show amenities. Since its launch, the platform has come a long way and in Paris it has almost 200 apartments for rent. On our chosen dates, we found several small studios in the 1st and 2nd arrondissements in the heart of Paris at a little under €2,000 per month. If you don’t mind being in the outskirts of the city, you can rent apartments twice the size for roughly the same price.
Blueground
Blueground is also principally aimed at people looking to rent out furnished rentalsfor one month or longer. Booking an apartment is extremely easy: simply filter and sort by dates, amenities and price. On our selected dates, Blueground had several hundred apartments available in Paris, many of which are in the centre, or in the city’s most sought-after arrondissements like Montmartre and Bastille on the Rive Droite, and Luxembourg and Place Monge on the other side of the river. For these type of areas, prices are roughly between €50 per square metre, so for a fully-furnished apartment of this size, you’d be paying approximately €2,500 per month.
Spotahome
Spotahome had the largest selection of apartments for rent in Paris out of all the short-rental platforms on this list. Its design and functionality is similar: just pick your dates of travel and you’ll see all available apartments across an interactive map. Monthly rentals range from €550 for a large room in a shared apartment in the suburbs to over €3,000 for apartments in the city centre. On a whole, apartments are cheaper than on some of the other sites, but there’s a big difference to living in the centre of Paris to being somewhere outside. Like most short let companies, Spotahome adds administration fees to the advertised price, so it’s worth making sure you understand all the extra costs before confirming a rental.
Coliving
Coliving was set up to create a community living concept to enable like-minded people to live, work, and play together. Emphasis is placed on design and comfort, with all secondary costs and utilities covered by one bill. The central aim of the sign up process is to match co-inhabitants according to their interests and hobbies. The quantity and pricing in shared accommodation can vary greatly. In Gare du Nord, for example, you can flat-share with four others at a price of €790 per month, with all bills included. Coliving.com generates most of its revenue from a marketplace commission paid by hosts, which, depending on the length of stay, is an equivalent of 5-10% of the total rental cost.