The short version
Both are competent, well funded, well built platforms. Both are quote based on pricing for any serious portfolio, which means you finish the demo before you find out the cost. Both are built primarily for the US market. If you manage 100 plus units and want an enterprise machine, Guesty is the stronger fit. If you want the safer, better reviewed all rounder, Hostaway. If you run 5 to 50 properties and resent paying enterprise prices for a product built by software engineers rather than property people, well, you can guess what we built and why.
Guesty: the enterprise machine
Guesty is impressive on a demo. Slick, deep, clearly built with serious money behind it. The automation engine, unified inbox and multi calendar are genuinely strong, and reviewers consistently praise the message automation. Operators who’ve scaled from 10 units to 350 on it exist and they’re happy.
But two things put me off enough that Guesty is genuinely part of the reason HelloHosty exists.
The first is how they sell. When I demoed, you could not find a price anywhere on their website. That has partly changed. Their Lite plan now has published pricing, starting at $9 per listing per month on a pay as you go basis, though that one takes a 1% cut of every reservation on top. But Lite caps out at 3 listings. The Pro tier, the one anyone reading this actually needs, is still quote only. You sit through a sales call, they scope out your business, and then you get a number. Third party research puts real world Pro costs for a 5 to 50 unit operator at roughly $40 to $72 per listing per month once the extras land. And the extras do land. Onboarding fees reported between $300 and $1,500. An owner portal add on around $5 to $10 per listing. An accounting module at $100 to $300 a month. Annual renewal increases of 5 to 8 percent. Reviewers note the fees are usually in the contract somewhere, just not clearly communicated while they’re selling to you.
Ask yourself what it says about a company that won’t tell you the price until they’ve had a look at you first.
The second is the percentage of revenue model that appears in parts of their pricing. I’ll be blunt about this because it’s a point of principle. Software should charge for how useful it is, not for how well your business is doing. The product Guesty gives me is identical to the product they give the operator down the road who earns half what I do. Charging us differently based on turnover isn’t pricing, it’s taxation. A flat fee per property is honest. A skim off your revenue is not something I’d ever accept from a software vendor, and it’s not something we’d ever do to our own customers.
One more thing worth knowing. Guesty has grown substantially through acquisition, buying up MyVR, Your Porter, Rentals United and others over the years. That’s a legitimate strategy and it expands the feature list fast. But critics argue it creates a stitched together system where the pieces don’t always feel like one product. My read from the demo was the same: a business empire more than a tool built ground up by people who’ve done linen runs.
Hostaway: the reviews darling
Hostaway is the better liked of the two, and it isn’t close. Around 4.8 from over 1,500 Capterra reviews against Guesty’s 4.4, and a Trustpilot full of onboarding staff being thanked by name. The platform covers the same ground: 60 plus channel integrations, automation, direct bookings, payments, reporting. The consensus is a strong, scalable all rounder.
But read past the star rating and the same themes keep surfacing. No public pricing here either, quote based per portfolio, with third party estimates around $25 to $50 per listing per month depending on volume and contract. A one time setup fee, commonly reported between $300 and $1,000. A 1% application fee on payments processed through Stripe. A 1.8% guest service fee on bookings through their booking engine. Dynamic pricing as a paid add on. The website builder locked behind an upsell. And a recurring complaint that the brilliant support you get during the sales process isn’t always the support you get once you’ve signed, with some users reporting the 24/7 phone line ringing out and tickets sitting escalated for days.
None of that makes Hostaway a bad product. It makes it a product where the sticker price and the real price are different numbers, and you only learn the real one from the inside.
What they actually cost, side by side
Prices below are from independent third party research and operator reports, correct as of July 2026. Neither company publishes a full price list, which is rather the point of this table existing.
| Guesty | Hostaway | |
|---|---|---|
| Public pricing | Lite only, up to 3 listings, from $9 to $29 per listing per month | None, quote based |
| Typical real cost, 5 to 50 units | $40 to $72 per listing per month | $25 to $50 per listing per month |
| Setup or onboarding fee | $300 to $1,500 reported | $300 to $1,000 reported |
| Revenue based charges | 1% per reservation on Lite pay as you go, 2 to 3.5% on direct bookings reported on Pro | 1% Stripe application fee, 1.8% booking engine fee |
| Common paid add ons | Owner portal, accounting module, some integrations | Dynamic pricing, website builder tier, SMS |
| Free trial | Lite only | No |
For context, HelloHosty publishes every price on the website, charges a flat fee, and onboarding and support are free. Operators who’ve switched to us from these platforms at the smaller end of the market tell us they were paying many multiples of our price for a broadly similar core product. Make of the comparison what you will, that’s your job as the reader of a page written by a competitor.
Who should honestly buy what
Buy Guesty if you’re at genuine enterprise scale, 100 plus units, multiple brands, a team that needs granular permissions and an API, and you have someone whose actual job is administering the PMS. At that size the machine earns its complexity and its cost.
Buy Hostaway if you want the mainstream safe choice with the biggest review footprint, you’re comfortable negotiating your own quote, and you’d rather predictable per listing pricing than a percentage model. Especially if you’re US based, because both of these platforms are American first in their integrations and assumptions.
And look elsewhere, whether at us or at others, if you run 5 to 50 properties and the words setup fee, quote only and paid add on make your eye twitch. You’re the customer both of these companies find least profitable to serve properly, which is exactly why we stopped waiting for someone to serve operators like us properly and built it ourselves. A team of property people and engineers in the same room, arguing until the product worked the way a real portfolio needs it to.
The bottom line
I didn’t reject Guesty and Hostaway because they’re bad software. They’re not. I rejected them because of what the buying experience told me about how they see operators like me: as a revenue line to be scoped on a sales call, not a customer to be given a straight price. Fifteen years of running flats has made me allergic to hidden costs, and we priced our product the way I wished someone had priced theirs.
If you want to see the difference, our pricing is on the website. No demo required to find out what you’d pay. Although we’d love to show you around anyway.
Part two is now live: Guesty vs Hospitable
Pricing sources: independent reviews and operator reports from Capterra, G2, Trustpilot and third party pricing research, July 2026. If you spot a number that’s gone stale, tell us and we’ll update the table. That’s a standing promise for this page.