Property management software pricing is a mess because no two vendors sell the same unit. Some sell a flat monthly fee. Some sell per door. Some sell a tier with a minimum spend that kicks in whether you have four units or forty. And the AI features, the part people actually shop for in 2026, are scattered across plans like confetti. Every price below was read off the vendor’s own page on November 10, 2026. This guide is about what the AI costs per month once you do the per-unit arithmetic.
The short answer
- DoorLoop is the clearest AI-first platform: One starts at $2.50 per unit per month with an AI Assistant, Connect at $4.00 adds a Receptionist Agent that answers tenants 24/7, and Multiply at $5.00 adds Maintenance Ops and Lease Renewal agents. Minimum spend and unit floors apply.
- Buildium is the traditional manager’s platform: $65 a month for Essential, which includes the AI Assistant, rising to $202 for Growth and $420 for Premium. The full AI and automation suite only shows up on Premium.
- Baselane is the cheapest real AI bookkeeping: $20 a month on the yearly plan for the Smart tier with an auto-tag assistant that categorizes transactions and matches receipts.
- TurboTenant is the cheapest entry point by a wide margin: free forever for basic listings, screening and rent collection, with Essentials at $12.42 and Pro at $16.58. Its AI lease compliance audit costs nothing.
- TenantCloud puts its AI listing writer (Cloudia) on Pro at $50 a month billed yearly, and AppFolio runs Realm-X at $1.49 to $3.20 per unit with a 50-unit minimum on Core.
Three different kinds of AI are being sold here
Before comparing prices, you need to know what you are buying, because vendors use the word “AI” for at least three unrelated things and the price gap between them is enormous.
The first type is the assistant: a chat window that answers questions, drafts messages, processes invoices, or builds reports. DoorLoop calls it AI Assistant, Buildium calls it AI Assistant, AppFolio calls it Realm-X Assistant. It is cheap because it runs on top of the platform you already pay for. It does not take actions on its own.
The second type is the agent: software that acts without you. DoorLoop’s Receptionist Agent answers tenant texts and calls around the clock and handles routine requests under rules you set. This is the expensive tier because it consumes phone minutes and model tokens continuously, and it is the one that can actually replace a night shift.
The third type is the narrow automator: Baselane auto-tagging transactions to 120 categories, TurboTenant auditing a lease for compliance, TenantCloud writing listing descriptions. These are single-purpose and usually bundled rather than sold separately.
Most buyers shop assuming they want the second type and end up paying for the first. Knowing which one solves your actual bottleneck is worth more than any feature comparison.
DoorLoop: the AI tiers are the whole pricing ladder
DoorLoop is the rare vendor that publishes per-unit AI pricing with no demo required, and the ladder is unusually clear. DoorLoop One starts at $2.50 per unit per month and drops to $1.50 per unit above 100 units. It includes the AI Assistant, which answers questions, processes invoices, and creates reports, plus the full property management platform with accounting, leasing, maintenance, payments, showings, owner and tenant portals, and API access. Minimum spend and units apply, which is the catch worth reading twice.
DoorLoop Connect starts at $4.00 per unit and adds the Receptionist Agent: it answers tenant texts, calls, and portal messages around the clock, handles routine requests without reaching your team, and escalates the rest according to rules you write. It also adds free incoming ACH payments, which for a landlord collecting rent by ACH is worth real money on its own.
DoorLoop Multiply starts at $5.00 per unit, is invite only, and adds the two agents that change the workload: a Maintenance Ops Agent that runs a repair from request to vendor to completion to bill, pausing for approvals, and a Lease Renewal Agent that spots expiring leases, builds the offer from your records, and carries it to signature. You set each agent’s supervision level, every action is logged in plain language and attributed to the agent, and new agents released later are included at no extra cost.
Check DoorLoop pricing and per-unit AI tiers
Do the math on a real portfolio. Five units on Connect at $4.00 each is $20 a month if there were no floor, and $240 a year. Twenty units is $80 a month, $960 a year. One hundred units on Multiply at $5.00 is $500 a month, and at the above-100-unit rate it gets cheaper per door. A landlord with three doors who wants a 24/7 receptionist needs to know that the minimum spend, not the per-unit rate, is what they will actually pay.
Buildium: AI Assistant on paper, the full suite on Premium
Buildium publishes three starting prices: Essential at $65 a month, Growth at $202, and Premium at $420. The price rises with unit count but Buildium does not publish how, so those are floors rather than quotes. Portfolios over 5,000 units get a quote instead of a number.
