Tools
We pay for every one of these. Nothing on this page is here because somebody pitched us. Where we could negotiate you a discount or free credits, we did, and it is listed with the link.
Before you buy anything
If you do not own a property yet, you need exactly one of these, and it is AirDNA. The other three solve problems you do not have until there are guests in the house. Buying a pricing tool before you own a door is the most common money waste we see.
The stack
Short-term rental market data. What comparable properties in a market actually earn, what they charge, and how booked they stay. This is where the revenue projection in our deal analyzer comes from, which makes it the one tool you need before you own anything.
We will not underwrite a deal without it. Guessing at revenue is how people end up with a cabin that costs them money every month.
Use it for: validating a market, pulling revenue comps, sanity checking a listing before you tour it.
Our property management software, and the single tool I would keep if I had to delete the rest. One inbox for Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and direct bookings, so you are not checking four apps.
The AI guest messaging handles roughly 90 percent of guest questions in your voice, which is the difference between owning a rental and being owned by one. Reviews go out automatically, calendars sync, and the cleaner and team workflows mean nothing falls through on a turnover day. You can also launch a direct booking site in an afternoon without a developer.
Use it for: guest messaging, channel sync, automated reviews, cleaner scheduling, direct bookings. And if you decide you do not want to self-manage at all, Hospitable will match you with a top rated property manager.
Dynamic pricing. It adjusts your nightly rate against real demand instead of leaving you to guess, and it is the reason our revenue holds up in shoulder season instead of falling off a cliff. Set your base and minimum prices, then review weekly rather than daily.
The honest caveat is that this is not set and forget. It is a tool that rewards someone who checks it. If you will never look at it, you will not get the lift.
Use it for: nightly rate automation, minimum stay rules, seasonality, gap night filling.
$10 in credits, a 30 day free trial of dynamic pricing, 1 market dashboard, and 2 revenue estimator tokens
Try PriceLabsBenefits apply after you connect a listing.
Cleaner scheduling and turnover management. It assigns cleans off your booking calendar, handles checklists and photo proof, and gives you a marketplace to find a cleaner when yours quits on a Friday in July. Which will happen.
It is also where we found both of our cleaners, and where you can read their reviews from other hosts before you hire. The timestamps it keeps on cleaner check in and check out are the same records you need to prove material participation at tax time, so it quietly does two jobs at once.
Use it for: automatic clean scheduling, cleaner payments, turnover checklists, backup cleaners, and the cleaner hours log you will want in April.
25 percent off a paid plan, or $50 off your third clean on the free plan
Try TurnoFree plan available. The discount applies once you connect a listing.
On the price of AirDNA
I remember staring at that number and thinking there was no way I was paying a few hundred dollars a year for a data subscription. So I understand the reaction completely.
But hold it up against the decision it is informing. If you are doing rental arbitrage, you are putting somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000 into a unit before your first guest checks in. If you are buying, the property is probably $350,000 or more. Against either of those numbers, the subscription rounds to nothing.
What it buys you is the difference between knowing what a market earns and hoping. I have watched people skip it, trust a revenue number an agent gave them, and end up feeding a mortgage every month out of their own paycheck. That mistake costs more in one quarter than the subscription costs in a decade.
It is not a software expense. It is the cheapest line item in the entire deal.
Do not buy the stack yet
Get the free guides, figure out your strategy and your capital, and come back to this page when you are under contract. The tools are the easy part.