TurboTenant vs Avail (2026): The Flat Fee, the Per-Unit Fee, and Who Really Pays
Search “TurboTenant vs Avail” and you will not find a single neutral comparison on page one. Stessa ranks with a compare that, as of its February 2026 update, still uses TurboTenant plan names that no longer exist. TenantCloud, a direct competitor to both, ranks with its own self-serving version. TurboTenant itself attacks Avail on its own rent-collection page. The rest are aggregator stubs, including a GetApp listing that prints a junk “$35 one time” price for TurboTenant that corresponds to nothing you can actually buy.
So here is the comparison the SERP does not have: two genuinely free landlord platforms, two very different paid models (flat fee vs per unit), a fee stack that lands mostly on the tenant either way, and an ownership disclosure that no ranking page makes properly. Every figure below is dated and labeled OFFICIAL or REPORTED, because in this category the difference matters.
TurboTenant vs Avail at a glance
| Dimension | TurboTenant | Avail |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Independent; acquired Azibo May 7, 2025 | Realtor.com (Move, Inc.) since 2020, News Corp umbrella |
| Free tier | $0, unlimited units | $0, unlimited units |
| Paid price (dated) | Essentials $149/yr, Pro $199/yr, annual only (REPORTED, multi-source Jun to Jul 2026, matches our Jul 21, 2026 browser check) | Unlimited Plus $9/unit/mo (OFFICIAL, avail.co/pricing, Jul 22, 2026) |
| Paid cost at 1 unit | $149/yr (Essentials) | $108/yr |
| Paid cost at 5 units | $149/yr flat | $540/yr |
| Tenant screening | $55 free plan, $45 paid plans, applicant-paid | Commonly ~$55, varies by state law, tenant-paid |
| ACH rent payment fee | Free plan: $2/payment, tenant-paid. Pro: $0 (waived ACH is a Pro-only line in the feature grid). Essentials: not waived, see below | Free tier: $2.50/payment. Plus: $0 |
| Card payment fee | 3.49%, tenant-paid, all plans | 3.5%, all plans |
| AI tools | Free AI lease audit, listing generator, maintenance AI | None found in our research |
| Team accounts | Multi-user available | Single-user only |
| Best for | 2+ units, DIY landlords who want AI help | 1-unit landlords, Realtor.com syndication fans |
One row in that table carries a verification flag, and we will be explicit about why when we get to the fee stack.
The SERP is quoting plans that no longer exist
Before the head-to-head, a short tour of why you should distrust most of what ranks for this query. This is the dead-price internet in miniature.
Exhibit A: Stessa’s comparison. Updated February 2026 by its own dateline, it still presents TurboTenant’s lineup as Pro at $149 and Premium at $199. Those plan names are dead. TurboTenant renamed its plans; the current lineup is Essentials at $149 a year and Pro at $199 a year. Same dollar amounts, different plans attached to them, which is exactly the kind of rot that makes a stale page look plausible.
Exhibit B: TenantCloud’s comparison. TenantCloud competes directly with both products, so its compare page is marketing with a table in it. It is not useless (its June 2026 fee claims are part of why we flag the ACH question below), but read it as a vendor document. We review TenantCloud itself at 4.0 in our TenantCloud review, so this is not a knock on the product, just on treating a competitor’s comparison as neutral.
Exhibit C: TurboTenant’s own rent-collection page. TurboTenant runs comparative claims against Avail on its own site. Same rule: vendor document.
Exhibit D: the aggregators. GetApp prints “$35 one time” for TurboTenant. There is no $35 one-time price in TurboTenant’s current lineup. And the $7 per unit figure for Avail Plus that circulates through older reviews is dead too: the live price is $9, verified July 22, 2026.
What TurboTenant costs in 2026
A sourcing note first, because it is unusual: turbotenant.com blocks automated fetchers, so TurboTenant’s figures here are REPORTED from multiple sources dated June to July 2026 and match our own July 21, 2026 real-browser verification. They are consistent across sources, but they carry the REPORTED label all the same.