The AI structure is where Buildium gets interesting. Essential includes Buildium’s AI Assistant alongside accounting, maintenance, and leasing basics. Growth adds enhanced screening, cheaper eSignature and EFT, and live phone support, with onboarding required. Premium, also onboarding-required, is the only tier with the open API and the full AI and automation suite.
The fees are where the real bill hides. Incoming ACH is $2.35 per rent payment on Essential, $1.35 on Growth, and free for twelve months on Premium before dropping to $0.60. Credit cards run 2.99 percent on every plan. Outgoing EFT to owners and vendors is $0.99 each everywhere. eSignature through Dropbox Sign is $5 per document on Essential, $1 on Growth, and included on Premium. Business bank accounts are $99 each with a free allotment that depends on plan.
Check Buildium pricing, fees, and add-ons
A landlord collecting $2,000 of rent by ACH on Essential pays $2.35 per tenant per month, which is $47 a year per door, on top of a $65 base that only covers one or two units before rising with size. That is the number to compare against DoorLoop’s free incoming ACH on Connect, not the headline price.
Baselane: $20 buys the bookkeeping AI nobody else sells cheap
Baselane is a financial operating system for landlords rather than a property management suite, and that focus is why its AI is cheap. The Smart tier at $20 a month on a yearly plan adds auto-tagging of transactions to properties and 120 or more categories, advanced tagging rules based on recipient, amount, or account, and auto-receipt matching and storage. The auto-tag assistant is the AI part. The rest of the plan is a lot of banking: unlimited checking and savings accounts earning up to the stated APY, physical and virtual Visa debit cards with spend controls, FDIC insurance up to the stated limit through Thread Bank, and fee-free ATM deposits at more than 55,000 Allpoint locations.
The essentials tier underneath includes unlimited property-specific accounts, automatic rent collection with reminders and late fees, a tenant portal with auto-pay, split rent payments where tenants pay in installments while you receive the full amount, QuickBooks and Xero sync, entity-level bookkeeping, real-time financial reports including rent roll and tenant ledger, and an accountant tax package with Schedule E reports.
For a landlord under ten units who wants rent collection, categorization, and a clean year-end tax package without a full property management system, $20 a month is hard to beat. The limitation is equally clear: this does not handle leasing, maintenance, screening, or tenant communication.
TurboTenant and TenantCloud: the low end and the middle
TurboTenant serves self-managing landlords with one to fifty doors. The free plan covers listing and marketing rentals, screening applicants, and collecting rent online with no fees or contracts, ever. Essentials at $12.42 a month adds online lease creation and signing, faster rent collection, and priority listing review. Pro at $16.58 adds income verification and fraud checks, one-click tax-ready reports, and built-in financial tools. Autopilot is full-service, where their team finds tenants, handles maintenance, and collects rent for a flat fee, but you have to call for the number.
The free AI feature here is the lease audit, which checks a lease for legal compliance and costs nothing. It is a narrow tool, not an agent, but for a landlord in their first year it prevents an expensive mistake.
TenantCloud runs four tiers: Starter, Growth, Pro, and Business. The AI writing tool, Cloudia, generates listing descriptions with rework and tone options, and it is not on Starter or Growth. It sits on Pro at $50 a month billed yearly. Pro also brings full accounting, premium reporting, team features, and integrations, while Business adds custom roles and permissions, advanced team onboarding, personalized support, and tooling for hundreds or thousands of units.
TenantCloud’s structure makes the AI a feature of the expensive plan rather than the cheap one, which is the opposite of how Baselane and TurboTenant handle it. If Cloudia is the only reason you want it, $50 a month for listing copy alone is poor value next to a general writing tool.
AppFolio: per-unit with a 50-door floor
AppFolio sells by unit with minimums attached. Core, which carries the Realm-X Assistant and Messages, runs $1.49 per unit per month, and Plus adds Realm-X Flows at $3.20 per unit. Both carry a minimum spend, and Core carries a 50-unit minimum. That floor is the detail that decides the category for small landlords: you do not rent AppFolio for a single duplex at $1.49, you rent it for 50 doors or more.
The same page that shows the per-unit price also shows the customization model, where you select value-added services on top of a base platform rather than buying fixed tiers. For a portfolio above 50 units that is attractive, because you can add only the services you use. For everyone else, the floor makes the entry price meaningless and a quote mandatory.
The pricing table
| Tool | Entry price | Unit | What the AI does | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DoorLoop One | $2.50/unit/mo | Per unit, minimums apply | Assistant: answers, invoices, reports | Small landlords wanting one platform |
| DoorLoop Connect | $4.00/unit/mo | Per unit, minimums apply | Adds 24/7 Receptionist Agent, free incoming ACH | Landlords losing calls and texts |
| DoorLoop Multiply | $5.00/unit/mo | Per unit, invite only | Adds Maintenance Ops and Lease Renewal agents | Managers tired of renewals and repairs |
| Buildium | $65/mo (Essential) | Flat start, rises with units | AI Assistant on Essential; full suite on Premium | Professional management companies |
| Baselane | $20/mo yearly | Flat | Auto-tag assistant, receipt matching | Bookkeeping-first landlords under 10 units |
| TurboTenant | $0 / $12.42 / $16.58 | Flat | Free lease compliance audit | First-year landlords, 1 to 50 doors |
| TenantCloud | $50/mo yearly (Pro) | Flat | Cloudia writes listing descriptions | Landlords who need listing copy |
| AppFolio | $1.49 to $3.20/unit | Per unit, 50-unit minimum | Realm-X Assistant, Flows | Portfolios of 50 doors or more |
What AI actually costs at five, twenty, and one hundred doors
Run the same portfolio through each option and the ranking changes completely, which is why the per-unit headline is not the story.
- At 5 doors: Baselane at $20 a month is the cheapest AI anywhere near property management. TurboTenant at $16.58 is cheaper still and includes leasing. DoorLoop Connect at $4.00 per unit is $20 before the floor applies, so you are buying the agent at roughly Baselane’s price only if the floor is generous. AppFolio is not in the conversation at all with a 50-unit minimum.
- At 20 doors: DoorLoop Connect lands near $80 a month before floors. Buildium Growth at $202 a month now costs more than three times DoorLoop’s per-unit rate and still does not include an answering agent. Baselane is still $20 but no longer handles leasing or maintenance. TurboTenant at $16.58 is the price winner and probably the capability winner for a 20-door self-manager.
- At 100 doors: DoorLoop Multiply at $5.00 per unit is about $500 a month, and that includes two working agents plus the platform. Buildium Premium starts at $420 before rising with unit count and before ACH fees, and it still lacks an answering agent. This is where the traditional platforms and the AI-native ones separate clearly.
How to choose without overbuying
Start with the bottleneck. If rent arrives late and tenants text you at midnight, you want DoorLoop Connect or a standalone AI receptionist, not a better accounting system. If your books are a mess at tax time, you want Baselane at $20, not a full suite with leasing and maintenance features you will never touch. If leases expire quietly because nobody tracks the date, the Lease Renewal Agent is worth paying for on its own.
Then check the fees that compound, because these are what turn a cheap plan into an expensive year. Buildium’s ACH fee of $2.35 on Essential versus free on DoorLoop Connect is $47 a year per door at the rate above. Buildium’s eSignature at $5 per document on Essential against included on Premium is the kind of gap that decides a plan by itself once you count leases. DoorLoop’s minimum spend and unit floors are the equivalent trap for the small landlord, just in the other direction.
Last, be honest about whether you need an agent. An assistant that drafts a message is worth a few dollars a month. An agent that answers every inbound call and text for a year is a staffing decision, and it deserves a trial where you watch what it escalates and what it gets wrong before you commit to a yearly plan.
Things to check before you sign
- Ask for the floor in writing. DoorLoop states that minimum spend and units apply. Get the actual dollar amount for your portfolio size, not the per-unit rate.
- Count your doors, not your tenants. Per-unit pricing rewards scale and punishes small portfolios. Flat plans like Baselane and TurboTenant do the opposite.
- Price the payment fees separately. ACH, EFT, and card fees can exceed the subscription on a small portfolio.
- Test escalation rules before letting an agent live. The vendor’s demo will not show you what happens when a tenant asks about money you do not have.
- Confirm what a human still signs. In this category a human still signs and serves notices. If a vendor implies otherwise, ask specifically.
- Check the moving parts you will resell. Buildium sells showing scheduling, inspections, screening, and 1099 e-filing as separate products from other vendors. The subscription price is not the total.
Pricing reviewed November 10, 2026, against each vendor’s own pricing page. Property management software repackages tiers, floors, and per-unit minimums more often than almost any category, so verify the number on the page before checkout. Some links here are affiliate links, which cost you nothing and do not affect which tools are included.