13 Best Holiday Home Websites in the UK & Ireland (2026)

Q: Are there many vacation rentals available across Great Britain?

Yes. Between the 13 platforms covered in our guide you're looking at well over a quarter of a million self-catering properties available to book across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Sykes alone has 22,000+, VRBO has well over 100,000, and Booking.com has tens of thousands of self-catering options sitting alongside its hotel inventory.

If you’re planning a trip in the UK or Ireland, you might be considering renting a holiday home. These self-catering options can give you a home-away-from-home experience, usually coming with a range of amenities that you wouldn’t always find in a hotel: a kitchen, a lounge, a dining area, a private terrace, maybe even a washing machine and a hot tub.

A holiday cottage can be a lovely way to have a more private and self-contained trip. The format works just as well for a romantic escape as a couple, a fun family trip, or an adventure with friends. Jess and I have been booking self-catering stays in the UK and Ireland for over a decade, from a Sykes cottage in Cornwall to a Booking.com place in Dorset back in March 2024, and we’ve used a wide spread of platforms to find them.

Holiday cottages and homes are available across the UK and Ireland and cover a vast array of budgets and sizes, from compact city-centre studio apartments in London and Dublin through to sprawling mansions in the countryside. They also span styles, from rustic accommodation through to holiday villas with pools, hot tubs, tennis courts and more. There are pet-friendly options, family-friendly cottages, and large country retreats for a group gathering.

In this post we’re going to share our favourite websites for finding and booking holiday homes in the UK and Ireland, with a curated comparison of 13 platforms we use and recommend in 2026. We’ll help you decide which one to click first for your specific need: luxury, rural, Ireland-specific, last-minute, or just plain good all-rounder.

Quick verdict, which UK and Ireland holiday-home website should you click first? For an all-round option that’s hard to fault, Sykes Holiday Cottages wins on breadth and consistency, with over 22,000 self-catering stays across the UK and Ireland.

If you care more about curation than scale, Plum Guide vets to the top 3% of homes across 40+ destinations globally.

Imagine Ireland is the long-established Ireland-only specialist for stays in either the Republic or Northern Ireland.

For rural retreats specifically, Rural Retreats has close to 1,000 hand-picked country properties and a Which? Recommended Provider badge for the fifth year running.

For last-minute deals, Snaptrip aggregates around 60,000 holiday cottages from the other providers on this list and guarantees the lowest price.

If none of those quite fit, the full comparison below covers eight more platforms, from boutique villa specialists (Oliver’s Travels) to giant aggregators (Booking.com, VRBO) and everything in between.

Table of Contents:

The Best Holiday Home Websites in the UK and Ireland

Below are our favourite holiday-home rental websites for the UK and Ireland. They span a wide variety of properties, from city getaways to remote rural escapes, and they cover every budget bracket between them.

Some are UK-only or Ireland-only specialists, others have a more global reach but include strong UK and Irish coverage. We’ve used most of these ourselves and can point to specific stays where they delivered. We hope you find one that works for you.

Sykes Holiday Cottages

Sykes Holiday Cottages are one of the best-known holiday cottage companies in the UK and Ireland, and they’ve won multiple awards for their service and brand. They have over 22,000 self-catering stays across the UK and Ireland as of 2026, with a clear focus on character cottages perfect for a getaway.

So whether it’s a cottage with a hot tub, a dog-friendly cottage, a luxury bolthole, or a large place for a big group, Sykes should have something to suit. Jess and I rented a cottage in Cornwall from Sykes for a week and had a lovely stay with no issues. Cornwall is one of the most competitive holiday-cottage markets in the country, so a smooth booking through a major platform there is a decent stress-test.

Pricing runs the full range from under £300 a week to in excess of £15,000 a week, so whatever your budget, we’re sure you’ll find something to suit.

