Published October 2026. Every price below was read from the vendor’s own pricing page in October 2026, or marked reported where the vendor does not publish one. We run short term rentals in London and built one of the tools on this list, so read the Hello Hosty entry knowing that. The one to one comparisons are separate: Guesty vs Hostaway, Hostaway vs Hospitable, and what Hostaway’s quote really comes to in Hostaway pricing explained (2026).
The short version
- Hostaway is a good product with a sales process built for 50 plus properties: a quote instead of a price, a reported $500 onboarding fee, an annual contract by default and a demo before you can touch it. If you run 5 to 50 properties, that is usually what sends you looking.
- Hello Hosty: a published flat price of $24, $17 and $12 per property, a direct booking website on your own domain included, no setup fee, a 14 day trial you start yourself. We built it, for exactly this gap.
- Hospitable: the best automation for 1 to 5 properties and a free plan to start on, but the per property add ons and the 4% plus 3% direct booking fee make it dearer than it looks by 20.
- Guesty: the enterprise option. Guesty Lite is published for 1 to 3 listings; Guesty Pro is a quote with a reported $40 to $72 per listing and a reported $300 to $1,500 onboarding fee. Right at 50 plus with a team, wrong below it.
- Lodgify: website first. Published prices, 0% booking fee on every plan since mid 2026, a 7 day trial, reported $231 a month for 10 listings on Professional.
- Uplisting: simple and UK based, £16 a listing on Operator with a £90 floor, £13 on Manager with a £208 floor, a 14 day trial and no booking commission.
- Smoobu: the European budget choice at €28 for one unit and €9.60 for each extra, 0% booking fee on the prepaid plan, custom quote above 20.
- Hostfully: $15 or $25 per property plus an unpublished platform fee; the cheaper plan adds a 1% gateway fee and a 0.85% direct booking fee. Strong guidebooks, demo rather than trial.
- OwnerRez: the US owner operator favourite. $88 for 5 properties, $127 for 10 and $196 for 20 on its calculator, no booking fees, 14 day trial, with property management and websites as paid add ons.
Why people look for a Hostaway alternative
It is rarely the software. Hostaway’s channel manager, inbox and automations are mature, it connects to 200 plus tools, it answers the phone around the clock, and 1,623 Capterra reviewers give it 4.8. The valuation passed $1 billion in October 2025 and the product shows it.
What sends people to Google is the commercial wrapper. Hostaway does not publish a price; its pricing page is a quote form with bands from 0 to 1 listing up to 200 plus, and the number you get back is reported at $15 to $50 per listing per month depending on your size and your negotiating, typically $25 to $40 for 5 to 50 properties. There is a reported $500 onboarding fee, which Hostaway itself cites on its comparison pages. The default contract is annual, with month to month reported at 10% to 20% more. There is no self serve trial: you book a demo, you get a quote, and only then do you see the inside. And on the direct booking side, US listings on Stripe carry a 1.8% service fee the guest pays by default, with an application fee of about 1% reported on top for the host. None of this is hidden exactly. It is just arranged so that a 10 property manager has the same buying experience as a 500 property one, and pays a flat $500 to get in the door either way.
So the question is not whether Hostaway works. It is whether you want to pay $500 and sign a year to find out what it costs. Below are the eight tools people switch to, and the honest fit for each.
The shortlist, side by side
Checked October 2026. Monthly software cost at 10 and 20 properties, before card processing. Reported means the vendor does not publish the figure and the number comes from operator and comparison site accounts. Uplisting prices in pounds and Smoobu in euros, as the vendors do.
