TurboTenant Review (2026): Costs, Fees and Who It’s For

TurboTenant review: who it suits and who should skip it

TurboTenant fits the landlord with one to ten units who wants to run the full cycle (list, screen, sign, collect) from one account and pay nothing for it. That is most first-time landlords and most owners of a duplex or a few single-family homes. The Free plan isn’t a stripped-down trial. It includes listing syndication, online applications, screening, rent collection, maintenance requests and basic accounting, with no unit limit stated on the pricing page.

The catch is who pays. TurboTenant makes its money from tenant and applicant fees, so a free plan for you means a $2 charge on every bank rent payment and a $55 screening fee for every applicant. Most tenants accept that. Some don’t: tenant fees are the most common complaint in public reviews, and threads on Reddit’s r/Landlord return to renters pushing back on paying a fee to pay rent.

Skip TurboTenant if:

• You manage property for other owners. There’s no owner portal, so you can’t send owner statements or give an owner a login.
• You want double-entry accounting or bank reconciliation. TurboTenant’s books are basic on Free, and even Pro is a long way from Buildium.
• Your tenants won’t accept fees and you have between 11 and 16 units. That’s the range where Pro costs more than the fees it removes (more on that below).

How each job works in TurboTenant

The descriptions below come from TurboTenant’s pricing and help pages and from recurring themes in public reviews. We’ll add screenshots and timings after our own account test.

Listing and syndication

You build a listing with photos, rent, deposit and availability, and TurboTenant syndicates it to major rental sites. Every new listing goes through a review step before it’s published. On Free that can take up to 48 hours. Essentials and Pro shorten it to under 24 hours. A few reviewers say this review step lands later in setup than they expected, so start the listing a couple of days before you need leads.

Applications

Applicants get a link, create an account and fill in their own details: rental history, income, employment and references. There is no separate application fee; the screening fee is collected as part of the application. You see each application in your dashboard and can message applicants from there.

Screening

Each report covers credit, criminal history and evictions. The applicant pays $55 on Free and Essentials, or $45 on Pro, unless you choose to pay. Pro adds income verification and fraud detection, which matters more than it sounds, because doctored pay stubs are a known way for a weak applicant to look strong on paper.

Screening is regulated. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act you need the applicant’s written consent before pulling a report, and if you turn someone down because of what’s in the report, you owe them an adverse action notice. Apply the same written criteria to everyone, and don’t use a blanket ban on any criminal record. Blanket bans can still draw Fair Housing Act claims, even though HUD withdrew its 2016 guidance on criminal records in 2025.

Lease and e-sign

TurboTenant offers lease templates and lets you send leases for electronic signature. Unlimited e-signed leases and addendums come with Essentials and Pro, along with the Landlord Forms Pack. On the Free plan the Forms Pack costs $199 on its own, which is the same as a year of Pro for up to 10 units. If you need the forms, that’s a strong reason to skip the one-off purchase and pick a paid plan.

Rent collection and payouts

Tenants pay online by bank transfer (ACH) or card. ACH is $2 per payment on Free and Essentials and free on Pro. Cards cost the tenant 3.49%, which on a $1,650 rent is $57.59 a month. You can set up recurring payments and see who has paid in the dashboard.

Payout speed is the gap between plans. ACH transfers normally take a few business days to settle, and Essentials and Pro add “expedited rent payouts”. If your mortgage is due on the 1st and rent lands on the 1st, the difference can matter.

Late fees

TurboTenant can add a late fee automatically once rent is past due. You set the amount and the grace period. Check your state’s rules first: many states cap late fees or require a grace period, and the fee also has to be written into the lease.

Maintenance

Tenants submit requests in the app, typically with a description and photos, and you track each one until it’s closed. There’s no vendor network or dispatch service on the software plans. For that, TurboTenant sells its full-service Autopilot option, quoted by phone.

Accounting and reports

Free gives you basic income and expense tracking with one connected bank account and manual transaction import. Pro adds automatic bank transaction import, unlimited connected bank accounts and fuller accounting tools. It’s enough for a Schedule E at tax time if you keep it current. Many TurboTenant landlords pair the Free plan with Stessa or Baselane for the books instead.

What TurboTenant costs at 1, 5 and 20 units

TurboTenant bills its paid plans annually only, and the price steps up by unit count. The numbers below assume each tenant pays a $1,650 rent by ACH every month, which is 12 payments a year per unit.

