Corbica vs Buildium
Corbica vs Buildium: which property management software is right for you?
Corbica and Buildium both cover rent collection, leasing, maintenance, accounting, and tenant/owner portals. Buildium is a mature platform built for professional management companies; Corbica pairs the same full general-ledger accounting with transparent per-unit pricing and a free tier, making it a strong fit for independent landlords and small-to-mid property managers who don't want per-door minimums.
Buildium is an established, full-featured property management platform aimed at professional property-management companies and larger portfolios.
Most Buildium comparisons stop at a feature checklist, and a feature checklist will tell you these two products look nearly identical. Both collect rent by ACH and card, both run applications and screening, both e-sign leases, both keep double-entry books, both give tenants and owners a portal. The checklist is not where the decision lives.
The decision lives in two places: what the software actually costs once per-transaction fees are counted, and whether the accounting underneath is something you can hand to a CPA without a reconciliation project first. This page works through both using Buildium's own published numbers, and it says plainly where Buildium comes out ahead — because on cost per rent payment at mid-size portfolios, it does.
Short version: at five units or fewer Corbica is free and Buildium has no free tier. Between roughly six and a hundred units the two subscriptions are close and Buildium's flat per-EFT fee is cheaper than Corbica's percentage-based platform fee, so Buildium often wins on total cost. Above that, Corbica's Business plan charges no ACH platform fee at all while Buildium's per-transaction fees keep scaling — but Buildium does not publish its subscription price at that unit count, so nobody can honestly compute the total for you, us included.
Corbica vs Buildium at a glance
| Corbica | Buildium | |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting | Full double-entry general ledger with a real chart of accounts — every report (owner statements, P&L, balance sheet, Schedule E) is GL-sourced, not derived from a payments table. | Full double-entry accounting built for professional management companies — mature, well understood by bookkeepers, and the deepest track record in this comparison set. |
| Pricing model | Corbica starts free for up to 5 units, then Starter is $59/mo including 60 units ($2/unit after), Professional is $149/mo including 100 units ($1.50/unit after), and Business is $299/mo including 300 units ($0.75/unit after). No per-door minimum, no onboarding fee, and no setup charge per bank account. | Three tiers — Essential, Growth, Premium — each quoted as a “starting at” price that scales with unit count. The per-unit schedule is not published; you choose a unit count on their pricing page to see a number. |
| Free tier | Corbica's free plan covers 5 units and includes online rent collection, tenant and owner portals (owners see their statements there), and maintenance requests. The general ledger, the report catalogue, tenant screening and e-signing start on paid plans — the free tier is a working system, not the whole product. | No free tier. A 14-day free trial with sample data, then a paid plan. |
| Per-transaction fees | Corbica takes a platform fee out of ACH rent rather than charging a flat per-transaction fee: 2.9% capped at $10 per payment on Free, 2.5% capped at $8 per payment on Starter, 1% capped at $5 per payment on Professional, and no platform fee on Business. Card rent carries a 3.25% convenience fee (minimum $5) added to the tenant's total, which is how card processing is covered without taking it out of the landlord's rent. There is no charge per e-signature inside the plan allowance — Professional includes 30 envelopes a month and Business includes 100, with additional envelopes at $1.50 — but e-signing is a Professional-and-above feature, so Free and Starter do not have it at all. | Published per plan: incoming EFT, outgoing EFT, card, e-signature, screening, 1099 filing, and a per-bank-account setup fee. See the table below — this is Buildium's most useful published detail and the reason total cost is not the sticker price. |
| Onboarding | Self-serve signup on every plan. The guided Buildium migration is offered and scoped with you, not sold as a mandatory line item. | Buildium's pricing page states that new Growth and Premium customers must use its customized Onboarding service to get started. The fee is not published. |
| Inspections | Included, in-house and not plan-gated — inspection templates, condition ratings, tenant-signed move-in/move-out inspections, and a direct path from a move-out inspection to the deposit disposition. | Available through a HappyCo integration: $99 setup and $40–$95/month on Essential, included on Growth and Premium. |
| Tax forms | 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC preparation from the ledger, plus an IRS-format data file and a Track1099-ready CSV. Corbica does not transmit them for you — that step stays yours. | A paid 1099 service through Nelco at $50 per batch plus $4.50 per form. |
| Services marketplace | Narrower, and tiered: tenant screening (SingleKey) and postal mail from Starter, certified mail from Professional, renters-insurance tracking on every plan. Retail cash payments and a mail-my-checks service are not offered at all. | Broad — inspections (HappyCo), retail cash payments (PayNearMe), remote check printing and mailing (RevSpring), renters insurance (MSI), showings coordination (Tenant Turner), and a lead marketplace. |
What Buildium publishes about pricing
Quoted from Buildium’s pricing page as of 2026-08-25. Vendors change pricing; check the source before deciding. Where Buildium doesn’t publish a figure we say so rather than estimating one.