| Published price? | 10 properties a month | 20 properties a month | Direct booking fee | Setup fee | Trial | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostaway | No, quote | About $350 at a reported $35 | About $700 at a reported $35 | 1.8% guest paid on US Stripe listings, about 1% host side reported | $500 reported | Demo first, no self serve trial |
| Hello Hosty | Yes | $240 | $410 | 0.9% guest paid, host keeps the full rate | None, migration included | 14 days, no demo needed |
| Hospitable | Yes | $179 (Professional) | $609 (Mogul) | 1% Basic host paid, or 4% guest plus 3% host on Premium | None | 14 days, no card |
| Guesty Pro | No, quote (Lite is published for 1 to 3) | $400 to $720 reported | $800 to $1,440 reported | None on the booking engine | $300 to $1,500 reported | Demo first |
| Lodgify Professional | Yes | $231 reported | About $360 (reported $231 at 10, $421 at 25) | 0% on every plan | None | 7 days, no card |
| Uplisting Operator | Yes | £160 | £320 (£260 on Manager) | None, or pay as you go at 1.5% to 3% instead of a subscription | None | 14 days, no card |
| Smoobu Prepaid | Yes, to 20 units | From about €114 | From about €210, quote above 20 | 0% Prepaid, 0.9% Flex | None | 14 days, no card |
| Hostfully Growth | Partly | $150 plus platform fee | $300 plus platform fee | 1% gateway plus 0.85% direct booking; none on Pro | Onboarding for hire, price not published | Demo |
| OwnerRez | Yes | $127 plus add ons | $196 plus add ons | None | None | 14 days |
Hello Hosty
We built Hello Hosty after 15 years running about 60 London rentals and paying for seats, add ons and onboarding we did not want. The price is on the website: $24 per property per month, $17 from your 11th property and $12 from your 31st, which is £17, £12 and £9 in the UK. That includes the channel manager for Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Agoda, Trip.com and 50 plus platforms, a direct booking website on your own domain, monthly owner statements per property with long lets included, rate modifiers per platform, an AI assistant that answers guests on every channel, and a digital guidebook that collects the guest’s email. Dynamic pricing comes through integrations with no per property fee. Direct bookings carry a 0.9% fee the guest pays, so you keep the whole rate. No setup fee, migration done for you, monthly billing with no annual lock in, and the 14 day trial starts without a demo call.
Where it falls short: it is younger than everything else on this list, the marketplace is 50 plus platforms rather than Hostaway’s 200 plus integrations, and if you need a quote, a procurement process and a dedicated account manager, that is not what we are. Best for 5 to 50 properties where the owner wants to see the price before the demo and keep the booking fee off the host side. Every price is on the pricing page.
Hospitable
Hospitable publishes four plans. Essentials is free with the basics for a first listing. Host is $29 a month with 1 property included and $10 for a second. Professional is $59 with 2 included and $15 for each extra. Mogul is $99 with 3 included and $30 for each extra, with 12% off annual billing. The automation is the best in this group for a small portfolio: guest messaging, reviews and team tasks out of the box, and a 14 day trial with no card. The catch is the bill grows backwards. At 10 properties Professional is $179 a month, reasonable. At 20 on Mogul it is $609, which is more than a reported Hostaway quote before Hostaway’s onboarding fee. Direct bookings cost the host 1% on the Basic site, or on Premium a 4% guest fee plus a 3% host fee, or 7% host only, and dynamic pricing is included on the paid plans. Capterra gives it 4.7 from 145 reviews and G2 4.9. Best for 1 to 5 properties, and for anyone who will never want a website or owner statements. The full numbers are in Hostaway vs Hospitable.
Guesty
Guesty is the only name on this list that is bigger than Hostaway. It raised $130 million in 2024, bought Rentals United, Kigo, MyVR and Your Porter along the way, and closed Guesty For Hosts on 31 May 2026. Guesty Lite is published for 1 to 3 listings: $9 per listing per month plus 1% per reservation, or $20 on annual billing and $29 monthly, with a 14 day trial. Guesty Pro, for 4 to 199 listings, is a quote, reported at $40 to $72 per listing, with onboarding reported at $300 to $1,500 and contract terms Hostaway’s own comparison page describes as 13 months. Guesty says there are no percentage fees on reservations through its booking engine. Capterra gives it 4.4 from 485 reviews, with customer service at 4.3, both lower than Hostaway on the same site. Best for 50 plus properties with a revenue manager and an accountant who will use the depth. Below that it is a Hostaway alternative that costs more and asks for a longer commitment, which is not the direction most people searching this phrase want to go. More in Guesty vs Hostaway and Guesty vs Hospitable.