The current lineup:
- Free: $0. Unlimited units. Marketing, applications, screening, rent collection, and the AI toolset are all available. The landlord pays nothing; the fees move to the tenant, which we cover below.
- Essentials: $149 a year. Unlimited leases and reduced tenant fees.
- Pro: $199 a year. The full feature set, including free ACH for tenants and the $45 screening price.
Both paid plans are annual only. There is no monthly billing, so treat any per-month equivalent you see printed elsewhere as arithmetic, not an option.
TurboTenant’s structural advantage in this comparison is that the price is flat. Five doors or fifty, the subscription is the same $149 or $199 a year. Its other advantage is the AI toolset, which is free on every plan: an AI lease audit, an AI listing description generator, and a maintenance AI that troubleshoots tenant issues before a ticket is created. In our research, no SERP comparison of these two products mentions AI at all, and Avail has no equivalent tooling. For a DIY landlord, free AI triage on maintenance requests is a real, daily-life difference, not a brochure line.
Company context in one line: TurboTenant acquired Azibo on May 7, 2025, and claims “over 1 million landlords,” a vendor figure we cite as such. Our full TurboTenant review owns the hands-on verdict and the 4.2 score, and our TurboTenant pricing guide owns the complete fee math, including the tenant-side cost table and the full history of the plan rename. This post stays on the head-to-head.
What Avail costs in 2026
Avail’s numbers are the clean ones in this comparison: OFFICIAL, from the live avail.co/pricing page, verified July 22, 2026.
- Unlimited (free): $0. Unlimited units, listings, applications, screening, state-specific leases, and rent collection.
- Unlimited Plus: $9 per unit per month. Waives the tenant’s ACH fee, adds a custom marketing site, faster payments, and priority support.
The fee lines that matter:
- ACH rent payments: $2.50 per payment on the free tier, $0 on Plus.
- Card payments: 3.5% on all plans.
- Screening: commonly around $55, tenant-paid. One important nuance the aggregators flatten: Avail’s screening price varies by state law, so no single flat number is universally true. If a comparison page prints one screening price for Avail with no qualifier, that is a small tell about its rigor.
- Rent price analysis report: $19.99 each (REPORTED via TenantCloud’s June 2026 compare; we did not find it priced on Avail’s own pricing page).
The $9 matters for another reason: it used to be $7. The old $7 per unit price is dead, and stale reviews across the SERP still print it. If the Avail article you are reading says $7, it predates the change and probably predates other details too.
Two structural facts round out the Avail side. First, Avail is single-user only: no team accounts, no second login for a spouse or assistant. Second, Avail has been owned by Realtor.com operator Move, Inc. since 2020, under the News Corp umbrella, and is branded “Avail, by Realtor.com.” We treat that as factual disclosure, not insinuation: the concrete upside is listing syndication into Realtor.com’s network, and the business logic of the free tier is partly portal lead generation. Avail reports 200,000+ landlords, a vendor figure. The positioning is unambiguous: solo landlords, generally under 20 units, who want a polished free tier with a big-portal pipe behind it.
The break-even math: flat fee vs per-unit fee
This is the comparison’s real differentiator, and it takes four rows to settle.
| Units | TurboTenant Essentials (flat) | TurboTenant Pro (flat) | Avail Unlimited Plus ($9/unit/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $149/yr | $199/yr | $108/yr |
| 2 | $149/yr | $199/yr | $216/yr |
| 5 | $149/yr | $199/yr | $540/yr |
| 10 | $149/yr | $199/yr | $1,080/yr |
The crossover sits under two units. At exactly one unit, Avail Plus is the cheapest paid plan in this comparison at $108 a year, undercutting TurboTenant Essentials by $41. The moment you add a second door, Avail Plus costs $216 against TurboTenant’s unchanged $149, and from there the per-unit meter runs away: $540 a year at five doors, $1,080 at ten, against a flat $149 to $199.
