Across 65,806 live apartment listings, median asking rent in the United States today is $1,654 for a studio, $1,699 for a one-bedroom, $2,026 for a two-bedroom, and $2,202 for a three-bedroom. Two findings in those numbers go against conventional wisdom.
First: the median three-bedroom asks less than the median two-bedroom, by $-176. Adding a bedroom does not always cost more on the median. Second: studios beat one-bedrooms on median by $45, but they lose on mean because the luxury-studio long tail in expensive urban cores pulls their average upward. Both findings hold today and reverse in specific cities. The rest of this page is the breakdown.
Rent by bedroom count
Quartiles show where the middle 50% of each bedroom bucket lives. A wide P25 to P75 spread means the market is bimodal, value plus luxury, rather than clustered around one number.
| Size | 25th pct | Median | 75th pct | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | $1,355 | $1,654 | $2,083 | 6,512 |
| 1 bedroom | $1,367 | $1,699 | $2,225 | 30,243 |
| 2 bedroom | $1,564 | $2,026 | $2,739 | 23,594 |
| 3 bedroom | $1,743 | $2,202 | $2,888 | 4,798 |
| 4+ bedroom | $1,075 | $1,900 | $2,686 | 659 |
The headline number, by bedroom
The single most-searched rent question is some flavor of "what does a [N]-bedroom cost". The honest answer requires showing the middle of the market, not just one number. Below is the median, the 25th-to-75th-percentile band where two out of three listed units fall, and the count of units the figure rests on.
| Bedroom size | Median | Middle 50% | Units | Cost per room |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | $1,654 | $1,355 – $2,083 | 6,512 | $1,654 |
| 1 bedroom | $1,699 | $1,367 – $2,225 | 30,243 | $1,699 |
| 2 bedroom | $2,026 | $1,564 – $2,739 | 23,594 | $1,013 |
| 3 bedroom | $2,202 | $1,743 – $2,888 | 4,798 | $734 |
| 4+ bedroom | $1,900 | $1,075 – $2,686 | 659 | $475 |
The "cost per room" column is the median rent divided by bedroom count, with studios counted as one living room. Studios pay $1,654 per room. Two-bedrooms pay $1,013 per room. Three-bedrooms pay $734 per room. Each additional bedroom buys roughly 56% more usable footprint per dollar.
Studio versus 1-bedroom: the median-vs-mean paradox
On the median, a studio is $45 cheaper than a one-bedroom (-2.6% below the 1BR median). On the mean, the relationship inverts: studios run higher than one-bedrooms in our dataset because studio supply concentrates in premium urban cores (downtown San Francisco, downtown Austin, Manhattan-adjacent Brooklyn) where per-square-foot pricing is highest. The luxury-studio tail pulls the average up even as the midpoint of the studio market sits comfortably below the midpoint of the 1-bedroom market.
The practical read for a renter: if you are price-sensitive and looking for the typical end of the market, a studio likely saves you money. If you are looking at premium urban cores specifically, a one-bedroom in the same neighborhood often costs less than a luxury studio in the same building. The right comparison is always at the city level, not the national level.
2-bedroom vs 3-bedroom: when adding a bedroom saves money
The median two-bedroom asks $2,026. The median three-bedroom asks $2,202. Adding the third bedroom drops the median by $-176, which is -8.7% of the 2-bedroom median. This is composition, not magic. Three-bedroom apartments in our dataset skew toward suburban townhome-style buildings, older garden-style complexes, and student-adjacent submarkets in college towns. Two-bedrooms cluster in newer high-rise buildings in expensive urban cores.
For a household that can absorb a longer commute or a less central location, a three-bedroom is often the cheaper move per unit even when only two of the bedrooms get used. The third bedroom becomes a home office, a guest room, or storage at no median premium over the smaller urban-core two-bedroom.
Distribution width: where each bedroom size scatters
Median is one number. The width of the distribution tells you how predictable the market is at that size. The 25th-to-75th percentile spread for each size:
- Studios scatter across $728 from P25 to P75
- One-bedrooms scatter across $858
- Two-bedrooms scatter across $1,175
- Three-bedrooms scatter across $1,145
Three-bedrooms have the widest distribution by a meaningful margin. That width is the suburban-vs-college-town-vs-luxury-townhome split visible in one number: a three-bedroom search returns the largest range of outcomes. One-bedrooms are the tightest distribution because the inventory is the most homogeneous nationally.
What you need to earn to afford each bedroom size
The federal cost-burdened threshold is 30% of gross income spent on rent. To stay below that line on the national median by bedroom size, your gross annual income needs to clear:
| Bedroom size | Median rent | Annual income needed (30% rule) | Monthly take-home (rough) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | $1,654 | $66,160 | $4,135 |
| 1 bedroom | $1,699 | $67,960 | $4,248 |
| 2 bedroom | $2,026 | $81,040 | $5,065 |
| 3 bedroom | $2,202 | $88,080 | $5,505 |
Take-home estimates assume 25% effective tax for federal, state, FICA, and standard deductions. Two-bedroom apartments require roughly $13,080 more annual income than one-bedrooms to clear the 30% rule, which is the single largest income jump on the bedroom ladder.