Units	Free: landlord pays	Free: tenants pay in ACH fees	Pro: landlord pays	Pro: tenants pay in ACH fees
1	$0	12 x $2 = $24	$199	$0
5	$0	60 x $2 = $120	$199	$0
20	$0	240 x $2 = $480	$399	$0

At 1 unit, Free is the obvious choice. Pro costs $199 to save your tenant $24. You’d only pay for it to get income verification and phone support.

At 5 units, your tenants pay $120 a year between them on Free. Pro still costs more than that ($199), so on fees alone it doesn’t win. Essentials, at $149 a year, makes sense if you want unlimited e-sign and faster listing review, but it doesn’t remove the ACH fee.

At 20 units, Pro moves to the 11-30 tier at $399 a year, or about $33.25 a month. Your tenants would pay $480 a year in ACH fees on Free, so Pro costs $81 less than the fees it removes, and every applicant saves $10 on screening. This is the size where Pro starts paying its way.

The break-even points: one unit of tenant ACH costs $24 a year. On the 1-10 tier, $199 divided by $24 is about 8.3, so Pro beats the fees at 9 or 10 units. On the 11-30 tier, $399 divided by $24 is about 16.6, so it beats them again from 17 units.

Other costs to know about:

• Screening: $55 per applicant on Free, $45 on Pro. Three applicants for one vacancy cost $165 on Free, paid by them unless you opt to cover it.
• Rent reporting: $4.99 a month, and only if the tenant opts in.
• Landlord Forms Pack: $199 on Free, included on paid plans.
• Autopilot tenant placement: a one-time $1,500 if you want TurboTenant’s team to find the tenant for you.

One small inconsistency: the Pro headline on the pricing page says “starting at $16.48/month”, but $199 a year divided by 12 is $16.58.

A first year on TurboTenant Free, from vacancy to renewal

Here is what one vacancy and one year of rent cost on the Free plan, for a single-family home renting at $1,650.

1. List the unit. $0. Allow up to 48 hours for TurboTenant’s listing review before it reaches rental sites.
2. Take applications. Say three people apply. Each pays $55 for screening, so applicants pay $165 between them and you pay nothing. If you’d rather pay for your top applicant only, that’s $55 from you.
3. Sign the lease. If you want the Landlord Forms Pack, it’s $199 on Free. Essentials includes it for $149 a year, so a paid plan is the cheaper route if you need the forms.
4. Collect 12 months of rent. Your tenant pays 12 x $2 = $24 a year by ACH. If they pay by card instead, it’s 12 x $57.59 = $691.08, which is why most landlords ask for ACH.
5. Renew. No extra charge. The account, the ledger and the tenant’s payment setup carry over.

Total for you in year one: $0 if you skip the Forms Pack, $149 if you buy Essentials for it. Total for your tenant and applicants: $189, almost all of it screening.

Put the fees in the listing and the lease. Tenants who know about a $2 ACH fee up front rarely complain about it later; tenants who discover it on the first of the month often do.

Support and reliability

Phone support is a Pro feature. On Free and Essentials you get help through the help center and written support. The most common complaints in public reviews are about the tenant fees rather than the software itself. A smaller group of landlords says the paid tiers feel overpriced for what they add over Free, and some find the menus less intuitive than they expected.

How TurboTenant compares

Against Avail, TurboTenant is close. Both are free, both cover the full cycle, and both charge tenants for ACH. Avail’s tenant ACH fee is higher ($2.50) and its paid plan is priced per unit ($9 per unit a month), so TurboTenant’s flat annual Pro gets cheaper as you grow.

Against RentRedi, the trade is different. RentRedi has no free plan, but its annual plan is $144 a year for unlimited units and tenant ACH is $1. At 20 units, RentRedi plus your tenants’ ACH fees comes to $384 a year, against $399 for TurboTenant Pro with no tenant ACH fee. They’re within a few dollars.

Innago is the other free option, with a $2 tenant ACH fee and $30-$35 screening, cheaper for applicants than TurboTenant’s $55.

Once you pass 20 units or start managing for other owners, look at Buildium ($62 a month on Essential) for real accounting and owner portals. DoorLoop’s $199 monthly minimum makes it hard to justify at this size.