Lodgify
Lodgify started as a website builder for holiday rentals and grew the channel manager and PMS around it, which still shows: the website templates are its strongest piece and the rest is competent. Prices are published and scale with listings. Basic covers one rental and Starter two, so from three properties you are choosing between Professional and Ultimate; comparison sites that read the calculator in September 2026 report Professional at $231 a month for 10 listings, $421 for 25 and $696 for 50, with Ultimate at $307, $574 and $968. The 1.9% booking fee that used to sit on the lower plans was gone from every plan by mid 2026, and dynamic pricing is included on Professional and Ultimate. The trial is 7 days, enough for one listing, no card needed. Capterra gives it 4.5 from 1,312 reviews, the second biggest review base after Hostaway. Best for an operator whose direct booking site is the business and who wants it built in rather than bolted on. If owner statements and team workflows are the core of yours, check those screens on the trial before you commit.
Uplisting
Uplisting is the quiet UK built option, priced in pounds. Independent Host is a flat monthly rate for up to 4 properties, £40 on the pricing page in October 2026. Operator is £16 per listing with a £90 floor, Manager £13 per listing with a £208 floor, and annual billing takes 10% off. There is also a pay as you go route with no subscription at all: 3% of each booking for 1 to 4 properties or 1.5% for 5 to 10. Owner statements and the client portal are an £8 per listing add on, deposits £4, the Plus website £30 a month on the lower plans. Every plan gets a basic direct booking site, a 14 day trial with no card and free one to one onboarding; Manager adds phone support. Capterra gives it 4.7 from 129 reviews. Best for a 5 to 40 property operator in the UK who wants a clean tool with no percentage on bookings and does not need the deepest reporting. The floors mean Manager only makes sense from about 16 listings.
Smoobu
Smoobu is Berlin based, bills in euros and is the cheapest serious option for a small European portfolio. One unit is from €28 a month and each additional unit from €9.60, so 10 units come to roughly €114 and 20 to roughly €210 on our arithmetic from the published per unit rates; above 20 properties you ask for a quote. Professional Prepaid, the plan most people take, has a 0% booking fee; Flex, the no commitment version, charges 0.9% per booking. Annual billing is 10% off and two years 20%. It syncs Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia and 100 plus portals, includes a website builder on your own domain, has no setup fee and a 14 day trial with no card. Capterra gives it 4.4 from 197 reviews. Best for 2 to 20 units in Europe where price matters more than depth; above 20 the quote process starts, and that is where the published price advantage ends.
Hostfully
Hostfully came up through its digital guidebooks and still sells them as an add on to its property management platform. Growth is $15 per property per month plus a platform fee the pricing page does not put a number on, with a 1% payment gateway fee and a 0.85% direct booking fee on top. Pro is $25 per property plus the platform fee with no gateway or booking fees. Comparison sites report flat quotes around $119 a month for a small portfolio and $215 for up to 11 listings, with Enterprise at 200 plus. Onboarding is for hire at an unpublished price, support is 24 hours, and the route in is a demo and a quote rather than a trial. Capterra gives it 4.2 from 236 reviews, the lowest on this list. Best for an operator who already lives in Hostfully’s guidebooks and wants one vendor. Weakest on pricing clarity, which is the thing you were trying to escape.
OwnerRez
OwnerRez is the one US owner operators recommend to each other, and its Capterra score of 4.9 from 271 reviews is the highest here. Pricing is a calculator on the website: $88 a month for 5 properties, $127 for 10 and $196 for 20, per account rather than per user, with channel management for Vrbo, Airbnb, Booking.com and Google included. Property management, hosted websites, QuickBooks and the Rezzy AI assistant are premium features switched on per property at extra cost, reported at $10, $15, $10 and $9 per property for a single listing and falling as you add more. No booking fees, no contract, no setup fee, a 14 day trial, and card processing through your own Stripe or similar gateway. It is a deep, slightly old fashioned tool with a loyal forum. Best for a US portfolio of 5 to 30 with an owner who likes configuring things. Outside the US, check the channel list for your market first, and add up the add ons before you compare it with the flat price tools.
