The self-hosted TurboTenant alternative
Rentara — Automatic rent posting, late fees, and a tenant self-service portal for the portfolio you already manage. Own it once, run it on your own server, and stop paying TurboTenant every month.
TurboTenant Free $0/month; Essentials from $12.42/month and Pro from $16.48/month, billed yearly by units managed: 1–10 units $149/year or $199/year, 11–30 $199 or $399, 31–60 $299 or $699, 61+ $349 or $999 Rentara is $119.00 once, runs on your own server, and never invoices you again.
How TurboTenant pricing grows with you
TurboTenant bills its paid plans YEARLY, in bands of units managed, with renter-paid extras.
“Units Managed Essentials Pro 1-10 $149/year $199/year” — their own page, read 2026-09-24
What TurboTenant does that we don't
TurboTenant has a genuinely free plan for listing, screening and rent collection.
“No fees or contracts – ever” — their own page
Who should stay with TurboTenant
Stay with TurboTenant if you are a landlord whose needs fit the free plan — Rentara records payments on a ledger rather than collecting them, and it does not list units or screen applicants. Full honest limitations are on the product page.
Why owning beats renting TurboTenant
- One payment. No monthly, per-seat, or per-location fees — the license is perpetual.
- Your data stays on your server. It never lives in TurboTenant's cloud.
- No plan ceilings. Records and users are limited by your hosting, not a pricing tier.
- It keeps working if the vendor doesn't. Self-hosted software can't be sunset or price-hiked out from under you.
Fair trade-offs: you host it, back it up, and apply updates yourself — see the product page for honest limitations, and the full Rentara vs TurboTenant comparison.
Questions about moving off TurboTenant
Do tenants need accounts?
No. Each lease gets a private link; tenants bookmark it, see their own balance and ledger, and submit maintenance requests. You can rotate or kill any link instantly.
Does Rentara collect rent online?
No — Rentara records payments as they arrive by transfer, cash, check, or card; it doesn't process or collect rent online.
I already installed 1.0 — do I lose data?
No. Drop the new files over the old install (keep config.php and data/); the database upgrades itself in place on the next page load. Existing leases stay on manual billing until you enable auto-billing per lease, so nothing back-posts by surprise.
Will this run on my hosting?
Almost certainly. Rentara needs PHP 8+ with PDO — present on virtually all cPanel/Plesk hosts — and either MySQL or SQLite. Installation is a two-minute web installer.
Related on this site
Sources
- TurboTenant — price checked 2026-09-24 —
source “$149/year”
Competitor prices change — always confirm on the linked page. We only print figures we could verify on the date shown. This vendor is tracked in the Price Observatory — every figure verbatim, dated, re-checked quarterly.