Plans
- Entry plan
- Essential — starting at $62/month
- Growth
- starting at $192/month
- Premium
- starting at $400/month
Minimums and caps
- Minimum units
- Not stated on the pricing page. The page prices each plan from a “Number of Units” selector, and the three figures above are “starting at” prices.
- Per-unit pricing
- Not broken out publicly; price scales by unit count within each tier.
- Large portfolios
- “If you have more than 5,000 units or are looking for pricing for community associations please call 877-396-7876.”
- Onboarding
- “All new Buildium customers purchasing our Growth or Premium plan must use our customized Onboarding service to get started with Buildium.” Price not published.
- Free trial
- 14-day free trial with sample data; no credit card required.
Per-transaction fees
- eSignature (Essential)
- $5 per document
- eSignature (Growth / Premium)
- Growth $1 per document · Premium “Unlimited - All fees included”
- Incoming EFT — rent in (Essential)
- $2.35 per transaction
- Incoming EFT (Growth / Premium)
- Growth $1.35 per transaction · Premium “First 12 months free, then $0.60”
- Credit cards (all three plans)
- 2.99% per transaction
- Outgoing EFT — payouts
- $0.99 per transaction on all three plans
- Bank account setup
- Essential $99 per business bank account · Growth 10 free, then $99 each · Premium 100 free, then $99 each
- Tenant screening
- $17 per screening · Applicant Paid $35 per screening paid by applicant · Enhanced Tenant Screening (Growth & Premium) $20 per screening
- 1099 service (Nelco)
- $50 per batch + $4.50 per form
- Property inspections (HappyCo)
- Essential $99 setup fee, $40–$95 monthly fee · Growth included (after 3 years, $0.40 per unit) · Premium included
- Remote check printing (RevSpring)
- $30 setup fee, $1.50 per check
Buildium publishes more fee detail than anyone else in this comparison set, and that deserves saying out loud: you can compute your true cost from their page. Most vendors make you ask for it.
All three plan prices are “starting at” figures that rise with unit count, so the sticker price is a floor rather than a quote.
And for Corbica, at the same resolution
Corbica starts free for up to 5 units, then Starter is $59/mo including 60 units ($2/unit after), Professional is $149/mo including 100 units ($1.50/unit after), and Business is $299/mo including 300 units ($0.75/unit after). No per-door minimum, no onboarding fee, and no setup charge per bank account.
Corbica takes a platform fee out of ACH rent rather than charging a flat per-transaction fee: 2.9% capped at $10 per payment on Free, 2.5% capped at $8 per payment on Starter, 1% capped at $5 per payment on Professional, and no platform fee on Business. Card rent carries a 3.25% convenience fee (minimum $5) added to the tenant's total, which is how card processing is covered without taking it out of the landlord's rent. There is no charge per e-signature inside the plan allowance — Professional includes 30 envelopes a month and Business includes 100, with additional envelopes at $1.50 — but e-signing is a Professional-and-above feature, so Free and Starter do not have it at all.
