Corbica vs TurboTenant
Corbica vs TurboTenant: marketing your rental vs running the whole business
TurboTenant is free for landlords and very good at the front of the funnel — listings, applications, screening — with premium plans from $149/year. Corbica costs considerably more and earns it, or doesn't, on the back office: a double-entry general ledger, owner portals and statements, work orders, inspections, and trust-grade accounting. This page is about which half of the job you actually need.
TurboTenant is a widely used free-for-landlords platform known for listing syndication, applications, and tenant screening.
TurboTenant's pricing is the headline fact of this comparison and there is no point burying it: the landlord plan is $0, permanently, and the premium tiers start at $149 a year. Corbica's entry paid plan is $59 a month. For a landlord with a couple of units who wants to advertise a vacancy, screen an applicant and collect rent, TurboTenant is an order of magnitude cheaper and it is a good product.
The trade is where the money comes from and where the product stops. TurboTenant's economics lean on the renter: its published renter pricing shows a $55 screening fee for applicants of free-plan landlords ($45 if the landlord is on a premium plan) and a $2 ACH fee on rent payments that disappears when the landlord upgrades. Corbica takes its fee from the landlord's side of the transaction instead, and charges the applicant nothing unless you choose to pass the screening cost on.
The other trade is depth. TurboTenant's Pro plan includes accounting insights, automated transaction tracking, fixed-asset and depreciation tracking, and Schedule E and Form 8825. That is a real accounting layer — better than these comparison pages usually admit. What it is not is a double-entry general ledger with a chart of accounts, a balance sheet, owner statements and a trial balance, which is the line where a set of records becomes a set of books.
Corbica vs TurboTenant at a glance
| Corbica | TurboTenant | |
|---|---|---|
| Price to the landlord | 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. | Free plan at $0/mo “No fees or contracts - ever”. Essentials starts at $12.42/mo billed annually at $149; Pro starts at $16.58/mo billed annually at $199. Annual price rises with units managed — see the table below. |
| Price to the renter | Tenants pay nothing extra to pay rent by ACH. Card payments add a convenience fee to the tenant's total. Screening is landlord-paid by default; passing it to the applicant is optional and capped by state law where one applies. | Published renter pricing: screening fee $55 (or $45 if the landlord is on a premium plan); ACH $2 (free if the landlord is on a premium plan); credit/debit 3.49%. Optional renter add-ons: rent reporting $4.99/mo, renters insurance from $11/mo. |
| 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. | Accounting Insights, automated transaction tracking, fixed asset and depreciation tracking, and Schedule E and Form 8825 on the Pro plan. Not a double-entry ledger with a chart of accounts. |
| Owner reporting | Owner portal and owner statements on every plan, including free. | Not part of the published feature set — the product is built for the landlord managing their own rentals. |
| Leasing & screening | Applications, screening (SingleKey), custom lease templates and e-signing — screening from Starter, e-signing from Professional. | Its core strength: listing syndication to top rental sites, unlimited listings, pre-screeners, applications, credit/criminal/eviction checks, unlimited e-signatures and unlimited lease agreements on premium plans. |
| Bank accounts | No limit on connected accounts on any plan; Plaid bank feeds start on Professional. | 1 connected bank account on Free and Essentials; unlimited on Pro. |
| Operations | Work orders with vendors and bills, inspections with tenant sign-off, move-out disposition, renewals, HOA, Section 8 and commercial-lease accounting. | Maintenance requests and coordinated maintenance; the vendor/work-order/GL chain is not part of the published feature set. |
| Best fit | Landlords and small managers who need books, owner reporting and operations in one system. | Landlords whose main need is filling vacancies fast with screened tenants, at the lowest possible cost. |
What TurboTenant publishes about pricing
Quoted from TurboTenant’s pricing page as of 2026-08-25. Vendors change pricing; check the source before deciding. Where TurboTenant doesn’t publish a figure we say so rather than estimating one.
Plans
- Free plan
- $0/mo — “No fees or contracts - ever”
- Premium plans
- Essentials from $149/year; Pro from $199/year (1–10 units)
- Essentials, verbatim
- “Starting at $12.42/mo”, “Billed Annually at $149”
- Pro, verbatim
- “Starting at $16.58/mo”, “Billed Annually at $199”
Minimums and caps
- Price by units managed (Essentials)
- 1–10 units $149/year · 11–30 $199/year · 31–60 $299/year · 61+ $349/year
- Price by units managed (Pro)
- 1–10 units $199/year · 11–30 $399/year · 31–60 $699/year · 61+ $999/year
- Always free
- “Unlimited property listings”, “Applications and screening”, “Online rent collection”, “Maintenance requests”
- Connected bank accounts
- 1 on Free, 1 on Essentials, Unlimited on Pro
- Landlord Forms Pack
- $199 standalone; included on Essentials and Pro
- E-signatures
- “Unlimited E-Signatures” and “Unlimited Lease Agreements” on the premium plans
Per-transaction fees
- Renter screening fee
- $55, or $45 if the landlord is on a premium plan
- Renter ACH — rent payment
- $2 for renters of free-plan landlords; free for renters of premium-plan landlords
- Renter credit / debit card
- 3.49% fee, on both the free and premium landlord tiers
- Renter rent reporting (optional)
- $4.99/mo — “Renters can opt in to build their credit score when they pay rent on time.”
