If you own two rentals, a duplex, or a handful of units you manage yourself, you have probably run into TurboTenant. It advertises free landlord software, and for a lot of landlords that promise holds up reasonably well. You have probably also noticed that "free" carries an asterisk, and that everything happens in a browser tab. That combination is what sends people searching for a TurboTenant alternative, and it is usually what brings them to KeyLoft.
This comparison is written by the people who build KeyLoft, so take the obvious bias into account. That said, there is no point pretending TurboTenant is bad software. It is not. It does several things KeyLoft does not do at all, and if those things matter to you, you should use it. What follows is an honest look at where each tool fits.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | KeyLoft | TurboTenant |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, no paid tier | Free core; Premium around $9.92/month billed annually |
| Works Offline | Yes — full functionality with no connection | No — web-based, requires internet |
| Account Required | No account, no email, no password | Yes — email account required |
| Best For | Solo landlords and small portfolios who want fast private records | Landlords who advertise vacancies and want online applications and rent collection |
| Platform | iPhone and iPad app | Browser on desktop and mobile, with a companion app |
| Key Features | Property and unit tracking, tenant records, rent logging, lease dates, maintenance history, expense notes, document capture | Listing syndication, online rental applications, tenant screening reports, e-signed leases, online rent payments, maintenance requests |
| Data Privacy | Data stays on your device; nothing uploaded by default | Data stored on company servers under their privacy policy |
Pricing
TurboTenant's free tier is genuinely useful. You can list a vacancy, collect applications, and run the basic workflow without paying a monthly fee. The company makes money in two places: a Premium subscription for landlords, and fees charged to applicants. That second part is the one worth understanding before you commit, because it is not your money but it is your reputation.
When a prospective tenant applies through TurboTenant, the application and screening fee typically lands on the applicant, commonly in the $45 to $55 range depending on the package. For a landlord this feels free. For an applicant touring five units in a competitive market, it is a couple hundred dollars spent before anyone has signed anything. Some applicants will pay without blinking. Others — particularly good tenants with options — will skip your listing. Neither outcome is hypothetical, and which one you get depends heavily on your market.
The Premium tier adds things like unlimited e-signatures, state-specific lease agreements, expedited rent payouts, and better support. Around $9.92 per month billed annually comes to roughly $119 a year. That is not expensive relative to the industry, but it is a recurring line item that grows whether or not your portfolio does.
KeyLoft's pricing is simpler to explain: it is free, and there is no upgrade path waiting to catch you at month three. There is also no paid tier holding back a feature you will eventually need. The honest trade is that KeyLoft does not process payments or run credit checks, so there is no transaction stream to monetize in the first place.
| Cost Over Time | KeyLoft | TurboTenant Free | TurboTenant Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | $0 to you; applicant pays screening fees | About $9.92 |
| 1 Year | $0 | $0 to you | About $119 |
| 3 Years | $0 | $0 to you | About $357 |
| Cost per tenant application | $0 | Roughly $45–$55 charged to applicant | Roughly $45–$55 charged to applicant |
Save money. Try KeyLoft free today. Download KeyLoft for Free — no account needed, works 100% offline.
Features
These two tools are not competing on the same axis, which is worth saying plainly before listing features.
TurboTenant is a leasing pipeline. Its center of gravity is filling a vacancy. You create a listing, it syndicates out to rental sites, applicants apply through a standardized form, screening reports come back, you e-sign a lease, and rent starts flowing through the platform. Maintenance requests and messaging sit on top of that. If your main pain is "I have an empty unit and a stack of inconsistent applications," TurboTenant is built for exactly that problem and does it well.
KeyLoft is a record keeper. Its center of gravity is the ongoing, unglamorous part of being a landlord — the part that happens for the fifty months between move-in and move-out. Properties and units, who lives where, what the rent is, when it was paid, when the lease ends, what broke and when you fixed it, what you spent, and which documents belong to which unit. You open it, tap a few things, and close it. No loading, no dashboard tour.
What KeyLoft does well:
- Speed. A native app opens instantly. Logging a rent payment while standing in a driveway takes seconds, not a browser session and a login.
- Maintenance history per unit. When the same water heater fails twice in eighteen months, you want that visible in one place, not reconstructed from email.
- Lease date tracking. Renewal windows are where landlords lose money. Knowing which leases expire in the next ninety days is worth more than most premium features.
- Expense notes tied to properties. Come tax season, per-property expense records are the difference between a clean Schedule E and a weekend of guessing.
- No setup ceremony. Install, add a property, done. No onboarding wizard, no verification email.
What TurboTenant does that KeyLoft does not:
- Syndicated listings across rental marketplaces
- Online applications with standardized applicant data
- Credit, criminal, and eviction screening reports
- Legally reviewed state-specific lease templates with e-signature
- ACH and card rent collection with automatic reminders
- A tenant-facing portal for requests and payments
That is a real list, and if you need three or more items on it, KeyLoft alone will not cover you. Plenty of landlords run both: TurboTenant to fill a vacancy, KeyLoft to track everything afterward. That is a perfectly sensible setup and nobody should feel bad about it.