What it actually costs — worked through, including where Buildium wins
Take a landlord with 12 units at an average rent of $1,400, where every tenant pays by ACH and about a dozen documents are signed a year. Every Buildium figure below is quoted from the table above; every Corbica figure is published on our own pricing page. The arithmetic is shown so you can redo it with your own numbers.
Buildium Essential: $62/month starting price, plus 12 incoming EFT transactions at $2.35 = $28.20/month, plus twelve $5 e-signatures a year ≈ $5/month, plus a one-time $99 bank-account setup fee. That is roughly $95/month plus $99 in year one — with the caveat that $62 is a starting price and the real quote at 12 units is not published.
Corbica Starter: $59/month, which covers 60 units, plus the ACH platform fee. At $1,400 rent the Starter rate of 2.5% capped at $8 per payment hits its cap, so each payment costs $8 — twelve payments is $96/month, for about $155/month all in. E-signing is not available on Starter; it starts on Professional.
Corbica Professional: $149/month plus twelve payments at the Professional cap of $5 = $60/month, so about $209/month, with 30 e-sign envelopes a month included.
Read that honestly and Buildium Essential is the cheaper product for this landlord. Corbica's ACH fee is a percentage with a per-payment cap, and above $94 in rent that percentage costs more than Buildium's flat $2.35 — and the crossover moves by tier: $81 on Free, $235 on Professional. If your portfolio sits in this band and your rent arrives by bank transfer, Buildium's transaction pricing is better than ours and it should weigh heavily in your decision.
The picture inverts at both ends. At five units or fewer Corbica is $0/month and Buildium has no free tier — four units at $1,400 costs $40/month in Corbica platform fees (the $10 cap, four times) against $62 plus four EFT transactions at $2.35, or $71.40/month, plus the $99 bank-account setup fee on Buildium Essential. And on Corbica Business ($299/month, 300 units included) there is no ACH platform fee at all, while 300 incoming EFT transactions on Buildium Growth would be $405/month in EFT fees alone, on top of a subscription price Buildium does not publish at that unit count.
The comparison nobody can complete is the middle-to-large one, because Buildium's actual quote at your unit count is not on their page. Ask them for it, then set it next to Corbica's published number — ours is on /pricing and does not require a call.
Where the accounting actually differs
Both keep real books — this is not the differentiator people claim
Plenty of comparison pages assert that a challenger has “real accounting” and the incumbent does not. That is not true of Buildium. Buildium has full double-entry accounting with a long history in property-management firms, and if the ledger is your only criterion it is a genuinely strong product. The honest differentiator is not whether the ledger exists but what sits on top of it, how far a number drills, and what tier it starts on.
Every number on a Corbica report is a sum of journal-entry lines
Every figure on a Corbica report is a sum of journal-entry lines, and you can open the line to see the entry, the account it hit, and the property it was allocated to. That is the difference between a report you can defend to an owner and a number you have to re-derive in a spreadsheet. Corbica enforces this internally: a test fails the build if a report or KPI starts summing the payments table instead of the ledger, because payment records and booked entries drift apart the moment a partial payment, a refund, or a bank-feed-categorised deposit enters the picture.
Per-line property allocation, so owner statements survive a split expense
A single invoice covering three properties is where simple systems fall down: the expense lands on one property and the owner statements quietly disagree with the P&L. Corbica allocates at the journal-entry-line level, so one entry can hit three properties in the proportions you set, and every property-scoped report reads the allocation rather than the entry header.
The books start at the entry paid plan
The general ledger, chart of accounts, core financial reports, bank reconciliation and Schedule E export are all on Corbica Starter at $59/month. Plaid bank feeds, the Tax Center and 1099 preparation are Professional features, and three-way trust reconciliation is Business — we would rather list the ladder than imply everything is included everywhere.
Who should actually pick Buildium
You run a management company with staff, and the services layer matters
Buildium's marketplace is broader than ours: retail cash payments at 20,000+ locations, remote check printing and mailing, renters-insurance sales, showings coordination, and a lead-generation marketplace. If your operation leans on any of those, that is a real reason to choose Buildium, and no amount of ledger quality substitutes for it.
