Guides / Rental rules

Alojamento Local (AL) Licenses in Portugal: Can You Still Airbnb That Apartment?

If your purchase plan includes short-term rental income, the single most important due-diligence question in Portugal is whether the property can get — or keep — an Alojamento Local (AL) registration. The honest answer is always local: the rules are decided parish by parish, and two streets apart can mean "permitted" versus "banned".

How the system works now

AL registration is handled through the municipality. After the back-and-forth of the 2023 housing package and its 2024 revision, the operative reality is that municipalities control where new AL registrations are possible: they designate containment zones — areas where the short-term rental density is judged excessive — and inside those zones new registrations for apartments are suspended or heavily restricted.

Where the walls are

• Lisbon: most of the historic core (Santa Maria Maior, Misericórdia, and neighbouring parishes) is contained — new apartment ALs are effectively off the table.
• Porto: the central união de freguesias operates containment rules in the busiest zones.
• Coastal Algarve: several parishes carry extreme AL density — registration may be technically possible, but you'd be entering a saturated market.

Density itself is decision-relevant even where licensing is open: a parish where AL units are 15%+ of the housing stock is a crowded market with softening nightly rates.

Buyer's checklist

• Never assume an existing AL registration transfers cleanly with the sale — verify its status and the current transfer rules before valuing the property on rental income.
• Check the parish's containment status before the promissory contract.
• Condominium rules can restrict AL independently of the parish rules.

Check any parish in one click

SirJohn holds the parish-level AL data: every area page shows the licensing status and the AL-to-housing ratio, and every audit tells you whether the specific property's rental strategy is realistic.