Company headquarters: Cheshire, UK
Number of property listings: 22,000+ in the UK and Ireland
Geographical availability: UK and Ireland only
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Snaptrip

If you’re planning a getaway in the UK or Ireland, then we think Snaptrip should be one of the websites you check. With around 60,000 properties pulled together from across the UK and Ireland, they have a huge amount of choice.

That isn’t the main reason we recommend them. Snaptrip is a little different to the other holiday rental websites on our list. They focus on last-minute getaways, and rather than listing their own properties, they search the top providers in the UK and Ireland (many of them on this list) for the best deals.

The result is a huge choice paired with consistent quality, and they guarantee the lowest price. If you find the same property available at a lower price elsewhere, they’ll refund the difference. They also let you book properties well in advance if you prefer to plan ahead, although the headline strength of Snaptrip is the last-minute window.

With so many properties available, the price range varies. Properties can be rented from under £200 a week to in excess of £10,000 a week, and they range from cute far-flung cottages to extravagant castles. If you’re struggling to find a holiday home elsewhere and need a last-minute rental, Snaptrip is often the answer.

Company headquarters: Hatfield, UK
Number of property listings: 60,000+, primarily in the UK and Ireland
Geographical availability: UK and Europe
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Plum Guide

Many of the websites in our list focus primarily on rural or country cottages. Plum Guide covers a slightly broader range of categories, with an impressive collection of properties that range from ultra-luxurious city-centre apartments through to remote Scottish castles.

What we like about Plum Guide is how selective they are. Their team accepts only the top 3% of homes onto the platform, meaning every property has been vetted against a strict set of standards. They have fewer total listings than some competitors, but they tend to have some of the highest-quality options we’ve seen anywhere in the curated-rental space.

As of 2026, Plum Guide has over 30,000 vetted homes across 40+ destinations globally, with strong UK coverage and a smaller selection in Ireland. This is a broader footprint than they had a few years ago. They’ve grown from a UK-anchored curator to a global one, but the vetting standard hasn’t dropped.

Pricing is firmly in the mid-range to luxury category, depending on the property. A week’s stay typically ranges from around £500 to over £60,000. You can filter by hot tubs, gym facilities, lift access, parking, and fast WiFi is standard at every property.

You can read our detailed Plum Guide review over on Independent Travel Cats for more on the service and our experiences using it.

Company headquarters: London, England, UK
Number of property listings: 30,000+ globally; strong UK coverage
Geographical availability: 40+ destinations globally
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland (smaller Irish selection)
Pricing: Mid-range to luxury
Book UK holiday homes online: Book here

VRBO UK

With well over 100,000 holiday lettings to choose from across the UK and Ireland, VRBO UK has no shortage of choice. VRBO is part of Expedia Group, which runs a number of brands in the vacation rental space across a wide global footprint.

In the UK, we recommend using the VRBO UK site as it’s specifically focused on the UK market. The range covers everything from farm cottages and apartments through to stately homes and castles. The filter set is useful too, letting you narrow by amenities, distance to the sea, accessibility features, and more.

Pricing varies from under £300 a week through to over £10,000 a week. VRBO is a particularly strong option if you want the breadth of a global player with a UK-specific interface, although the property pool is less hand-picked than the boutique platforms on this list.

Company headquarters: Texas, USA
Number of property listings: Well over 100,000 across the UK and Ireland
Geographical availability: 190+ countries
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Holidaycottages.co.uk

Focusing entirely on the UK and Ireland, and with a collection of around 16,000 hand-picked properties, Holidaycottages.co.uk is an excellent choice if you want a wide range of personally-inspected properties to choose from.

They’ve been helping travellers find properties in the UK since 1989, and they have an extensive range of options across the budget spectrum. From great-value cottages through to luxurious mansions with pool, hot tub and tennis court, there’s something to suit.

One thing worth mentioning: Holidaycottages.co.uk is part of the Travel Chapter group, which became a certified B Corp in 2024. If sustainability credentials and responsible-tourism commitments matter to you, that B Corp certification is the kind of independently-audited signal that’s hard to fake.

Prices vary depending on the property, from around £350 a week up to in excess of £10,000. You can also filter properties based on your requirements, be that WiFi access, four-poster beds, hot tubs or nearby amenities.

Company headquarters: Devon, UK
Number of property listings: Around 16,000 across the UK and Ireland
Geographical availability: UK and Ireland
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Sustainability: B Corp certified via parent Travel Chapter (since 2024)
Book UK holiday homes online: Book here

Rural Retreats

Rural Retreats exclusively lists holiday homes in the UK and Republic of Ireland, so you know they know the market. They have close to 1,000 properties on their site, and as the name suggests, the focus is firmly on rural properties where you can get away from it all.

That said, they do have a small selection of city flats as well, so don’t discount them for a city break.

Rural Retreats has been helping customers find properties since 1985, and they know the rural areas well. They have properties across the UK and Ireland, at a range of prices and sizes to suit all types of travellers, from shepherd’s huts to castles. Worth knowing: they’ve been a Which? Recommended Provider for UK Holiday Cottages for the fifth year running, which is a useful independent third-party signal of consistency.

Properties span cosy enough for two to spacious enough for groups of 20+. Pricing varies accordingly, from around £450 a week up to £10,000+, depending on the size of property, time of year, and amenities.

Company headquarters: Gloucestershire, UK
Number of property listings: Close to 1,000
Geographical availability: UK and Ireland only
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Mid-range to luxury
Independent rating: Which? Recommended Provider (fifth year running)
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Oliver’s Travels

Oliver’s Travels has properties in destinations across the world, with a curated luxury collection of holiday cottages, villas and castles across Britain and Ireland. They focus on character properties and luxury villas, with most stays positioned in the higher-end bracket.

For their UK and Ireland properties there’s a definite focus on top-end stays, although they do have some smaller mid-range options. If you’re looking for a castle or a spectacular manor house to rent for a week, this is the platform that will most reliably surface them. Their vetting tilts toward “would you tell your friends about this place?” rather than “does it meet a checklist?”, which means the misses are rarer than on the bigger aggregators.

Pricing ranges from around £450 a week through to in excess of £100,000. With such large properties available, Oliver’s Travels is a strong option if you’re looking to rent a villa for a big group.

With numerous awards and positive customer feedback about the Oliver’s Travels experience, this is a site worth considering for your next villa rental.

Company headquarters: London, UK
Number of property listings: Curated luxury collection (smaller than mass-market platforms, quality-led)
Geographical availability: Worldwide
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Primarily mid-range to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy

You’re probably familiar with the Marriott brand of hotels. What you might not know is that they also have a wide range of private properties available through their Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy platform.

Globally, the program covers around 183,000 properties across 10,000 destinations as of 2025, with a curated UK and Ireland selection that ranges from bungalows through to opulent chalets. Every home on the platform is professionally managed by a premium property management company, so what you book is what you get. Fast WiFi, professional cleaning, 24/7 support and premium linens are standard.

The big draw for many travellers is Marriott Bonvoy points. Members earn and redeem points on all stays at the properties, so if you’ve been collecting Bonvoy points on hotel stays, you can spend them on a self-catering holiday too. That’s a useful angle if you travel for work and have a points balance burning a hole in your wallet.

Pricing ranges from around £350 a week up to in excess of £20,000 a week for the larger castle properties. Properties can be filtered by accessibility, hot tub, pet policies, and even whether butler service is offered.

Company headquarters: Maryland, USA
Number of property listings: ~183,000 globally as of 2025; UK and Ireland selection
Geographical availability: 10,000 destinations across 45+ countries
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Loyalty programme: Earn and redeem Marriott Bonvoy points
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Interhome

Founded in Switzerland in 1965, Interhome has decades of experience helping travellers book holiday homes around the world. As of 2026 they offer around 40,000 holiday apartments and houses across more than 20 countries, with a UK and Ireland selection that covers city-centre apartments, rural cottages, chalets and full-size holiday homes.

Properties accommodate group sizes ranging from solo travellers to over 20 in a single booking. The filter system is usefully granular, letting you search by fireplaces, saunas, jacuzzis, distance from the sea, golf-course proximity, or hiking-trail access. Useful if you’re booking for a specific activity rather than a general getaway.

Pricing varies from under £300 a week through to over £5,000 a week.

Company headquarters: Zurich, Switzerland
Number of property listings: ~40,000 globally; UK and Ireland selection
Geographical availability: 20+ countries
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Imagine Ireland

If you’re heading to Ireland, you might want to use a company that focuses exclusively on the island. Covering both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, Imagine Ireland has hundreds of Irish self-catering properties to choose from.

A note on ownership for transparency: Imagine Ireland now operates under the Shamrock Cottages brand within the Travel Chapter group, which also owns Holidaycottages.co.uk earlier in this list. The two are run as separate brands with different focuses (Ireland-only versus UK and Ireland), but they’re part of the same corporate family.

City breaks in Dublin or Belfast, country breaks in rural County Kerry, road trips along the Wild Atlantic Way: there’s something to suit. Properties range from apartments through cottages to castles, with options for small couples up to large family groups. Pricing covers a wide range, from under £300 a week to over £4,000. You can search across a variety of property styles and filter based on your requirements.

Company headquarters: Yorkshire, England (part of Travel Chapter group)
Number of property listings: Hundreds across Ireland
Geographical availability: Ireland
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Airbnb

It would be hard to do a round-up of holiday rental accommodation without mentioning Airbnb. Although Airbnb is one of the younger companies on the list, it’s the company that really made home-sharing popular, and it remains the market leader globally for short-let home rentals.

Airbnb has a huge variety of properties across the UK and Ireland: from a room in someone’s house through to renting an entire Scottish castle. Yurts, treehouses, houseboats, country estates. If it can be slept in, it’s probably on Airbnb. With so much choice, finding the right place can be a bit overwhelming, although the filter set has improved over the years.

For a deeper look at how Airbnb compares to similar services (and our recommended alternatives), see our guide to Airbnb alternatives.

Company headquarters: California, USA
Geographical availability: 191 countries
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Cottages.com

Cottages.com has over 18,000 properties available across the UK, with everything on their books from coastal retreats to country castles. Worth flagging that their footprint has narrowed in recent years. The platform used to include Ireland, France and Italy, but as of 2026 their focus is firmly UK-only self-catering.

One feature we particularly like is how granular the filtering system is. If you’re going away for Christmas, for example, you can search for properties that are specially decorated for the festive period. There are also filters for hot tubs, pet policies, and parking, plus a useful interactive map.

With a wide choice of properties to suit all budgets, group sizes and tastes, you’ll likely find something that fits. Pricing varies from under £300 a week to in excess of £20,000 a week.

Company headquarters: Lancashire, UK
Number of property listings: Over 18,000 across the UK
Geographical availability: UK only (recently narrowed from UK/Ireland/France/Italy)
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

Booking.com

When you think of booking.com, you probably think of hotels. The popular accommodation website offers a great deal more than hotels though, with categories including villas, apartments, cottages and even glamping sites available to book.

In the UK and Ireland they have tens of thousands of holiday-rental-style properties available to book, across a wide range of styles and price points. Jess and I booked a lovely cottage in Dorset through Booking.com in March 2024 for a few days away, and the experience was as smooth as any hotel booking. Same Booking.com Genius discounts applied, same one-click cancellation policy where the property allowed it, same review database we already trusted from hotel stays.

Pricing ranges from under £200 for a week’s stay to in excess of £15,000 for the larger properties. If you’re looking for a holiday rental specifically rather than a hotel, the easiest path is to use the property-type filter on the search results. That strips out everything except the self-catering inventory.