Your rent arrives by ACH, in volume, at mid-size portfolio scale
Buildium's flat incoming-EFT fee ($2.35 on Essential, $1.35 on Growth, $0.60 on Premium after the first year) is cheaper per payment than Corbica's percentage-with-a-cap for any rent above $94 on Starter — the crossover is $81 on Free and $235 on Professional, and Business takes no ACH platform fee at all. If cost per rent payment is the number you optimise, run the arithmetic above before you switch.
You want a bookkeeper who already knows the software
Buildium has been the default in property-management bookkeeping for long enough that the accountant you hire has probably used it. That is not a feature we can match, and it is worth money on the day you hand your books to someone new.
Who Corbica is right for
You have five units or fewer and want to start at zero
Corbica's free plan covers 5 units and includes online rent collection, tenant and owner portals (owners see their statements there), and maintenance requests. The general ledger, the report catalogue, tenant screening and e-signing start on paid plans — the free tier is a working system, not the whole product. Buildium has no free tier at all, so for a small landlord the comparison at this size is $0 against a monthly subscription plus a $99 bank-account setup fee.
You want the price without a call, and without a mandatory onboarding purchase
Every Corbica price is published, including the fees that make us look worse. Buildium publishes its fees in impressive detail but not the plan quote at your unit count, and new Growth and Premium customers are required to buy its onboarding service. If you would rather sign up, import, and look at the books yourself this afternoon, that path exists here.
You are large enough for the Business plan's economics
At $299/month with 300 units included and no ACH platform fee, the per-payment cost that hurts us in the middle of the range disappears. A 250-unit portfolio collecting rent by ACH pays nothing in Corbica transaction fees; the same volume on Buildium Growth is $1.35 a payment, or $337.50 a month.
You want inspections without another line item
Corbica's inspection module is in-house and not plan-gated: templates, condition ratings, photos, tenant-signed move-in and move-out inspections, and a direct link from a move-out inspection into the security-deposit disposition. Buildium's inspections come from HappyCo at $99 setup and $40–$95/month on the Essential plan.
Where Corbica is behind Buildium
Every comparison page claims to be honest. Here is ours, in the form that costs us something to publish.
- Our ACH platform fee is a capped percentage, and from about six units up to the Business plan it costs more per rent payment than Buildium's flat EFT fee.
- E-signing starts on Professional ($149/mo). Buildium sells e-signatures on its entry plan at $5 a document, which is cheaper for a landlord signing a handful of leases a year.
- No retail cash-payment network (Buildium integrates PayNearMe) and no service that prints and mails your checks for you (Buildium integrates RevSpring). Corbica prints checks; you post them.
- No public API and no Zapier app. Buildium sells Open API access on its Premium plan.
- QuickBooks is a mapped CSV export, not a live two-way sync.
- No native iOS or Android app in the stores yet — Corbica is an installable mobile web app with push notifications.
- Support is email and in-app ticketing at every tier. Buildium sells live phone support on Growth and Premium.
- Buildium sells a 1099 service that transmits for you; Corbica prepares the forms and the IRS-format data file, and the submission stays your job.
What moving from Buildium looks like
Corbica connects to Buildium through Buildium's own API rather than asking you to export CSVs. Properties, units, tenants and co-tenants, leases, owners, vendors, work orders, GL accounts, bills and payment history come across, and opening balances are posted into the general ledger so the books tie out on day one rather than starting from zero.
It is a guided migration rather than a self-serve button. A reconciliation step ties the imported trial balance back to live Buildium before anything goes live, and an unexplained gap blocks the opening-balance post rather than quietly passing. Importing does not contact your tenants — they hear from Corbica at the go-live date you choose, through notice waves you approve first.
Two things stay manual because Buildium exposes no API for them: stopping your recurring rent charges in Buildium, and unwinding tenant auto-draft enrolments there. Both are on the migration checklist, and both matter — a tenant left on charges in both systems gets billed twice.
Choose Corbica if…
- You have five units or fewer and want a working system for $0.
