The 36 best hotels in New York for 2026: by budget
Where you sleep decides how the whole trip feels. These 36 hotels in New York are picked for the walk home, not the lobby photo, and they run from budget to worth-the-splurge. Every one is somewhere I'd book myself.
Check AvailabilityAce Hotel New York★ 4.1Laptops by day, DJs by night: the Ace more or less invented the modern hotel lobby as an office, and it still runs on taxidermy, mosaic floors and battered antique sofas. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel★ 4.5Almost every luxury hotel in New York leases its bars and restaurants to an outside operator; this one still runs its own, which is why it feels like the last of old New York. Directions
Check AvailabilityWythe Hotel★ 4.5 · $$$Brooklyn hospitality more or less starts here: a 117-year-old barrel factory on the Williamsburg waterfront, converted into 69 rooms that kept their original timber ceilings and look out at the Manhattan skyline across the river. Directions
Check AvailabilityArlo SoHo★ 4.2 · from $196Arlo SoHo is built on a trade: rooms of 150 sq ft, small even by New York standards, in exchange for drop-down desks, floor-to-ceiling glass and a stack of shared space downstairs. Directions
Check AvailabilityCrosby Street Hotel★ 4.6No two of the 86 rooms here are alike, running from 340 to 1,500 sq ft, each one dressed in the Firmdale maximalism that Kit and Tim Kemp brought to SoHo. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Ludlow Hotel★ 4.6Sean MacPherson's Lower East Side hotel is the benchmark other downtown places get measured against: factory casement windows, reclaimed beams, and bathtubs set by the window so you soak looking at the skyline. Directions
Check AvailabilityCIVILIAN Hotel★ 4.4 · from $147David Rockwell designs actual Broadway sets, and he built this one like a backstage: rooms styled as theatre dressing rooms, with archival production photographs running through the building. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Marlton Hotel★ 4.5 · From $254This landmark building on West 8th Street sits one block from Washington Square, restored into something that feels transplanted from Paris: herringbone floors, brass faucets, sconces shaped by hand. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad★ 4.4An entire José Andrés dining operation lives in this building: Zaytinya, Bazaar Meat, and Nubeluz on the 50th floor, where the views run 270 degrees across the city. Directions
Check AvailabilityAce Hotel Brooklyn★ 4.4 · From $200Roman and Williams dropped a Brutalist slab on the edge of residential Boerum Hill and modelled the rooms on Le Corbusier's Cabanon, spare and wood-lined, some with a turntable or a D'Angelico guitar in the corner. Directions
Check AvailabilityHI New York City Hostel★ 4.4 · $28-36The hostel people recommend rather than merely tolerate occupies a 19th-century Victorian mansion at 891 Amsterdam Ave, with a garden, a self-catering kitchen and a social calendar that actually runs. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Greenwich Hotel★ 4.6 · $$$In the basement, above the swimming pool, sits the most unexpected room in any New York hotel: a 250-year-old Japanese farmhouse, shipped over and rebuilt by Japanese craftsmen for Robert De Niro's Tribeca hotel. Directions
Check Availability11 Howard★ 3.8 · From $215A former Holiday Inn, gutted by Space Copenhagen and rebuilt into the most convincing Scandinavian hotel in New York: pale wood, low light, and a restraint you do not expect at a SoHo address. Directions
Check AvailabilityAman New York★ 4.4 · $2,400+All eighty-three rooms are suites, each with a working fireplace, and the spa runs across three floors and 25,000 sq ft. Directions
Check AvailabilityPod Times Square★ 4.1 · from $93665 tiny, tightly engineered rooms sit two blocks from Times Square, directly over the A/C/E and Port Authority, so the theatre district is a walk and everywhere else is one train. Directions
Check AvailabilityHampton Inn Brooklyn/Downtown★ 4.4 · from $125For a first-time visitor who wants a predictable clean room and a free hot breakfast, this is the boring answer and usually the correct one, listed from about $125. Directions
Check AvailabilityNine Orchard★ 4.7The century-old Jarmulowsky Bank, raised by an immigrant banker who made his money on these streets, has been gut-restored into 113 rooms that feel closer to apartments than to hotel rooms. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Wallace★ 4.7The Upper West Side has almost no modern boutique hotels, which is exactly what makes this one useful: it opened in October 2020, so the fittings are new rather than restored, and it sits on a quiet residential block within… Directions
