Stessa Review 2026: Pricing, Features, Cost and Alternatives

Stessa is a free rental property bookkeeping app owned by the Roofstock group, and for a buy and hold landlord with a handful of doors the free Essentials tier is genuinely enough. Paying for it is a narrower decision than the pricing page suggests: Manage at $12 a month billed annually buys you a Schedule E report, legal forms and one eSignature, and it still caps you at one portfolio and five receipt scans a month.

Last updated September 2, 2026. Every Stessa price, tier limit and feature on this page was read the same day from stessa.com. QuickBooks Online prices were read the same day from quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing.

What Stessa is, and who is behind it

Stessa is web based rental property accounting with a mobile app on both iOS and Android. You connect the bank accounts and cards your rentals run through, the transactions come in automatically, and you tag each one to a property. Out the other end come income statements, net cash flow, a schedule of real estate owned and tenant ledgers. It also collects rent by ACH, card or debit, screens tenants through RentPrep, and handles eSigning through DocuSign against a library of more than 50 legal templates.

Ownership matters here more than it usually does, because the business model is unusual. Stessa sits in the same group as Roofstock, Mynd and RentPrep, and the property marketplace inside the app is powered by Roofstock data. The company says it serves more than 350,000 landlords, a figure it dates to October 15, 2025. It is a financial technology company rather than a bank, which is the detail that matters most when you get to the banking features.

The reason the free tier is as good as it is comes down to that model. Stessa makes money from the banking relationship, from rent payment volume, from screening and from the marketplace, so it does not need your subscription the way a pure software company would. That is good news for a small landlord and worth understanding before you assume the free plan is a trap.

Stessa pricing, read September 2 2026

Stessa advertises the annual billing as "Save 20% when billed annually", which is what produces the $12 and $28 numbers. Unlimited properties on every tier including the free one is the headline, and it is real. What is easy to miss is that the limits which actually bite are portfolios and receipt scans, and those do not move at all when you upgrade from free to Manage.

What the paid tiers actually buy you

Strip the marketing away and Manage at $144 a year is essentially a Schedule E report, a forms library and one eSignature a month. That is a fair trade if you file your own return, because building Schedule E by hand out of a stack of categorized transactions is the tedious part of a landlord's April. It is a poor trade if a CPA does your return anyway, since they will work from the income statement Stessa gives you for free.

Pro at $336 a year is the tier with a real functional difference, and the reason is portfolios. If you hold properties in more than one LLC, or you keep a personal rental separate from a partnership, one portfolio is not enough and no amount of tagging fixes it. Unlimited receipt scanning matters too once you are past a few doors, because five a month is roughly one property's worth of receipts.

Worth comparing the same money against Baselane, which includes a Schedule E report and its accountant tax package on the free Core tier. If the Schedule E report is the only reason you were going to pay Stessa $144 a year, that is the comparison to run first.

Where Stessa falls down

The important limitation is single entry accounting. Stessa records what moved through your accounts. It does not run a double entry ledger, which means there is no balance sheet, no trial balance and no proper handling of things that are not cash movements. Depreciation, owner contributions, a mortgage principal and interest split done properly, the basis in each building: none of that lives in Stessa the way it would in real accounting software.

For most self managing landlords that is fine, because the tax return is a cash basis Schedule E and cash in and cash out is genuinely what you need. It stops being fine the moment a lender asks for a balance sheet, or you take on a partner who wants to see equity, or you hold property in an entity that files its own return. Single entry bookkeeping also means Stessa shows you what moved rather than whether the books balance, so if rent arrives through a payment processor as well as a bank account it is worth taking the time to reconcile the two feeds against each other before anything goes to a preparer.

The second gap is exit. Stessa is a browser product with no desktop file, so there is no local copy of your books and no import path from the desktop software most long time landlords are leaving. If you are coming off Quicken you cannot bring the history with you in any structured way, and if you later decide to move to QuickBooks you are working from CSV exports rather than an accounting file.

The banking and APY question

Stessa offers landlord banking with per property accounts, and quotes rates up to 1.88% APY on the free tier and up to 3.24% APY on Pro, plus 1.10% cash back on debit card purchases. Read the word "up to" seriously. The top Pro rate is quoted against balances of $250,000 and above, which is not where most small landlords sit.

Stessa is not itself a bank. It is a financial technology company working with partner banks, which is the standard arrangement for this category and the same structure Baselane uses. That does not make it unsafe, but it does mean your deposit relationship is with a partner institution and it is worth reading which one and what the insurance arrangement is before you move operating cash across.

Is Stessa legit?

Yes. Stessa is a real company inside the Roofstock group alongside Mynd and RentPrep, it states more than 350,000 landlords as of October 2025, and it holds 4.8 stars on the Apple App Store and 4.5 on Capterra. It has been operating for years and is one of the better known names in US rental property software.

The reasonable scepticism is not about legitimacy, it is about the free tier. A product that gives away unlimited properties has to earn elsewhere, and Stessa earns from banking, rent payment volume, tenant screening and the Roofstock marketplace. That is a disclosed model rather than a hidden one, but it does mean you will see the marketplace and the banking products in front of you.

Is Stessa free?

The Essentials tier is genuinely free with unlimited properties, automatic bank feeds, financial reports, online rent collection, tenant screening and maintenance tracking. There is no trial clock on it. The two limits are one portfolio and five receipt scans a month, and the paid tiers exist to lift those and to add the Schedule E report.

