Corbica vs Stessa
Corbica vs Stessa: investor tracking vs a full property management system
Stessa is a well-liked investor platform with a genuinely generous free tier — unlimited properties, automated bank feeds and tax-ready reporting for $0. Corbica is a heavier system: a double-entry general ledger, owner portals and statements, maintenance workflows and the operational layer a manager needs. Stessa is materially cheaper; the question is whether you need books or a dashboard.
Stessa is a popular financial tracking and reporting tool for rental property investors, known for automated expense tracking and banking features.
Let's start with the part most comparison pages skip: Stessa is cheaper than Corbica, by a lot, and its free tier is more generous than ours. Stessa Essentials is free with an unlimited number of properties. Corbica's free plan stops at five units. Stessa Pro is $28/month paid annually; Corbica's entry paid plan is $59/month. If your requirement is “track my rentals' finances and give me a tax package”, Stessa does that for less money and you should look hard at it.
The reason to consider Corbica anyway is the shape of the accounting and the presence of an operational layer. Stessa's published feature matrix describes transaction tracking, bank data feeds, receipt scanning, reporting and a tax package. It does not list a chart of accounts, a balance sheet, a trial balance, or owner statements. That is the difference between excellent categorised records and a set of books, and it matters exactly when someone else has a stake in the property.
The other difference is who the software is for. Stessa is built for the investor looking at their own portfolio. Corbica is built for someone operating properties — often on behalf of owners who need their own login, their own statements, and a maintenance request that becomes a work order and then a journal entry.
Corbica vs Stessa at a glance
| Corbica | Stessa | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 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. | Essentials free; Manage $12/mo paid annually ($15 monthly); Pro $28/mo paid annually ($35 monthly). All plans include an unlimited number of properties. |
| 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. | More generous at the free end: unlimited properties, automated bank data feeds, basic reporting and a basic tax package for $0. |
| Accounting model | 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. | Transaction tracking with bank feeds and receipt scanning. The published feature matrix lists advanced transaction tracking, advanced reporting and an accountant tax package; it does not list a chart of accounts, a balance sheet or a trial balance. |
| Owner reporting | Owner portal with statements on every plan including free — built for managing property that isn't all yours. (The dashboard-side owner-statement report sits with the rest of the report catalogue on Starter.) | “Shared account access” is listed; owner statements are not a published feature. The product is designed around the investor's own view of their portfolio. |
| Property operations | Maintenance requests to work orders to vendor bills to journal entries, plus inspections, move-out disposition and lease renewals. | “Maintenance tracking” is listed as a Manage/Pro feature; the workflow layer around vendors and work orders is not part of the published matrix. |
| E-signature | 30 envelopes/mo on Professional, 100 on Business; not available on Free or Starter. | One (1) eSignature/month on Manage; seven (7)/month on Pro; not available on Essentials. |
| Banking | None. Corbica connects to your bank; it is not a bank and pays no yield. | A real differentiator: high-yield cash management up to 1.88% APY (Essentials/Manage) and up to 3.24% APY (Pro), FDIC insured up to $3M per entity, and 1.1% cash back on debit purchases. |
| Best fit | Landlords and managers who need books, owner reporting and an operations layer in one system. | Investors who want automated financial tracking, portfolio metrics, banking yield and a tax package at the lowest possible cost. |
What Stessa publishes about pricing
Quoted from Stessa’s pricing page as of 2026-08-25. Vendors change pricing; check the source before deciding. Where Stessa doesn’t publish a figure we say so rather than estimating one.
Plans
- Free tier
- Essentials — free
- Paid tiers
- Manage $12/mo billed annually ($15 monthly); Pro $28/mo billed annually ($35 monthly)
Minimums and caps
- eSignatures included
- One (1)/month on Manage; seven (7)/month on Pro
- Properties
- “All plans include an unlimited number of properties.”
