I'll say it plainly: TurboTenant's free tier is the easiest yes in this category, and there's nothing wrong with starting there. The question is what 'free' costs you later, in late-night text threads and compliance changes you never saw coming. So here's the honest side-by-side, with our pricing pulled straight from the page, no games.

What TurboTenant gets right

TurboTenant's free plan is genuinely useful. You get listing syndication to the major portals, digital applications, basic rent collection (3 to 5 business day ACH), and tenant screening that the applicant pays for. For a one-unit landlord who only needs to fill a vacancy and collect monthly rent, that is most of the job done at $0.

Their Premium plan, billed annually at roughly $99 per year, adds unlimited state-specific leases, faster ACH (next-day), and e-signatures. The pricing is published openly and there are no per-transaction surprises.

Where it starts to leak

At one unit you can run maintenance on iMessage. At five units you cannot. Three things start to leak:

  • Maintenance triage. Tenant texts "AC broken." Now you are diagnosing, picking a vendor, scheduling, following up, all by hand. TurboTenant has a ticket inbox; it does not classify, prioritize, or pre-fill the vendor message for you.
  • Compliance drift. When your state amends its security-deposit rule or late-fee cap, your TurboTenant lease template does not auto-update. You either notice on a landlord forum, or you do not.
  • Vendor-side tax tracking. Paid a plumber more than $600 this year? You owe them a 1099-NEC in January. TurboTenant tracks payments, not W-9s and YTD totals.

What you get with us instead

Rentari.ai costs $10 per month flat for 1 to 5 units, or $8 per month on annual billing. The base plan includes everything TurboTenant Premium gives you (unlimited state-specific leases, fast ACH, e-signatures) plus four things their plan does not:

  • AI maintenance triage. Every ticket is classified, prioritized, and pre-drafted with a vendor pick before you open it.
  • Live Legislation Watch. When your state's statute changes, Rentari.ai flags the affected clauses in your active leases and offers a one-click amendment.
  • 1099 + W-9 tracking. Every vendor uploads a W-9 before payment; Rentari.ai tallies year-to-date totals and generates the 1099-NEC in January.
  • AI Co-pilot inbox. Every lead, every tenant message, every late-rent flag arrives with an AI-drafted response ready for your approval.

The "$0 sounds great" math, on paper

Run the math on a 5-unit portfolio over a year:

  • TurboTenant Free: $0 a year. Tenant pays screening directly. ACH takes 3 to 5 business days. No AI tooling.
  • TurboTenant Premium: roughly $99 a year. Unlimited leases, fast ACH, no AI tooling.
  • Rentari.ai Annual: $96 a year ($8 a month). Everything Premium gives you, plus the four AI features above.

The honest delta is $21 a year for the AI layer. Whether that's worth it depends on how often the maintenance triage and the compliance watch would have saved you a phone call. For most landlords past a door or two, those two features alone earn the delta back inside the first quarter.

Pro Tip: Compare the tenant-side cost, not just yours

Free platforms usually monetize the tenant: $35 screening, slower ACH, sometimes a card-payment surcharge. A $120-a-year landlord subscription that absorbs those fees often nets the tenant a better deal too. Renters who feel respected by the payment flow are the renters who renew.

When TurboTenant is still the right call

If you own one unit, you do not yet have maintenance volume, and you do not operate in a state with annual rental-law churn, TurboTenant's free tier is genuinely fine. You can always migrate later. Rentari.ai's onboarding can pull your TurboTenant data via CSV in about 5 minutes when you decide to switch.