The same numbers, in city context
Live medians by city, with rent-to-income context, for the cities deep enough in our dataset to support per-city numbers. The "ratio" column is what share of the city's median household income goes to the city's average asking rent.
Rent-to-income reality check
Annual rent divided by Census median household income for the same city. The federal cost-burdened threshold is 30%. Shaded rows are over.
| City | Avg rent | Annual rent | Median income | Burden |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Ana, CA | $3,245 | $38,940 | $88,354 | 44.1% |
| Houston, TX | $2,270 | $27,240 | $62,894 | 43.3% |
| Los Angeles, CA | $2,878 | $34,536 | $80,366 | 43.0% |
| San Antonio, TX | $2,033 | $24,396 | $62,917 | 38.8% |
| Charlotte, NC | $2,377 | $28,524 | $78,438 | 36.4% |
| Nashville, TN | $2,277 | $27,324 | $75,197 | 36.3% |
| Atlanta, GA | $2,302 | $27,624 | $81,938 | 33.7% |
| Minneapolis, MN | $2,167 | $26,004 | $80,269 | 32.4% |
| Dallas, TX | $1,771 | $21,252 | $67,760 | 31.4% |
| Irvine, CA | $3,257 | $39,084 | $129,647 | 30.1% |
| Denver, CO | $2,229 | $26,748 | $91,681 | 29.2% |
| Albuquerque, NM | $1,571 | $18,852 | $65,604 | 28.7% |
| Seattle, WA | $2,853 | $34,236 | $121,984 | 28.1% |
| Addison, TX | $1,858 | $22,296 | $82,858 | 26.9% |
| Austin, TX | $2,014 | $24,168 | $91,461 | 26.4% |
| Lewisville, TX | $1,627 | $19,524 | $85,002 | 23.0% |
| Cary, NC | $2,103 | $25,236 | $129,399 | 19.5% |
| Carrollton, TX | $1,581 | $18,972 | $99,115 | 19.1% |
| Allen, TX | $1,785 | $21,420 | $129,130 | 16.6% |
| Mckinney, TX | $1,580 | $18,960 | $120,273 | 15.8% |
Every city in the table above publishes its own bedroom-by-bedroom breakdown on the city landing page. Click through to see how the four-line table at the top of this page looks for your specific market.
How we compute this, and why our numbers differ from Zillow and RentCafe
How we calculate this, and why it differs from Zillow and RentCafe
Every number on this page comes from a live asking price we collected from an apartment community's own leasing website, the same page a prospective tenant would see. We do not apply a statistical model. We do not survey landlords. We publish what is on the market right now, refreshed every morning.
Today that means 65,806 individual units across 4,797 properties in 652 cities, including studios to 4+ bedrooms.
Zillow's ZORI is a model, not a listing
The Zillow Observed Rent Index estimates the typical rent for the middle of the market in a given region, using a statistical model that weights repeat rentals across Zillow's listing database. It is useful for long-horizon macro comparisons. It is not a count of actual listed units. A ZORI figure reflects Zillow's estimate of the market, not the raw asking prices available to rent today.
RentCafe's public chart smooths the movement away
RentCafe publishes a national average apartment rent drawn from Yardi's property-management database. The published chart reads as a near-flat line from mid 2023 through early 2026, which is an artifact of how averages and index smoothing erase the monthly signal. Raw month-to-month medians across live listings do not sit flat for two and a half years. If you ran a landlord portfolio, you would never price at the index.
NMHC Quick Facts is the industry-size citation, not a rent figure
The National Multifamily Housing Council's Quick Facts page is the gold-standard reference for the size of the apartment industry: roughly 23.4 million apartment homes in 5+ unit buildings nationwide, around 39.1 million apartment renters, and a national vacancy rate updated quarterly. Those are the right numbers for industry-scale framing. They are not asking-rent figures, and they update on an annual or quarterly cadence rather than daily. We pair the NMHC totals with our live-listing coverage on a dedicated page so the seam between the two is explicit. Cite NMHC for the universe; cite us for the live asking price inside it.
What you get here instead
- The raw distribution: 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile asking rents. Indices collapse this to one number.
- Bedroom-by-bedroom quartiles so you can see what a studio actually rents for versus a 2 bedroom.
- Live city rankings, not metro-level aggregates that hide intra-market variance.
- Unsmoothed month-to-month medians, including the outlier months indices normally average out.
- A refresh timestamp on every chart, so you always know how stale what you are reading is.
Zillow, ZORI, and RentCafe are trademarks of their respective owners. This comparison is offered as methodology context. Ratings refer to public methodology documentation as of April 2026.
Where this data is dense enough to publish on
Sample size matters more for per-city claims than for national medians. National figures on this page rest on 65,806 units, which is comfortable. Per-city numbers in the table above are gated to cities with at least 3 properties. For deeper city analysis (neighborhood-level, time-series), see our coverage map, which classifies every city in the dataset as deep, moderate, or thin coverage and explains exactly where we will and will not draw conclusions.
Explore further
- What is the median rent in the US?: same dataset, national-headline angle, full distribution and trend.
- How much does an apartment cost in America?: same data, framed as a budget-first guide.
- Coverage map: the deep / moderate / thin city tier breakdown.
- Live search: filter the dataset by bedroom count, price band, or city, with current asking prices.