- Portfolios
- 1 on Essentials and Manage; Unlimited on Pro
- Receipt scanning
- 5 / month on Essentials and Manage; Unlimited on Pro
- Cash management yield
- “Up to 1.88% APY” on Essentials and Manage; “Up to 3.24% APY” on Pro, tiered by balance; FDIC insured “up to $3M/entity”; “1.1% cash back on purchases”
Per-transaction fees
- Per-transaction fees
- Not stated on the pricing page. “Online rent collection” is listed on all plans and “Accelerated rent payments” on Manage and Pro, without a fee schedule.
- Tenant screening fee
- Not stated. Tenant screening is listed on all plans and “Priority tenant screening” on Pro.
Stessa's page is a feature matrix rather than a fee schedule: the plan prices are clear, the per-transaction economics are not published. We have recorded that rather than filling the gap with numbers from a third-party blog.
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.
The cost comparison, which Stessa wins
An investor with eight rentals who wants automated bookkeeping and a tax package: Stessa Essentials covers unlimited properties for $0, or Pro at $28/month paid annually adds advanced reporting, unlimited receipt scanning and the Schedule E and CapEx tax package.
The same eight units on Corbica needs a paid plan, because our free tier stops at 5 units. That is Starter at $59/month plus the ACH platform fee on any rent collected through the system — 2.5% capped at $8 per payment.
There is no arithmetic where Corbica is the cheaper of the two for that investor. Stessa is roughly half the price at its top tier and free at its bottom one, and it pays yield on cash balances we do not offer at all.
Corbica's case has to be made on what the extra buys: a general ledger rather than a categorised transaction list, owner portals and statements for property you manage on someone else's behalf, a maintenance workflow that ends in a booked bill, inspections, deposit dispositions, and lease e-signing at volume. If you do not need those, the honest recommendation is the cheaper product.
Where the accounting actually differs
Categorised transactions and a general ledger are not the same thing
Stessa's matrix lists transaction tracking, bank feeds and receipt scanning — a very good version of “every dollar is labelled”. A general ledger adds the second half: every dollar is labelled AND every entry has two sides that balance, which is what makes a balance sheet possible and what lets a CPA trust the file without re-deriving it.
What the double entry actually gets you
A balance sheet with real equity, a trial balance that proves the books, security deposits sitting as a liability rather than as income you'll be surprised by, and owner statements that tie to the P&L because they are drawn from the same entries.
Click a number, see the entries behind it
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.
Where Stessa's model is the better fit
If nobody else has a stake in your properties, you file a Schedule E and you do not need a balance sheet, double-entry is overhead. Stessa's design reflects that judgement deliberately, and for a solo investor it is often the right call.
Who should actually pick Stessa
You want the lowest cost and your books are for you alone
Free for unlimited properties, or $28/month paid annually for the full tax package, is difficult to argue with. If your accounting audience is your own tax return, Stessa is cheaper and sufficient.
The banking features are worth real money to you
Up to 3.24% APY on cash balances, FDIC insurance up to $3M per entity, and 1.1% cash back on debit purchases is a genuine financial product. Corbica does not offer banking at all; on a large operating balance, Stessa's yield alone can exceed what either subscription costs.
You want portfolio-level investor metrics
Advanced ownership metrics, portfolio dashboards and CapEx tax packages are aimed at the buy-and-hold investor tracking returns. Corbica reports on properties as operating businesses; that is a different lens and Stessa's is better for the investor question.
Who Corbica is right for
You manage property for someone else
Owner portals and owner statements are on every Corbica plan, including free. If you have partners, an LLC with other members, or clients, they get a login and a statement instead of a PDF you assemble by hand.
You need the operational layer, not just the ledger
Tenant-submitted maintenance requests that become work orders and then vendor bills and then journal entries; inspections with photos and tenant sign-off; move-out inspections that flow into a deposit disposition; renewal automation. This is the half of the job Stessa's matrix does not cover.
You want books a CPA can work from without rebuilding them
Double-entry, chart of accounts, balance sheet, trial balance, bank reconciliation and Schedule E export — all on Starter. If your accountant currently starts by re-categorising your export, that is the cost this replaces.
Where Corbica is behind Stessa
Every comparison page claims to be honest. Here is ours, in the form that costs us something to publish.
