Short answer: usually not for your tenant, even when it’s free for you.
“Free landlord software” is one of the most searched phrases in this category, and for good reason. Nobody wants to pay for something that used to be a spreadsheet and a paper lease. But most of what shows up under that search isn’t free in the way you’d expect. Here’s how the math actually works.
Where “free” usually comes from
There are three common ways a landlord tool ends up “free”:
- The tenant pays instead. This is the most common. Sign-up costs nothing, and then every rent payment carries a fee, usually $2 to $3 for an ACH bank transfer, sometimes a percentage for card payments. The landlord never sees a bill. The tenant does, every single month.
- Screening and add-ons are marked up. The core software is free, but the moment you run a background check or e-sign a lease, there’s a fee well above the actual cost of that service.
- The free tier is capped so hard it’s really a demo. One property, a handful of tenants, features locked behind an upgrade wall the moment you try to use them for real.
None of these are scams. They’re business models. But “free” is doing a lot of work in the marketing copy, and it’s worth knowing which version you’re signing up for.
The actual tenant-fee math
Say your tenant pays $2.50 every month to send rent by ACH transfer. That’s $30 a year, just to pay rent electronically instead of writing a check or using a bank’s free bill pay. Over a typical lease term, that’s real money leaving a renter’s pocket for a service that costs the software company a fraction of a cent to process.
Tenants notice this. It shows up as a line item on their bank statement every month, and it’s one of the more common things renters ask their landlord about. “Why am I being charged to pay my own rent?” is a fair question, and “the software company set it up that way” isn’t always a satisfying answer.
What genuinely free looks like
LeaseRooster’s Starter tier is free: one unit, the core features you need to run it (leasing, rent collection, maintenance tracking), no card on file to sign up. Rent moves straight from your tenant’s bank to yours through Stripe. Your tenant doesn’t pay a fee to pay rent online, on Starter or on any paid tier.
If you outgrow one unit, Solo is $5 a month ($50 a year billed annually) and covers more units without adding a tenant-side fee. The pricing goes up as your portfolio does (Growth at $10 a month, Business at $20 a month), but it’s the same principle at every tier: what you see on the pricing page is what you and your tenant actually pay. No hidden ACH charge waiting in the transaction history.
The one question worth asking before you sign up anywhere
Before you pick any landlord software, free or paid, ask this directly: does my tenant pay anything to pay rent online? If the answer is yes, that’s not necessarily a dealbreaker, but it’s a cost you’re passing to someone who didn’t get a vote in choosing the software. Better to know it going in than to find out from a confused text message the first time rent is due.
See the full cost breakdown or check pricing for the exact tiers.