Average Rent in the Netherlands (2026): Room, Studio and Apartment Prices in 25 Cities

A room in the Netherlands costs between about €475 and €930 a month, and an apartment between €1,150 and €2,650, depending on the city. Those are the median asking rents across roughly 19,000 rental listings that we tracked in 25 Dutch cities between 30 July and 28 October 2026. Amsterdam and Amstelveen are the most expensive places to rent, and Enschede, Leeuwarden and Groningen are the cheapest.

Most rent price guides mix averages, ranges and figures from different years. This one uses one method for every city and every type of home, so you can compare them directly. It covers rooms, studios, apartments and houses, price per square metre, the cheapest and most expensive cities, and what the numbers mean if you're about to start searching.

Average rent by city

The table shows the median asking rent per month, which is the price in the middle of all listings: half were cheaper and half more expensive. We only show a price where a city had at least 20 listings of that type in the period, so a dash means there wasn't enough data, not that nothing was available.

Median asking rent per month for listings posted between 30 July and 28 October 2026. Sorted by apartment rent. Price per m² is the median for apartments with a known size.

The most expensive cities to rent in

Amsterdam is the most expensive city for every type of home except apartments, where neighbouring Amstelveen is higher, at a median of €2,650 against €2,450. Amstelveen's apartments are larger on average, which pushes its median up. Per square metre, though, Amsterdam is still clearly the most expensive at €31.60 per m², against €26.60 in Amstelveen.

Haarlem comes third for apartments at €2,200, followed by Den Haag (€1,960) and Rotterdam (€1,870). Utrecht, often described as nearly as expensive as Amsterdam, has a median apartment rent of €1,674. That's lower than Rotterdam, but Utrecht's apartments are smaller, so per square metre it's actually the more expensive of the two (€24.60 against €22.30).

If you're comparing neighbourhoods within the capital, our amsterdam neighbourhood map shows typical rents area by area.

The cheapest cities to rent in

The cheapest cities are mostly outside the Randstad, the urban area around Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht. In Enschede a median room costs half of what it does in Amsterdam, and an apartment less than half. Groningen stands out: it's one of the biggest student cities in the country, yet its median apartment rent is under €1,200. Per square metre it's less of a bargain (€25 per m²), because many of its apartments are small.

Rooms, studios or apartments?

How much extra you pay for your own front door depends a lot on the city. In Amsterdam, a studio costs about €320 a month more than a room (€1,250 against €930). In Den Haag the gap is under €200 (€899 against €708), and in Tilburg and Breda a studio costs about €240–€320 more than a room, from a much lower starting point.

Studios are also the scarcest type of home in most cities: only 14 of the 25 cities had enough studio listings to report a median. If a studio is what you want, expect to wait longer and to compete with more people for each one. In Amsterdam, our studios for rent in Amsterdam page shows what's currently listed.

Students usually rent rooms. For university housing, application deadlines and what each student city is like, see our guide to student housing in the Netherlands.

What these numbers mean for your search

Asking rents are only part of the cost. Expect a deposit (borg), which by law can be at most two months' bare rent, and check whether the price includes service costs, gas, electricity and internet, because many listings quote "kale huur" (bare rent) without them.

The price range within each city is wide. In Amsterdam, a quarter of apartments are listed below €1,900 a month and a quarter above €2,950. The cheaper listings attract the most replies and disappear first, so the rent you end up paying often depends on how quickly you see a listing as much as on your budget.

Rent rules also matter. Since the Affordable Rent Act took effect on 1 July 2024, the rent of most homes scoring up to 186 points on the Dutch points system is capped, including many mid-range apartments. If a rent seems high for the size and quality, the Huurcommissie (the Dutch rent tribunal) can check it. Our guide to dutch rental contracts explains what to look for before you sign.

Finding the listings below the median is mostly a question of time. They appear across dozens of rental sites and Facebook groups, and the good ones are gone within hours. That's what StayScout does: instead of scrolling every site and group yourself, you set your city, budget and type of home, and we send you an alert as soon as a matching listing appears, so you can reply among the first. You can set up rental alerts for most of the cities in this guide.

How we calculated these prices

StayScout monitors publicly available rental listings across more than 200 rental websites and Facebook housing groups in the Netherlands. For this guide we took every listing posted between 30 July and 28 October 2026 in the 25 cities above, and then:

• removed listings flagged as likely scams
• removed duplicates, where the same home was posted on several sites
• removed prices below €250 or above €8,000 a month, which are almost always errors or non-residential
• grouped homes by the type stated in the listing: room, studio, apartment or house
• only reported a median where a city had at least 20 listings of that type

These are asking rents, the price advertised, not the rent finally agreed in a contract. Listings without a stated size are included in the medians but not in the price per square metre. We'll update this guide every quarter, so you can see how rents change over time.

FAQs about rent in the Netherlands

Q1: What is the average rent in the Netherlands in 2026? It depends heavily on the city and the type of home. Across the 25 cities we track, median asking rents run from about €475 to €930 a month for a room and from about €1,150 to €2,650 for an apartment.

Q2: Which Dutch city has the highest rent? Amsterdam has the highest rents for rooms, studios and houses, and the highest price per square metre (about €31.60 for apartments). Neighbouring Amstelveen has a slightly higher median apartment rent, because its apartments tend to be larger.

Q3: Which city in the Netherlands has the cheapest rent? Enschede is the cheapest for both rooms (median €475) and apartments (median €1,146). Tilburg, Leeuwarden, Groningen and Zwolle are also among the cheapest.

Q4: How much is a room in Amsterdam? The median asking rent for a room in Amsterdam was €930 a month between August and October 2026. Most rooms were listed between about €770 and €1,190.

Q5: Is rent in the Netherlands still going up? Rents for new listings have risen in most cities over the past few years, while price rules for regulated homes have limited increases at the lower end. We'll publish how prices change per city with each quarterly update of this guide.

Conclusion

Rent in the Netherlands varies by more than double between cities. A room costs around €475 in Enschede and €930 in Amsterdam, and an apartment ranges from about €1,150 to €2,650. Use the tables to set a realistic budget for your city and type of home, then focus on seeing new listings early, because the ones priced below the median are the first to go.