How to choose
Start with the size you will be in 18 months, not today. Under 5 properties, Hospitable’s Essentials or Host plan costs almost nothing and the automation is excellent; Smoobu is the same answer in Europe. From 5 to 50, the published price tools win: Hello Hosty, Lodgify, Uplisting and OwnerRez will each show you the number before the call, and all four will let you in without one. At 50 plus with a team and an accountant, Hostaway and Guesty earn their quotes, and the onboarding fee stops mattering.
Then add up the whole bill, not the headline. Three things move it: the per property rate at your size, the direct booking fee and who pays it, and the add ons you will actually switch on. Hospitable at 20 is $609 before the 7% on upsells. Hostfully’s $15 is not $15 until you know the platform fee. OwnerRez’s $196 is $196 until you add websites and owner statements. Hostaway’s $35 is $35 after $500 and a year’s commitment. A guest paid booking fee, like Hostaway’s 1.8% or our 0.9%, costs you nothing on a $100,000 direct booking year; a 4% guest plus 3% host fee costs you $3,000 and your guests $4,000, or you $7,000 if you absorb it.
Finally, check the exit before the entrance. Monthly billing, your own Stripe account, your own domain on the website and an export of guests and bookings are what make leaving cheap. Annual contracts, the vendor’s payment account and a website on their subdomain are what make it expensive. The tools that let you in without a demo are, not by coincidence, the ones that let you out without a call.
The money left on the table
Take the 20 property manager who has just been quoted by Hostaway. At a reported $35 per listing that is $700 a month, $8,900 in year one with the $500 onboarding fee, and $25,700 over three years. On Hello Hosty the same 20 properties are $410 a month, $4,920 a year and $14,760 over three years, with no onboarding fee and a website included. The gap is about $11,000 over three years before you count a single booking fee. On Hospitable Mogul it is $609 a month, $21,924 over three years, with dynamic pricing included. The full working is in Hostaway pricing explained (2026).
Then look at the booking fee. If that manager takes $100,000 a year direct, Hostaway’s 1.8% is $1,800 paid by guests plus a reported 1% on the host side, about $1,000. Hospitable Premium at 4% plus 3% is $7,000, $3,000 of it paid by the host and $4,000 by the guest, or all $7,000 by the host on the host only option. Hello Hosty’s 0.9% is $900, paid by guests. Over three years the difference between the dearest and the cheapest host side bill on direct bookings alone is $9,000 to $21,000. That is a cleaner, a year’s photography, or the first three months of a 21st property.
To be fair to Hostaway, the $500 buys a real onboarding with a named person, the phone support is real, and at 100 properties the integrations list is worth the quote. The point is that below 50 you are paying for a process built for someone bigger. Every tool above except Guesty Pro and Hostfully will tell you its price. Six of them will let you try it today.
Hello Hosty includes a direct booking website on your own domain in every subscription, with the channel manager for Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Agoda, Trip.com and 50 plus platforms, rate modifiers per platform, monthly owner statements per property, the AI assistant that answers guests on every channel, and the digital guidebook that collects the guest’s email so the second booking comes to you. $24 per property per month, $17 from your 11th and $12 from your 31st (£17, £12 and £9 in the UK), no setup fee, free migration, monthly billing, and the 14 day trial starts without a demo call. Nothing is taken from your bookings.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Hostaway alternative in 2026?
It depends on size. Under 5 properties, Hospitable (free Essentials plan, excellent automation) or Smoobu in Europe. From 5 to 50, a published price tool: Hello Hosty ($24, $17 and $12 per property with a website included), Lodgify (website first, 0% booking fee), Uplisting (UK, £16 then £13 a listing) or OwnerRez (US, $196 for 20 properties). At 50 plus with a team, Guesty is the only option bigger than Hostaway, and it costs more.