Company headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Number of property listings: Tens of thousands of self-catering options across the UK and Ireland
Geographical availability: 225 countries
Areas of the UK and Ireland covered: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Pricing: Budget to luxury
Book holiday homes online: Book here

What we’ve learned booking holiday homes in the UK and Ireland

Over the years of booking holiday homes through a mix of these platforms, a few practical lessons have stuck with us. None of these are deal-breakers, but they’re the kind of thing that’s easier to know in advance than to discover at check-in.

Cleaning fees and deposits vary wildly across the platforms. Some quote a clean all-in price, others tack on £80-150 of cleaning fees and a refundable damage deposit only at the final booking screen. Always check the total before you click pay, especially on the boutique platforms where the cleaning fee can be a meaningful chunk of a short stay’s headline price.

School-holiday pricing is brutal, and shoulder seasons reward you. A cottage that runs £700 a week in October can hit £2,200 a week in mid-August. Late September and early October in particular tend to give you proper holiday weather (especially in Cornwall and the South Coast) for half the August price, and the platforms are noticeably less busy.

Remote-property check-in needs more planning than you’d think. Many of the rural cottages we’ve stayed in use a lockbox code that the host emails the day before arrival. Mobile signal in rural Wales, the Scottish Highlands and the West of Ireland is patchy though, so we now make a habit of saving the check-in details, the property address and any directions offline before we set off. Avoids a wet evening hunting for a signal in a layby.

Three-star reviews are more useful than five-star ones. Professional property photography can flatter a tired interior. The 3-star reviews tend to be honest about what to expect (slow drainage, lumpy mattress, dated decor) where the 5-star reviews can read as generic praise. We scan them first.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the best holiday home website for the UK? For breadth of inventory across the whole UK and Ireland, Sykes Holiday Cottages is hard to beat: over 22,000 self-catering stays, decades of experience, and consistent filters. If you care more about curation than scale, Plum Guide vets to the top 3% globally and has a strong UK presence. Both make the Quick Verdict above for different reasons.

Are there platforms specialising in high-end holiday rentals in Ireland? Yes. Imagine Ireland is the long-established Ireland-only specialist (covering both the Republic and Northern Ireland) and includes high-end options alongside its mid-market stock. For full luxury (castles, manor houses, large group villas), Oliver’s Travels has the strongest curated Irish portfolio. Plum Guide also has a smaller selection of vetted Irish properties.

Are there many vacation rentals available across Great Britain? Yes. Between the 13 platforms in this article you’re looking at well over a quarter of a million self-catering properties available to book across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Sykes alone has 22,000+, VRBO has well over 100,000, and Booking.com has tens of thousands of self-catering options sitting alongside its hotel inventory. The challenge is choosing between platforms, not finding availability.

Can I find pet-friendly holiday cottages in the UK and Ireland? Yes. Sykes, Holidaycottages.co.uk and Rural Retreats all have dedicated pet-friendly filters and substantial pet-friendly inventory. Most platforms in this list let you filter by pet policy at the search step, which is much easier than working through a long list checking each property individually.

Sykes vs Booking.com, which is better for cottages? Sykes is the better choice if you specifically want a self-catering cottage experience: every property is a holiday let, the filters are cottage-shaped, and the customer service team is geared around self-catering stays. Booking.com works well if you might want to mix and match (a cottage for the weekend, a hotel midweek) under one familiar booking experience, and the Genius loyalty discounts can be useful if you book accommodation regularly.

What’s the cheapest site for last-minute UK cottages? Snaptrip is specifically built around last-minute deals and guarantees the lowest price. If you find the same property cheaper elsewhere, they refund the difference. They aggregate inventory from many of the other providers on this list, so they’re a useful first stop for a window of “we want to get away next weekend, anywhere will do”.

The Best Holiday Home Websites in the UK & Ireland (2026)