Check AvailabilityRefinery Hotel★ 4.4Built in 1912 as a hat factory, the building kept its industrial bones through the conversion: columns, steel, high ceilings. Directions
Check AvailabilityWaldorf Astoria New York★ 4.4 · $$$$Eight years dark and a reported $2bn later, the Park Avenue giant reopened in July 2025 with its key count cut from roughly 1,400 rooms to 375, which leaves the guest rooms among the largest in Manhattan. Directions
Check AvailabilityWest Side YMCA★ 3.4 · from $60Guests get the run of a 65,000 sq ft gym with two indoor pools, which no budget hotel in the city matches, and the rooms are private singles and doubles rather than dorms. Directions
Check AvailabilityFreehand New York★ 4.1The old George Washington Hotel on Lexington Ave now holds the cheapest credible design hotel in Midtown South, and the real draw is upstairs: Broken Shaker, a James Beard finalist bar in its own right. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Roxy Hotel★ 4.4What you are really booking here is the basement and the ground floor: The Django, a Paris-style jazz club, and a 99-seat arthouse cinema running 35mm repertory, both inside the building. Directions
Check AvailabilityHotel Chelsea★ 4.7Dylan, Warhol and Patti Smith all lived at this Chelsea address, and the long restoration did not turn it into a museum piece: around 40 permanent residents still live here, with artwork left by earlier tenants hanging in the… Directions
Check AvailabilityPod Brooklyn★ 4.3 · from $86Consistently cheaper than the Manhattan Pods, 247 Metropolitan Ave drops you into the middle of Williamsburg's bars and restaurants, with four roof decks pointed back at the skyline, Bedford Ave six minutes' walk away and Union… Directions
Check AvailabilityHyatt House Jersey City★ 4.2 · from $95One Exchange Place stands 591 feet from the Exchange Place PATH station, and the PATH runs 24/7 to World Trade Center in five to ten minutes, which beats plenty of Manhattan hotel-to-sight commutes. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Local NYC★ 4.4Every room, dorm or private, comes with its own bathroom, which is not how hostels usually work and is most of the reason this is the best-designed one in the city. Directions
Check AvailabilityLIC Hotel★ 4.4 · from $99Nothing about it is charming, and that is the point: a plain, well-run, family-scale hotel one block from the subway, with free breakfast, a rooftop terrace and on-site parking at a fair price. Directions
Check AvailabilityRadio Hotel★ 3.8 · from $97Radio Hotel costs roughly half what the same room would below 96th St, and it is genuinely good: colourful, clean, modern, with a Dominican restaurant, Jalao, that locals eat in. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Lucerne Hotel★ 4.2 · from $185Two blocks from Central Park and one from the Natural History Museum, this landmarked 1904 Beaux-Arts building in red-plum brick offers rooms that are genuinely large by Manhattan standards, with rates listed from around $185. Directions
Check AvailabilityQ4 Hotel & Hostel★ 3.7 · from $40Probably the cheapest real bed in New York: four to six bed dorms that each come with a private bathroom and a locker, plus private ensuites, with listings seen from as low as $40. Directions
Check AvailabilityThe Leo House★ 4 · from $144A non-profit Catholic guesthouse founded in 1889, with 81 rooms, a free buffet breakfast, a garden and an open door to all faiths. Directions
Check AvailabilityNU Hotel Brooklyn★ 4.1 · from $107Smith Street is a working Brooklyn shopping strip rather than an office canyon, and the NU sits on it at number 85, in Boerum Hill, with 93 hardwood-floored rooms that reviewers call surprisingly spacious for the price, listed… Directions
Check AvailabilityHotel 31★ 4.1 · from $120Family-run and old-school, this walk-up between Lexington and Park has quietly stayed cheap while Murray Hill around it did not: rooms are plain but clean, the Empire State Building is a ten-minute walk, and the 6 train at 33rd… Directions
Check AvailabilityHotel 17★ 4 · from $99Hotel 31's sister property stands on a quiet residential block in Gramercy, near Stuyvesant Square and a few minutes from Union Square and the L, N, Q, R, 4, 5 and 6. Directions
Check AvailabilityWest Village Eurohostel★ 4.3 · from $98This is the old Jane Hotel, rebranded: a landmarked 1908 sailors' home on the Hudson where the cabins run 50 sq ft, ship-style, some with two-person bunks, and nothing else gets you a private door in the West Village from around… Directions
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