- Stessa's free tier is more generous than ours: unlimited properties against our five-unit cap.
- Stessa is materially cheaper at every paid tier — $12 or $28 a month against $59.
- No banking product. Stessa pays up to 3.24% APY on cash balances and 1.1% cash back; we pay nothing because we are not a bank.
- No mileage tracking, and no investor-style portfolio return metrics of the kind Stessa's advanced ownership metrics provide.
- Stessa lists syndication to Zillow on every plan including free; Corbica's listing syndication is a Professional feature and works by publishing a feed you register with each platform yourself.
- No native iOS or Android store app yet — Corbica is an installable mobile web app.
Choose Corbica if…
- You manage property for owners or partners who need statements and a login.
- You want maintenance, leasing, screening, inspections and rent collection in the same system as the books.
- You want double-entry books and a balance sheet, not only transaction categorisation.
- You expect a CPA or a lender to read your financials.
Consider Stessa if…
- You are a solo investor tracking your own portfolio and cost is the priority.
- The banking yield and cash-back are worth more to you than an operations layer.
- You have more than five units and want a free tier — theirs is unlimited, ours is not.
- You already keep operations elsewhere and only need financial tracking.
Frequently asked questions
Is Corbica a Stessa alternative?
It overlaps but it is a different shape of product. Corbica pairs GL-grade accounting with full property operations — rent collection, maintenance workflows, inspections, lease e-signing, screening, and tenant and owner portals. Stessa is built around the investor's view of a portfolio, with banking and tax packages Corbica does not offer. Corbica is free for up to 5 units; Stessa's free tier covers unlimited properties.
Is Stessa cheaper than Corbica?
Yes, clearly. Stessa Essentials is free with unlimited properties, Manage is $12/month paid annually and Pro is $28/month paid annually, as published on 25 August 2026. Corbica is free to 5 units and then $59/month for Starter. If cost is your deciding factor and you do not need owner reporting or an operations layer, Stessa is the cheaper answer.
How is Corbica's accounting different from Stessa's?
Corbica maintains a true double-entry general ledger with a chart of accounts, so you get a balance sheet, a trial balance, and owner statements that reconcile to the P&L because they are drawn from the same entries. Stessa's published feature matrix describes transaction tracking, bank data feeds, receipt scanning, advanced reporting and a tax package; a chart of accounts, balance sheet and owner statements are not listed on it.
Does Stessa do rent collection and screening?
Yes — its pricing page lists online rent collection, automated reminders and late fees, tenant autopay, a tenant ledger and rent roll, vacancy advertising, syndication to Zillow, tenant applications and tenant screening. It is broader than a pure bookkeeping tool, and pages that describe it as tracking-only are out of date.
Does Stessa publish its rent-collection fees?
Not on its pricing page as of 25 August 2026. Rent collection and screening are listed as features without a fee schedule. Corbica publishes its: the ACH platform fee is 2.9% capped at $10 on Free, 2.5% capped at $8 on Starter, 1% capped at $5 on Professional and none on Business, and card payments add a convenience fee to the tenant's total.
Does Corbica pay interest on balances like Stessa?
No. Corbica is not a bank and offers no cash-management account, no APY and no cash back. Stessa advertises up to 1.88% APY on Essentials and Manage, up to 3.24% APY on Pro, FDIC insurance up to $3M per entity and 1.1% cash back on debit purchases. On a large operating balance that is worth real money and it is a legitimate reason to choose Stessa.
Can Corbica produce a Schedule E?
Yes — Schedule E export in PDF and CSV is on the Starter plan, sourced from the general ledger. Stessa includes a basic tax package on its free tier and adds Schedule E on Manage and CapEx on Pro.
Which one should a landlord with a dozen units choose?
If those units are all yours, you do your own maintenance calls and your accounting audience is your tax return, Stessa Pro at $28/month is cheaper and probably enough. If you have owners or partners to report to, tenants submitting maintenance requests, leases to e-sign at volume, or a lender who wants a balance sheet, that is the point where Corbica's extra cost starts buying something.
Compare Corbica with others: