Avail is one of the best-known names in DIY landlord software, and for good reason. It bundles listings, screening, leases, and online rent collection into one platform with a free tier. But plenty of independent landlords sign up, poke around for a few weeks, and start asking whether there's something simpler, cheaper, or more private. If you own a duplex, a few single-family rentals, or a small mixed portfolio, you might not need a full tenant-facing platform. You might just need a reliable way to track rent, expenses, leases, and maintenance without paying per unit or handing your data to another cloud service. This guide covers five free Avail alternatives, what each one does well, where each falls short, and how to pick the one that fits the way you actually manage property.

Why People Switch From Avail

Avail isn't a bad product. Most landlords who leave it do so because it's built around a workflow they don't need, or because the costs grow as their portfolio does. These are the reasons we hear most often:

  • Per-unit pricing adds up. The free plan covers the basics, but features like custom lease templates, waived ACH fees, and advanced screening sit behind the Unlimited Plus plan at roughly $7 per unit per month. At 10 units, that's about $840 a year.
  • Tenant-paid fees create friction. On the free plan, some costs (such as ACH processing or screening fees) get passed to tenants. Some landlords don't like the conversation that follows when a long-term tenant is suddenly asked to pay a fee to send rent.
  • Everything lives in the cloud. Your tenant records, lease documents, and financial history sit on someone else's servers. For landlords who care about privacy, or who've been through a data breach notification before, that's a real concern.
  • You need an account and a connection. Logging into a web dashboard to record a $45 hardware store receipt while you're standing in a basement with no signal gets old quickly.
  • It's more than some landlords need. If your tenants already pay reliably by check or bank transfer and you rarely have vacancies, a listing syndication and screening engine is mostly overhead.

If one or more of those sounds familiar, one of the options below will probably suit you better.

1. KeyLoft (Free)

Best for: Independent landlords who want a private, fast, no-strings way to run their rentals from an iPhone.

KeyLoft takes a different approach from Avail. Instead of building a tenant portal and payment processor, it focuses on what the landlord does every day: tracking properties, units, tenants, leases, rent payments, expenses, and maintenance, all from one app on your phone. It's free, it doesn't require an account, and it works 100% offline. Your data stays on your device.

That last point matters more than it sounds. With no account to create, there's no email to verify, no password to reset, and no marketing drip campaign. You open the app and start adding properties. And because it doesn't depend on a connection, you can log a repair, record a rent payment, or check a lease end date from a crawlspace, a rural property, or an airplane.

What KeyLoft does well:

  • Truly free. No per-unit fees, no premium tier hiding the useful features, and no fees passed on to your tenants.
  • Privacy by design. Tenant names, phone numbers, lease terms, and financial records aren't stored on a third-party server.
  • Offline-first. Every feature works without a signal, which makes on-site inspections and maintenance logging much easier.
  • Fast and focused. Built for landlords managing a handful to a few dozen units who want clarity, not a dashboard full of upsells.
  • Clean record keeping. Rent and expense tracking that makes tax time and Schedule E prep much less painful.

Honest limitations:

  • It's available on the App Store only, so Android users and landlords who want a desktop web dashboard will need to look elsewhere.
  • It doesn't process online rent payments or run tenant screening. If you need those, you'll pair KeyLoft with a payment method you already trust (Zelle, bank transfer, or checks) and a standalone screening service.
  • Because data lives on your device, you're responsible for your own device backups.

For most small landlords, those trade-offs are the whole point. You get a tool that does the core job well, costs nothing, and doesn't make your business depend on another company's servers or pricing changes.

Try KeyLoft free today. Download KeyLoft for Free — no subscription, no account, works 100% offline.

2. TurboTenant (Free + $9.92/month Premium)

Best for: Landlords who fill vacancies often and want strong marketing and screening tools.

TurboTenant is probably Avail's most direct competitor. The free plan includes listing syndication to major rental sites, online rental applications, and tenant screening, with screening costs paid by the applicant. Premium, at about $9.92 per month billed annually, adds faster rent payouts, custom application questions, lease templates, and extra marketing features.

Pros:

  • Excellent listing and lead management tools for landlords with frequent turnover.
  • Flat monthly premium pricing instead of per-unit fees, which can be cheaper than Avail at scale.
  • Polished, beginner-friendly interface.

Cons:

  • Many of the best features are reserved for Premium, and the free tier nudges you toward upgrading.
  • Cloud-only and account-required, with all tenant data stored on TurboTenant's servers.
  • Expense tracking and accounting are lighter than a dedicated bookkeeping tool.

3. Stessa (Free + $20/month Premium)

Best for: Landlords whose main focus is financial reporting and portfolio performance.

Stessa, owned by Roofstock, is primarily a rental accounting platform. The free plan connects to your bank accounts, categorizes transactions, and generates income statements and net operating income reports. Premium, at around $20 per month, adds features like advanced reporting, receipt scanning, and budgeting tools.

Pros:

  • Strong financial dashboards and investor-style reports.
  • Automatic bank transaction imports save time on data entry.
  • Useful for tracking property values, equity, and portfolio-level returns.

Cons:

  • Requires linking your bank accounts, which some landlords aren't comfortable doing.
  • Auto-categorization needs regular cleanup to stay accurate.
  • Tenant and maintenance management are secondary to the accounting features.
  • The jump to $20 per month is steep for a landlord with two or three units.

4. Baselane (Free)

Best for: Landlords who want banking and bookkeeping in one place.

Baselane is a banking-first platform for real estate investors. It offers landlord-focused bank accounts, rent collection, and bookkeeping, and makes money mainly from its banking relationships rather than subscriptions.

Pros:

  • Separate virtual accounts per property make it easy to keep finances apart.
  • Integrated rent collection and transaction tagging.
  • Core features don't carry a monthly fee.

Cons:

  • You get the most value only if you move your banking to their platform, which is a big commitment.
  • Cloud-based, with sensitive financial data and an account required.
  • Maintenance and lease management are fairly basic.

5. A Spreadsheet (Free)

Best for: Landlords with one or two units who are comfortable building their own system.

Plenty of successful landlords run their entire business from Excel or Google Sheets. A well-built spreadsheet with tabs for rent, expenses, tenants, and maintenance can work surprisingly well.

Pros:

  • Completely free and endlessly customizable.
  • No vendor lock-in, and easy to share with an accountant.

Cons:

  • Clunky on a phone, so on-site logging rarely happens.
  • No reminders for lease renewals, rent due dates, or recurring maintenance.
  • Formulas break, tabs multiply, and the system usually decays as the portfolio grows.

If you're outgrowing a spreadsheet but don't want a subscription, a purpose-built free app like KeyLoft is the natural next step.

What to Look for in an Alternative

The right tool depends on how you run your rentals, not on which app has the longest feature list. Ask yourself these questions before you commit:

  1. What does it really cost at your unit count? Calculate the annual cost at your current size and at your five-year goal. Per-unit pricing that seems trivial at two units can become a real line item at fifteen.
  2. Who controls your data? Find out where tenant records and financial history are stored, whether you can export them, and what happens if the company changes its pricing or shuts down.
  3. Does it work where you work? If you spend time at properties with poor reception, offline capability isn't a nice-to-have.
  4. Do you actually need tenant-facing features? Online portals and payment processing are great if your tenants want them. If your tenants already pay reliably, you may be paying for complexity.
  5. How good is the record keeping? At tax time, you need clean, categorized income and expenses by property. Whatever tool you choose should make that easy.
  6. How much friction is there? The best system is the one you'll actually use. If logging an expense takes five taps and a login, you'll skip it.

Also think about how your rental business connects to the rest of your financial life. Many independent landlords also freelance or run a side business, and keeping those books separate from your rental books matters. A tool like Stintly handles time tracking and small business finances for self-employed work, so your rental records in KeyLoft stay clean and focused. And if you're planning a major renovation or doing a lot of your own contracting work between tenants, TrestleBook is built for job costing, contractor billing, and construction project tracking, which is useful when a kitchen remodel starts turning into a project with its own budget and change orders.

Making the Switch

Moving off Avail doesn't have to be disruptive. Here's a practical migration plan that works for most small landlords:

  1. Export everything first. Before you cancel or go inactive, download your lease documents, tenant contact information, payment history, and any maintenance records. Save them in a dedicated folder for each property.
  2. Pick a clean start date. The first of the month or the start of a quarter works best. Enter historical data as summaries if needed, and track transactions in detail going forward.
  3. Set up properties and units. In KeyLoft, add each property, its units, and current tenants with their lease start and end dates, rent amounts, and deposits.
  4. Arrange rent collection. If Avail was processing payments, give tenants at least 30 days' written notice of the new payment method. Zelle, direct bank transfer, or checks all work well. Document the change in writing and keep a copy.
  5. Run both systems for a month. Keep Avail active in read-only mode for one rent cycle while you confirm everything is recorded correctly in the new tool.
  6. Close the old account. Once you've confirmed a full month of clean records, cancel any paid plan and close the account so tenant data isn't left sitting on a server you no longer use.
Tip: Switch between tenancies or right after a lease renewal when possible. Tenants handle changes better when they come with a fresh lease conversation instead of a surprise email.

The bottom line: Avail is a capable platform, but it isn't the only option, and for many independent landlords it isn't the best fit. TurboTenant shines for marketing vacancies, Stessa for financial reporting, Baselane for integrated banking, and spreadsheets for the ultra-minimalist. If you want a free, private, offline-first tool that covers the daily work of being a landlord without subscriptions or accounts, KeyLoft is the strongest free Avail alternative available today.