So the honest answer is that the free plan is complete enough to run a small portfolio for years, which is unusual in this category. What is not free is the Schedule E report, which sits behind the $12 a month Manage tier.

Is Stessa really free, or does it upsell?

Really free, with upsells present but not blocking. You will see the Roofstock property marketplace, the banking product and the screening service inside the app, and Stessa will suggest the paid tiers when you hit the portfolio or receipt scan limits. None of that disables the core bookkeeping.

The clearest way to think about it: Stessa is free the way a brokerage app is free. The software costs nothing because the company would like a share of your transaction volume. If you never open a Stessa banking account or use the marketplace, you can still use the free plan indefinitely.

Is Stessa safe?

It uses the same bank feed infrastructure the rest of the fintech category uses, which means read only access to your accounts rather than credentials that can move money. The banking product is provided through partner banks, since Stessa is a financial technology company and not itself a bank.

The practical risk with any cloud only bookkeeping product is not a breach, it is access. There is no local file, so your records exist while your account does. Export your transaction history and reports at least annually so a year of bookkeeping never depends on one login.

Is Stessa a bank?

No. Stessa is a financial technology company, and the landlord banking accounts it offers are provided through partner banking institutions. That is the standard structure across this category, and Baselane, which is Stessa's closest competitor, works the same way through Thread Bank.

The distinction is worth understanding rather than worrying about. Your deposits sit with a partner bank, the insurance arrangement flows through that bank, and the terms are set out in the deposit agreement rather than by Stessa. Read the agreement before you move an operating account, particularly the fee schedule.

Is Stessa Pro worth it?

It is worth it for one specific reason: portfolios. Pro is the only tier with more than one, so if you hold properties across separate LLCs or need to keep a personal rental apart from a partnership, Pro at $28 a month billed annually is the tier that works and the cheaper ones do not.

If you have one entity and one portfolio, Pro is harder to justify. Unlimited receipt scanning, budgeting and pro forma tools and the advanced reports are real, but they are convenience rather than capability. Most single entity landlords are better served staying on Essentials or paying $12 for the Schedule E report.

Is Stessa rent collection free?

Yes, online rent collection is included on the free Essentials tier, which is one of the more generous things about the product. Tenants can pay by ACH, credit card or debit card. The paid Manage tier adds accelerated rent payments, meaning faster settlement rather than a different collection capability.

Compare that against QuickBooks, where taking a tenant payment means QuickBooks Payments and per transaction processing fees on top of a subscription that starts at $38 a month and needs to be $140 a month before it can even report per property.

Does Stessa do Schedule E?

Yes, from the Manage tier up, at $12 a month billed annually. The free Essentials tier gives you income statements and net cash flow but not the Schedule E report itself. Pro includes it along with the advanced report set.

One thing to keep in mind is that a Schedule E report is only as good as your categorization. Stessa will map your tagged transactions onto the form, but it cannot decide whether a $6,000 roof was a repair or a capital improvement. That distinction changes your return materially and is the one to ask a preparer about.

What are the best Stessa alternatives?

Baselane is the closest, and its free Core tier includes the Schedule E report and accountant tax package that Stessa paywalls. Landlord Studio is free up to three units, then $12 a month for Pro, and integrates with Xero. REI Hub is the one to look at if you want real double entry accounting with loan and fixed asset tracking, starting around $9 a month billed annually for up to three units.

QuickBooks Online is the alternative when rentals are not your only business. It is far more capable accounting, but it has no rental features at all and needs the $140 a month Plus plan before it can report per property, since class and location tracking is not in Simple Start or Essentials.

Is Stessa better than QuickBooks for rental property?

For a self managing landlord with rentals as the only business, yes, and it is not close on price. Stessa is built for the job, gives you unlimited properties for nothing, collects rent, screens tenants and produces a Schedule E report for $144 a year. QuickBooks needs $1,680 a year at Plus and still has no lease, tenant or rent roll records.

QuickBooks wins when you need real accounting rather than rental bookkeeping. It is double entry, it produces a balance sheet, it handles fixed assets and loans properly, and it is what your CPA and your lender already work in. If you also run another business, or an entity that files its own return, that is the deciding factor and the price stops being the point.

Can I import my Quicken data into Stessa?

Not in any structured way. Stessa is a browser product that fills itself from live bank feeds, and it has no import path for a Quicken data file or a QIF export. What you can do is connect the same bank accounts and let Stessa pull the history the bank makes available, which is usually somewhere between 90 days and two years depending on the institution.

If preserving years of categorized Quicken history matters to you, that pushes toward QuickBooks rather than Stessa. QuickBooks Online will not read a QIF file either, but a QIF export can be converted into a QBO Web Connect file and imported, which is the practical bridge between desktop Quicken and cloud accounting.

If you are weighing this against the accounting route instead, the comparison worth reading next is QuickBooks for rental property, which covers which plan can actually track each property and what it costs. For the desktop side, see Quicken Rental Property Manager and the wider roundup of accounting software for landlords. If you are deciding between the two big names, Quicken vs QuickBooks for rental property lays out the split, and if you have already decided to move, the Quicken file converter turns your QIF exports into QuickBooks ready QBO files.