Want to try KeyLoft for free? Download KeyLoft for Free — no subscription required.
Offline & Privacy
This is the clearest difference between the two, and it is not a small one.
TurboTenant is a web platform. That is an architectural choice with real benefits — it runs anywhere with a browser, updates instantly, and syncs across devices with no effort. It also means that with no connection, you have no software. Basements, rural properties, parking garages, elevators, older buildings with thick walls, and airplanes are all places landlords actually work, and all places where a browser tab is useless.
KeyLoft works entirely on your device. Every feature is available with airplane mode on, because there is no server round trip involved in any of it. You can stand in a crawlspace with no bars and pull up the full maintenance history of the unit above you.
The privacy consequence follows from the same design. KeyLoft does not require an account because it has nothing to authenticate you against. Your tenant names, rent amounts, addresses, and notes live in your phone's storage. There is no company database holding your portfolio, no breach that could expose it, and no policy update that changes what happens to it.
The practical test: if the company behind your landlord software shut down tomorrow, would you still have your records? With an offline-first app, the answer is yes. With a cloud platform, it depends on whether you exported in time.
The honest counterpoint is that local-only data means backup is your responsibility. If you lose your phone with no device backup, you lose your data. iCloud device backups cover this for most people, but it is a real obligation that a cloud platform handles for you. Choose knowingly.
This offline-first, account-free approach is something we apply across our other tools too. If you also do contract or freelance work alongside your rentals, Stintly handles time tracking, invoicing, and small business finances the same way. And if you self-manage renovations or run a trades business on the side, TrestleBook covers construction project management, contractor billing, and job costing — useful when you are tracking a unit turnover as an actual project with a budget rather than a pile of receipts.
Who Should Use TurboTenant
TurboTenant is the better choice if you recognize yourself here:
- You turn over units regularly. If you are filling vacancies several times a year, listing syndication and a standardized application pipeline save real hours. KeyLoft does not compete here.
- You need formal tenant screening. Credit and background reports from a compliant provider matter, and shifting that cost to applicants is a legitimate, widespread industry practice.
- You want rent collected digitally. Chasing checks or Venmo screenshots gets old. Automated ACH collection with reminders genuinely reduces late payments.
- You want a tenant portal. Giving tenants one place to pay and submit requests cuts down on scattered texts at 11pm.
- You work from a desktop. If your landlording happens at a desk with two monitors, a web platform fits your workflow better than a phone app.
- You want state-specific lease templates. Reviewed lease documents are worth paying for if you do not already have an attorney-drafted lease.
None of that is faint praise. For a landlord running eight units with frequent turnover, TurboTenant Premium at around $119 a year is easy to justify.
Who Should Use KeyLoft
KeyLoft fits a narrower but very common profile:
- You have long-term tenants and rare vacancies. If you fill a unit once every three years, a leasing pipeline is idle infrastructure. What you need daily is a record of what is happening now.
- You manage one to ten units yourself. Small enough that the overhead of a platform outweighs its benefits.
- You do not want to charge applicants. Some landlords screen through their own provider, or absorb the cost, or rent to referrals. If you would rather not put a $50 gate in front of applying, KeyLoft never creates one.
- You work on your feet. Property visits, inspections, repair calls. A phone app that opens instantly beats a browser every time.
- You care about where tenant data lives. Your tenants gave you their information. Keeping it on your device rather than a third-party server is a defensible position.
- You are done with subscriptions. Between accounting software, storage, and everything else, another $10 a month has a real cost in attention as much as dollars.
- You want to start in thirty seconds. No email verification, no onboarding call, no free trial countdown.
The Bottom Line
TurboTenant and KeyLoft solve different halves of the landlord job. TurboTenant is strongest at acquisition — advertising, screening, signing, and collecting. KeyLoft is strongest at stewardship — knowing what you own, who is in it, what they pay, what broke, and what it cost.
If you are actively marketing vacancies and want online rent payments, use TurboTenant. It does that job well and the free tier is a real offer, provided you are comfortable with applicants paying screening fees and with your records living on someone else's servers.
If your units are mostly occupied and your actual daily problem is keeping track of things without paying a subscription or opening a browser, KeyLoft is the better fit. It costs nothing, works with no signal, requires no account, and keeps your tenant information on your own device.
And if you are somewhere in between, run both. Use TurboTenant when a unit goes vacant, and keep KeyLoft as the permanent record of your portfolio. Since KeyLoft is free and requires no account, trying it costs you nothing but the install.
Ready to switch? Download KeyLoft for Free — it takes 30 seconds and costs nothing.