- You want every price published, including the unflattering ones, without a sales call.
- You are large enough for the Business plan, where the ACH platform fee goes to zero.
- You want inspections and renters-insurance tracking without another paid add-on.
Consider Buildium if…
- You need retail cash payments, remote check mailing, or an open API.
- Your portfolio is mid-range and most rent arrives by ACH, where Buildium's flat EFT fee beats our capped percentage.
- You want live phone support, which we do not offer on any plan.
- You rely on specific Buildium integrations or workflows your team is already trained on.
Frequently asked questions
Is Corbica a Buildium alternative?
Yes. Corbica offers the same core property-management capabilities — online rent collection, leasing and e-sign, maintenance, inspections, full general-ledger accounting, and tenant/owner portals — with transparent per-unit pricing and a free tier for up to 5 units. The places it is not a like-for-like replacement are retail cash payments, a check-mailing service, an open API, and live phone support, none of which Corbica offers.
Does Corbica have real accounting like Buildium?
Yes, and so does Buildium — this is not a case where the incumbent lacks a ledger. Corbica is built on a double-entry general ledger with a full chart of accounts; every financial report is sourced from the GL, so owner statements, P&L, balance sheet, trial balance and Schedule E reconcile to the books, and you can click any figure to see the journal entries behind it. Accounting starts on the Starter plan.
How much does Corbica cost compared to Buildium?
Corbica is free for up to 5 units, then $59/mo for Starter (60 units included), $149/mo for Professional (100 units) and $299/mo for Business (300 units). Buildium published Essential at "starting at $62/month", Growth at "starting at $192/month" and Premium at "starting at $400/month" as of 25 August 2026, and does not publish the quote at a given unit count. Corbica has no per-door minimum and no onboarding fee.
What does Buildium charge per transaction?
As published on buildium.com/pricing on 25 August 2026: e-signatures $5 per document on Essential, $1 on Growth, included on Premium; incoming EFT $2.35 / $1.35 / $0.60 (Premium free for the first 12 months); outgoing EFT $0.99 on all plans; credit cards 2.99% on all plans; bank-account setup $99 per business bank account on Essential. Tenant screening is $17, or $35 when the applicant pays. The Nelco 1099 service is $50 per batch plus $4.50 per form.
Is Buildium ever cheaper than Corbica?
Yes, and often. Buildium's flat incoming-EFT fee is cheaper per rent payment than Corbica's capped percentage above $94 on Starter ($81 on Free, $235 on Professional), at every Corbica tier except Business, which charges no ACH platform fee at all. For a landlord with a dozen units whose rent arrives by ACH, Buildium Essential's published figures work out cheaper than Corbica Starter. Corbica is cheaper at five units or fewer, where it is free, and at Business-plan scale.
Does switching from Buildium mean exporting CSVs?
No. Corbica connects to Buildium through Buildium's API and imports properties, units, tenants, leases, owners, vendors, work orders, GL accounts, bills and payment history, posting opening balances into the general ledger. It is a guided migration with a reconciliation review before go-live rather than a one-click import.
Will my tenants be contacted when I import from Buildium?
Not during the import. Connecting and importing does not message anyone. Tenants are contacted at the go-live date you choose, through notice waves you review and approve first, so rent keeps flowing through Buildium until you decide to switch.
Does Corbica handle 1099 filing the way Buildium's Nelco service does?
No, and we would rather say so here than have you find out in January. Corbica prepares 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC from the ledger, produces the printable copies, an IRS-format data file, and a CSV you can hand to a transmission service. The last step — getting the forms to the IRS — stays yours. Buildium sells a Nelco service that handles it for $50 per batch plus $4.50 per form.
Does Corbica do inspections?
Yes, in-house and on every plan: inspection templates, condition ratings with photos, tenant-signed move-in and move-out inspections, and a direct path from a move-out inspection into the security-deposit disposition. Buildium's inspections are a HappyCo integration priced at $99 setup and $40–$95 a month on the Essential plan.
Already on Buildium? See how a guided migration to Corbica works
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