That makes the paid-tier verdict unusually clean. One unit, and you expect to stay at one unit: Avail Plus. Two or more units, or one unit with growth plans: TurboTenant. There are not many software comparisons where the price answer is a single integer, but this is one.
Who really pays: the tenant-fee ledger
Both free tiers are genuinely free to the landlord. The revenue comes from the tenant, and the two fee stacks are close enough that this section is about the differences at the margin.
Screening. TurboTenant: $55 on the free plan, dropping to $45 on paid plans, applicant-paid. Avail: commonly around $55, tenant-paid, varying by state law. Near-identical on the free tiers; TurboTenant’s paid plans buy the applicant a $10 discount, which is a small courtesy to the people applying to live in your property.
ACH rent payments. TurboTenant free plan: $2 per payment, tenant-paid. Avail free tier: $2.50 per payment. Both companies waive the ACH fee when the landlord upgrades: Avail on Plus, TurboTenant on Pro. Over a 12-month lease, a free-tier tenant pays $24 a year in ACH fees on TurboTenant and $30 on Avail. Small numbers, but they are the tenant’s numbers, and a landlord deciding between free tiers should know their renter picks up the tab either way.
One honest flag on the TurboTenant side, because TurboTenant’s own pricing page is split on it. We checked the live page in a real browser on July 22, 2026. The plan feature grid checks “Waived ACH Fees” under Pro only, with the Essentials column blank. But the renter-pricing table lower on the same page groups every paid landlord under one “Premium” label and shows ACH as free. We go with the feature grid: Essentials keeps the $2 tenant ACH fee, and only Pro waives it. If free ACH for your tenant is the deciding factor, that is a $50 per year difference between the two paid tiers, and worth confirming with TurboTenant support before you buy, since their own page reads both ways.
Card payments. TurboTenant: 3.49%, tenant-paid, not waivable on any plan. Avail: 3.5%, all plans. A rounding error apart. On $1,500 rent, that is roughly $52 a month either way, which is why every guide we write says the same thing: tenants should pay by ACH, and landlords should pick the plan that makes ACH free.
Features beyond the fee table
Where TurboTenant leads. The AI toolset is the headline gap: lease audit, listing generation, and maintenance triage, all free, with no Avail equivalent found in our research. TurboTenant also supports multi-user access and, through the Azibo acquisition, has been building out its financial side. The flat fee is itself a feature at portfolio sizes above one.
Where Avail leads. Syndication into Realtor.com is the structural advantage ownership buys. The free tier’s state-specific lease library is strong, and the product’s single-user simplicity is a feature rather than a bug for the actual target customer: one person, a few doors, no staff. At exactly one unit, it is also the cheapest paid plan here.
Where both stop. Neither is a property management suite. No trust accounting, no owner portals, no team workflows at scale. Self-managing landlords who outgrow both typically move up to tools in the DoorLoop and Buildium class; our DoorLoop alternatives guide maps that next weight class, and our best AI tools for landlords roundup covers the wider 1-to-20-unit toolbox these two compete in.
Verdict: the answer is a unit count
- Exactly one unit, staying at one unit: Avail. $108 a year on Plus is the cheapest paid tier in the comparison, the Realtor.com syndication is real, and the single-user limit costs you nothing.
- Two or more units: TurboTenant. The flat $149 to $199 beats Avail’s per-unit meter immediately and by a widening margin, and the free AI tooling has no Avail answer.
- Staying on a free tier: near-tie, slight edge TurboTenant. The fee stacks are almost identical for your tenant ($2 vs $2.50 ACH, $55 vs ~$55 screening), so the free AI tools and multi-user support break the tie.
- If you need team logins: TurboTenant, by default. Avail is single-user only.
- If you are screening-fee sensitive on behalf of applicants: TurboTenant paid plans, where screening drops to $45.
The one-line takeaway: this comparison has an unusually honest answer. Count your doors. One door, Avail Plus is the value pick. More than one, TurboTenant’s flat fee wins the math before features even enter the room, and the features point the same way.
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