Bed bugs are extremely common. Some pest control companies report receiving 50 times more bed bug calls than they did before the resurgence that began in the late 1990s, and infestations show no signs of slowing down. The insects have spread to every U.S. state and most countries worldwide, thriving in homes, hotels, offices, and public transit.
Where Bed Bugs Are Most Common
Bed bugs concentrate in large, densely populated cities where people live in close proximity and travel frequently. In 2025, the five worst cities for bed bugs in the United States were Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland-Akron, Los Angeles, and Dallas-Fort Worth, based on the number of professional treatments performed. Rounding out the top ten were Atlanta, Houston, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Indianapolis.
The pattern is consistent: major metro areas with high population density, busy airports, and large numbers of multi-unit apartment buildings dominate the rankings year after year. But bed bugs aren’t limited to big cities. They turn up in suburban and rural communities too, carried home by travelers or arriving in secondhand furniture.
Housing Type Makes a Big Difference
Apartments and condos face a much higher risk than single-family homes. Research from Purdue University found that multi-unit apartment buildings are more susceptible to both rapid spread and chronic, recurring infestations. The reason is simple: bed bugs travel through wall voids, electrical outlets, and shared plumbing chases. One infested unit can seed neighboring apartments without anyone realizing it for weeks. In warm climates, infestation rates in some apartment complexes have reached nearly 100%.
If you live in a single-family home, your risk is lower but not zero. Bed bugs still arrive on luggage, used furniture, or clothing. The difference is that reintroduction from a neighboring unit isn’t a factor, so a single successful treatment is more likely to resolve the problem for good.
Why Bed Bugs Made a Comeback
Bed bugs were nearly eradicated in the developed world by the mid-20th century, largely through widespread DDT use. Their dramatic return over the past two decades comes down to three factors working together.
First, global travel exploded. More flights, more hotel stays, and more movement between cities gives bed bugs constant opportunities to hitch rides to new locations. Second, urbanization intensified. More people living in densely packed housing means more warm bodies in close quarters, which is exactly what bed bugs need to thrive. Third, and most critically, bed bugs evolved resistance to the pesticides designed to kill them. They are now resistant to most major classes of insecticides, including pyrethroids, the chemicals most commonly used against them. Lab testing on colonies collected from homes in Kentucky, Ohio, California, Florida, and Virginia found resistance levels thousands of times higher than what’s needed to kill non-resistant populations. Some colonies showed zero mortality even at the highest pesticide concentrations tested.
There’s even evidence that physical treatments are losing effectiveness. Diatomaceous earth, a powder that kills insects by drying them out, appears less effective against some bed bug populations that have evolved greater resistance to desiccation.
Where You’re Likely to Encounter Them
Bed bugs are primarily a residential pest. Your home and hotel rooms are the most likely places you’ll run into them. But the EPA has documented individual bed bugs and small infestations in theaters, offices, public transit, schools, after-care facilities, and restaurants. These public sightings don’t usually represent established infestations. Instead, a bug falls off someone’s clothing or bag and ends up on a seat or in a crack. The real risk is carrying one home, where it can establish a breeding population in your mattress or furniture.
Hotels and motels remain a primary transfer point. Even high-end properties get bed bugs regularly because the insects don’t discriminate based on cleanliness. They care about access to sleeping humans, nothing else.
Seasonal Peaks in Activity
Bed bug activity peaks between June and October, driven almost entirely by summer travel. More vacations mean more hotel stays, more luggage moving between locations, and more opportunities for bed bugs to spread. Interestingly, pest control companies often see their highest call volumes in winter. That lag exists because it takes weeks or months for a few hitchhiking bugs to reproduce enough for people to notice bites and spot the signs of an infestation.
What Treatment Costs
Professional treatment is expensive, which adds to the burden of how widespread these insects have become. Chemical treatments typically cost $270 to $775 per room. Heat treatments, which raise the temperature of your home high enough to kill bugs and eggs, run $1 to $3 per square foot. For a typical apartment, that can mean $1,000 to $3,000 or more, and some infestations require multiple rounds of treatment. Multi-unit buildings face even steeper costs because adjacent units often need to be treated simultaneously to prevent reinfestations from untreated neighbors.
The combination of pesticide resistance, increasing urbanization, and constant global travel means bed bug numbers are likely to remain high. They are not a sign of poor hygiene or neglect. They are an adaptable parasite that has evolved to exploit exactly how modern humans live and move.