Platforms and Tools for Hunting Housing in Paris

July 2026

Here I’ll show some of the tools I built to help with the apartment search, along with other resources I used as a student. This is aimed mainly at people coming to France from abroad for a master’s (like the MVA). From my position, since I wasn’t already in the French education system, many university resources aimed at helping students (reserved quotas) weren’t available to me, so what follows is what actually worked.

Public / subsidized residences

These tend to have the lowest prices.

Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP) — a cluster of about 40 “maisons,” many of them tied to a specific country or institution, which gives you priority if you match. Even if you don't, each house is required to keep at least 30% of its spots for residents of other nationalities, so you still have a real shot. You need to apply early (around April) to secure a spot. Prices range from €500–800; it's roughly 40 minutes from Saclay and 20 minutes from central Paris.

CROUS — Your university usually has some reserved slots, but priority is based mainly on your (or your parents') French tax household and financial situation, not just where you currently live. If you don't qualify there, you're left with whatever remains in the complementary phase, which works more or less first-come-first-served. To stay on top of this and get notified the moment a slot opens, I built this monitor: housing-monitor/crous_monitor. Prices range from €300–500; locations vary.

Césal — private residences subsidized by the government, similar to CROUS, with some slots reserved for specific universities and the same first-come-first-served policy. I built a monitor not only to check availability but also to book automatically the moment a spot opens — since most openings happen around 6pm, I added a “sniper” mode that checks and books every 10 seconds around that time. See housing-monitor/cesal_monitor. Prices range from €400–600; located on the Saclay plateau.

Fac-Habitat — private residences but quite affordable, around €500–600. Locations vary, but a couple are close to the Saclay plateau. I applied in early June and was put on a waiting list.

CLJT & ALJT — associations that also manage residences, with prices around €400–500. I submitted a request in June that's still being processed (as of late July).

ARPEJ — semi-private residences; you need an access code from your university to apply to most of them. There are several near the Saclay area, at around €400.

Associations that help with the search

Science Accueil — you need to be a PhD student, researcher, or Master's student at certain partner universities to use this service. It's free, and they help you by proposing individual listings from their own database, each request gets you around 20 listings that you contact directly. Because the service is exclusive to their network, response rates from landlords tend to be quite good.

Héberjeunes — a non-profit association (loi 1901) focused on housing near Paris-Saclay. Membership costs €8 a year, and they offer solid listings with a good contact rate, since you reach out to landlords directly. I built a bot that scrapes their site every hour and notifies me when new listings appear: housing-monitor/heberjeunes_monitor.

Free market websites

Pap.fr, Leboncoin, CASA (Université Paris-Saclay's own housing platform, aggregating CROUS, private, and partner listings for the area), Lokaviz (CROUS-run platform listing private landlords who rent to students), and ECLA Campus (a co-living option in Massy). I didn't get a great response rate on these, and prices seemed a bit higher than through the other resources above.