As of September 2026, the average asking rent for a 1-bedroom across Greater Boston is $2,863, based on August 2026 listings from verified, licensed agents. We cover ten cities — Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Medford, Newton, Everett, Quincy, Watertown and Malden — plus every Boston neighborhood with enough listings to report. Free to download and republish. See every neighborhood in the Boston Rent Index →
Boston rent doesn't make sense until you see the actual numbers. Each month we publish asking prices from licensed agents' active listings — Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and the surrounding cities. Not national estimates.
Average asking rent by bedroom size, published September 2026 from August 2026 listings. Tap a column to sort. A dash means fewer than 20 active listings that month, so we do not publish a figure. Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline are reported citywide.
| Area | Studio | 1 BR | 2 BR | 3 BR | 4+ BR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allston | $2,108 | $2,637 | $3,372 | $3,568 | $4,871 |
| Back Bay | $2,790 | $3,574 | $5,196 | — | — |
| Beacon Hill | $2,488 | $3,069 | $3,988 | — | — |
| Boston city | $2,373 | $2,928 | $3,632 | $4,069 | $4,705 |
| Boston Downtown | — | $3,610 | — | — | — |
| Brighton | $2,110 | $2,463 | $2,986 | $3,761 | $4,745 |
| Brookline city | $2,421 | $2,890 | $3,855 | $4,969 | $6,130 |
| Cambridge city | $2,366 | $2,975 | $3,825 | $4,615 | $6,579 |
| Coolidge Corner | $2,533 | $2,802 | $3,740 | $4,700 | $6,502 |
| Dorchester | — | $2,544 | $3,014 | $3,340 | $3,937 |
| East Boston | — | $2,670 | $3,192 | $3,274 | $3,638 |
| Fenway | $2,303 | $2,856 | $3,862 | $4,811 | — |
| Jamaica Plain | — | — | $3,265 | $3,470 | $4,515 |
| Mission Hill | — | $2,952 | $2,910 | $3,682 | $5,030 |
| North End | — | $3,411 | $4,500 | — | — |
| Oak Square | — | — | $3,028 | $3,495 | $4,660 |
| Roxbury | — | — | $3,022 | $3,607 | $4,229 |
| Somerville city | — | $2,570 | $3,253 | $3,801 | $4,909 |
| South Boston | — | $3,106 | $4,155 | $4,984 | $5,900 |
| South End | $2,374 | $3,318 | $4,559 | $5,808 | — |
Allston, Jamaica Plain, South End — the price gap between them is bigger than most people expect. Each month we publish average and median asking rent for every Greater Boston neighborhood with enough active listings to report, broken down by bedroom count.
Of the areas we publish, Dorchester, Roxbury and Allston consistently sit at the low end for a 1-bedroom, and Back Bay, Beacon Hill and the South End at the high end. The table above is sortable, so you can rank every area by the bedroom size you actually need — the cheapest studio market is not always the cheapest 2-bedroom market.
Look at the year-over-year figure at the top of this page: it compares this month against the same month last year for a Greater Boston 1-bedroom. For a single neighborhood, each Rent Index page carries a 13-month history table so you can see whether a specific area is moving with the market or against it.
A common rule is to keep rent near 30% of gross income — about $2,000 a month on a $80,000 salary, or $2,500 on $100,000. Compare that against the table above to see which areas and bedroom sizes are realistic before you start touring. Boston landlords also commonly ask for first month, last month and a security deposit up front, so budget for the move-in cost as well as the monthly rent.
Almost always, and the gap is bigger than people expect. Splitting a 2-bedroom two ways costs meaningfully less per person than renting a studio alone across Greater Boston — the exact figure is in the takeaways above, and every neighborhood page runs the same comparison for that area.
We publish a neighborhood and bedroom size only when at least 20 active listings support it that month. Below that, one or two unusual listings can swing the number several hundred dollars, so we show a dash instead of a figure we would not rely on ourselves.
From Spot Easy's own live listings database — active rental listings posted or verified by licensed real estate agents across Greater Boston, including listings sourced through their brokerages. These are asking rents on real listings, not survey responses, estimates or modeled figures. Everything here is free to republish under CC BY 4.0; see Download the data below.
We publish monthly rental market data sourced directly from our production database — active listings from verified, licensed agents across Greater Boston. All methodology is public.
Covering Boston rent trends? Ask us — we can often pull specific data for your story.
Joel Mundele, CEO — joel@spoteasy.comEvery figure we publish is downloadable. The CSV covers Greater Boston and every published neighborhood, by bedroom count. The JSON feed is what our own pages read.
License: free to republish, including commercially, under CC BY 4.0. Please credit Spot Easy and link back.
Cite as: Spot Easy Boston Rent Index, August 2026 listings, published September 2026. https://www.spoteasy.com/data/rent-index/2026-08
Cite the dated snapshot rather than the live Rent Index — a snapshot is frozen, so the number you quote stays the number a reader finds. For the current month, see the Boston Rent Index.
Source: All data is pulled from Spot Easy's live listings database — active rental listings posted or verified by licensed real estate agents, including listings sourced through their brokerages.
Geography: Greater Boston — Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Newton, Everett, Quincy, Watertown, and Malden.
Listings counted: Every listing that was on the market at any point during the reported month, measured from its on-market and off-market timestamps — not a single-day snapshot. Drafts, admin-removed listings, and asking rents below $500 or above $20,000 are excluded. A listing that left the market without a recorded off-market date is excluded rather than estimated, so the count runs conservative.
Deduplication: One listing per unique address + unit + bedroom count, keeping the most recently created record.
Bedroom buckets: Studio / 1 BR / 2 BR / 3 BR / 4+ BR.
Minimum sample size: Cells with fewer than 20 listings are suppressed and shown as —.
Metrics: Average (mean) and median asking rent, 25th and 75th percentile, month-over-month and year-over-year change. Average leads on the published pages; median is carried in the CSV and JSON feed.
Updated on the 1st of each month. Questions? joel@spoteasy.com