Why do people switch from Hostaway?
Usually the commercial terms rather than the software: no published price, a reported $500 onboarding fee, an annual contract by default with month to month reported at 10% to 20% more, a demo before any trial, and a 1.8% guest paid service fee on direct bookings through US Stripe listings with about 1% reported on the host side. The product itself scores 4.8 on Capterra from 1,623 reviews.
Is there a free Hostaway alternative?
Hospitable’s Essentials plan is free for the basics on a small portfolio. Uplisting offers a pay as you go route with no subscription, at 3% of each booking for 1 to 4 properties or 1.5% for 5 to 10. Beyond that, the realistic free option is a trial: Hello Hosty, Hospitable, Uplisting, Smoobu and OwnerRez each give 14 days, Lodgify 7, none of them needing a demo call first.
What is the cheapest Hostaway alternative for 10 properties?
On published prices in October 2026: Smoobu from about €114 a month, OwnerRez $127 before add ons, Uplisting £160 on Operator, Hospitable Professional $179, Lodgify Professional a reported $231, Hello Hosty $240 with the website, owner statements and rate modifiers included. Hostaway at a reported $35 per listing is about $350 plus the $500 onboarding fee, and Guesty Pro a reported $400 to $720.
Which Hostaway alternatives have no onboarding or setup fee?
Hello Hosty, Hospitable, Lodgify, Uplisting, Smoobu and OwnerRez all have no setup fee on their published terms; Uplisting and Hello Hosty include onboarding and migration in the price. Hostfully lists onboarding as for hire without a price. Hostaway’s onboarding is reported at $500 and Guesty’s at $300 to $1,500.
Does Hostaway offer a free trial?
Not a self serve one. Hostaway’s pricing page is a quote form and the route in is a demo call followed by a quote; some operators report a trial being offered after the demo. Hello Hosty, Hospitable, Uplisting, Smoobu and OwnerRez offer 14 day trials you can start yourself, and Lodgify 7 days.
Which alternatives charge a fee on direct bookings?
Hostaway charges 1.8% on US Stripe listings, paid by the guest by default, with about 1% reported on the host side. Hello Hosty charges 0.9%, paid by the guest. Hospitable charges the host 1% on the Basic site, or on Premium a 4% guest fee plus a 3% host fee, or 7% host only. Hostfully Growth charges 1% gateway plus 0.85% direct booking, Smoobu Flex 0.9%, and Uplisting pay as you go 1.5% to 3% in place of a subscription. Lodgify, OwnerRez, Guesty’s booking engine, Hostfully Pro, Smoobu Prepaid and Uplisting’s subscriptions charge nothing per booking.
Can I switch from Hostaway without losing my bookings?
Yes, if you plan it. Your Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo listings stay where they are; the new tool reconnects to them and pulls the calendar and future reservations through the channel connection. Export your guest list and booking history from Hostaway first, check your contract end date and notice period, and move your direct booking site to your own domain so the links keep working. Hello Hosty does the migration for you at no charge, and the 14 day trial starts without a demo. Try it free for 14 days.
Sources: hostaway.com pricing and comparison pages and support.hostaway.com (service fee), hospitable.com/pricing and help.hospitable.com, guesty.com (pricing and Guesty Lite pages), lodgify.com pricing as read by Plug and Play VA (27 September 2026) and AI Tools Bakery (5 October 2026), uplisting.io/pricing, smoobu.com/en/pricing, hostfully.com/pricing, ownerrez.com/pricing and PricingSaaS (20 June 2026), Capterra product and comparison pages, Roommaster (31 July 2026), MagicBnb (7 October 2026) and Comparatif Channel Manager (17 September 2026), all checked October 2026. If a vendor changes a price or publishes one it did not, tell us and we will update this page. That is a standing promise.
