finchStart with two sources
Each Airbnb listing is compared with the Council’s register of issued short-term let licences.
ABOUT FINCH · HOW IT WORKS
About this project
Finch compares Edinburgh Airbnb listings with the Council’s short-term let licence register. It helps you explore possible matches; it is not an official decision about whether a property is licensed.
THE PROCESS
From listing to possible licence
Find nearby possibilities
For listings without a direct licence reference, search within 50 metres of an exact map position and within 200 metres of an approximate or unclassified one. Keep up to 20 nearby candidates, preferring ones whose bedroom/sleeps capacity fits the listing. Licences directly referenced by any listing are reserved for the listing(s) that claim them and are never offered as candidates to others.
Compare the details
Compare distance using the listing’s marker precision, alongside bedrooms, sleeping capacity, room type and licence type.
If a host’s listing already includes a licence number found in the register, Finch marks that as a direct reference instead.
READING THE RESULTS
What each label means
The host included a licence number that appears in the Council register. This confirms the number was found, not every detail of the listing.
No direct number was found, but the comparison selected this nearby licence as the best fit. Treat it as a lead to check.
Nearby licences were considered, but none looked like a good fit. This does not prove the listing is unlicensed.
No issued licence was found within the applicable search radius: 50 metres for an exact map position, or 200 metres for an approximate or unclassified one.
THE DATA
Sources and activity
Airbnb: Inside Airbnb’s Edinburgh snapshot; the latest listing record was scraped on an unknown date. For listings without an exact map position, we treat the location as anonymized by up to 150 metres and use a 200-metre candidate radius.
Location precision: Doorstep Analytics marks some Airbnb map positions as exact. We use a 50-metre search radius for these and 200 metres for approximate or unclassified positions.
Licences: City of Edinburgh Council’s short-term let register. Licence locations are looked up using the register’s UPRNs and Ordnance Survey OpenUPRN.
Active listings: A listing is active if it had a review in the year before the snapshot and had at least one available night in the next year. The listings page starts with active listings selected; use the activity filter to see the rest.
NOT 100%
Confidence and caveats
Confidence reflects how strongly the comparison favours a result. As a rough guide, 0.7 and above is a stronger signal; 0.4–0.7 is worth reviewing; below 0.4 is uncertain. A high score is not proof.
Closely matched candidates remain visible, and a licence number directly referenced by multiple listings is flagged for manual checking. Shared references can be legitimate, but each listing should be checked against the licence’s address and terms.
The data is static and refreshed through a build pipeline. Always check the source register for the latest official information.