It is an extremely adaptable species, found in a range of habitats including shrubland, rocky areas, salt marshes, coastal areas, cliffs, caves, on stone walls in agricultural areas, and it is common in urban environments, including inside buildings. The females lay two to three clutches per year of one to two eggs.

In the European region, this species occurs (apparently as a long-naturalised non-native species, presumably introduced in antiquity) in southwestern Portugal, southern and eastern Spain (and as a historical introduction to the Canary Islands), southern France, much of coastal Italy, and coastal Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, southern Montenegro, southeast through the Balkans to western Albania and most of Greece, as well as European Türkiye. It has been recently introduced to Serbia (Urošević et al. in prep.). It is found on numerous islands in the Mediterranean, including the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Crete and Cyprus, and many smaller islands in the Tyrrhenian, Adriatic and Aegean Seas. This is a lowland species, typically occurring below 300 m, that is occasionally found up to 1,200 m asl (Speybroeck et al. 2016), and can be be found in higher altitudes in warm Mediterranean islands such as Cyprus, where 1,600 m asl -  is reported in www.herpatlas.cy.

This species occurs throughout the Mediterranean Basin, probably as a result of human-assisted dispersal from an origin in the Levant (Moravec et al. 2011). It has also been introduced to North America, from which it was first recorded in 1910 and where it is now known from more than 15 US States (Dallas et al. 2022). In mainland Asia it is found in western and southern Türkiye (coastal zones, as far inland as Afyon, with an isolated population at Samsun on the north coast), and western Syria. Records from Jordan, Israel and Lebanon represent other species (Moravec et al. 2011), however, the occurrence of the Mediterranean house gecko in Sinai suggests that it may occur in or have been introduced to the intervening countries. In mainland Africa it is found from in northern areas of Morocco and Tunisia (Moravec et al. 2011).

It is listed on Annex III of the Bern Convention and is present in a number of protected areas. Further taxonomic studies on this species are needed for parts of the global range.