- Renters insurance (optional)
- “STARTS AT $11/mo” through their partner
- Landlord-side transaction fees
- None are published. TurboTenant's fee schedule is presented as renter pricing.
TurboTenant publishes a “Renter Pricing / What Your Renters Pay” table, which is unusually transparent and worth reading before you choose a plan — the premium upgrade removes the $2 ACH fee from your renters and drops their screening fee by $10.
The annual price rises in bands with the number of units managed, so the “starting at” monthly figure applies to the 1–10 unit band only.
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 TurboTenant wins outright
Ten units, rent collected by ACH. TurboTenant Pro in the 1–10 unit band is $199 a year — about $16.58 a month — and on a premium plan the renters pay nothing for ACH. There is no landlord-side transaction fee published at all.
The same ten units on Corbica needs Starter at $59/month, plus the ACH platform fee. At $1,400 rent the Starter cap binds at $8 a payment, so ten payments is $80/month. Call it $139/month, or roughly $1,668 a year.
That is about eight times TurboTenant's price. No framing makes that comparison flattering, and a comparison page that tried would deserve to be ignored.
What the difference buys, concretely: a double-entry general ledger with a chart of accounts; a balance sheet and trial balance; owner portals and statements for property you manage on someone else's behalf; work orders that carry through to vendor bills and journal entries; inspections with tenant sign-off that feed a deposit disposition; bank reconciliation; and, higher up the ladder, Plaid feeds, a Tax Center, 1099 preparation and three-way trust reconciliation.
If you read that list and none of it is a problem you have, buy TurboTenant. If half of it describes your week, the price difference is smaller than the time difference.
Where the accounting actually differs
TurboTenant's accounting is better than most comparisons admit
Its Pro plan lists automated transaction tracking, an Accounting Insights dashboard, fixed asset and depreciation tracking, and Schedule E and Form 8825. For a landlord filing a personal return on a handful of properties, that genuinely covers the year-end job, and pages that describe TurboTenant as “no accounting” are wrong.
The line it does not cross is double entry
A chart of accounts, balanced entries, a balance sheet and a trial balance are not part of the published feature set. That is the difference between records that produce a Schedule E and books that produce a balance sheet — and it is the difference a lender, a partner or an owner asks about.
Where that bites in practice
Security deposits are the clearest case. In a ledger they sit as a liability you owe back; in a transaction list they look like income arriving in your account. The first version survives a move-out dispute and a tax return; the second one produces a surprise.
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.
Who should actually pick TurboTenant
Vacancy marketing is your main problem
TurboTenant's syndication to the top rental listing sites, unlimited listings, pre-screeners and applications pipeline are its core strength and they are free. Corbica's listing syndication is a Professional-plan feature and it works by publishing a feed you register with Zillow, Apartments.com and Realtor.com yourself — a materially weaker offer.
You want to spend as close to nothing as possible
A permanently free landlord plan with unlimited listings, applications, screening, rent collection and maintenance requests is a strong product at $0. If cost is the constraint, this comparison is over and TurboTenant wins it.
You are happy for renters to carry the fees
TurboTenant's model puts screening and payment fees on the renter, disclosed up front. That is a legitimate structure, it is how the free plan is funded, and it keeps your own bill at zero.
Who Corbica is right for
Tax season is where your current tooling falls apart
Schedule E export sits on Starter, sourced from the ledger. The Tax Center, depreciation schedules and 1099-NEC/MISC preparation are on Professional. Corbica prepares the 1099 forms and the IRS-format data file; the submission to the IRS remains yours.
You report to somebody
Owners, partners, an LLC's other members, a lender. Owner portals and statements are on every Corbica plan; TurboTenant does not publish an owner-reporting feature because it is built for the landlord managing their own doors.
You have moved past a shoebox of tools
Work orders that become vendor bills that become journal entries; inspections that become deposit dispositions; renewals that become new leases; trust accounting if you hold other people's money. This is the layer that appears when you stop being a landlord and start being an operator.
Where Corbica is behind TurboTenant
Every comparison page claims to be honest. Here is ours, in the form that costs us something to publish.
- TurboTenant is dramatically cheaper — free for landlords, or $149–$999 a year on premium plans, against $59–$299 a month here.
- Its listing syndication is stronger and free. Ours is a Professional feature and requires you to register a feed with each platform yourself.
- It offers unlimited e-signatures on premium plans; e-signing here starts on Professional with a monthly envelope allowance.
- It has a renter credit-reporting product and a landlord forms pack we do not match.
- It has over a million landlords using it; we are a much smaller product, and that is a fair thing to weigh.
- No native iOS or Android store app on our side yet — Corbica is an installable mobile web app with push notifications.
Choose Corbica if…
- You want 1099 preparation and Schedule E-ready reports straight from reconciled books.
- You report to owners or partners who need their own statements and login.
- You want rent, maintenance, inspections, leases and screening in one system instead of tool-juggling.
- You would rather absorb the fees than have your applicants and tenants pay them.
Consider TurboTenant if…
- Cost is the deciding factor — theirs is free and ours is not.
- Your single biggest need is vacancy marketing reach across listing sites.
- You keep books elsewhere and only need the leasing front door.
- You are comfortable with renters paying the screening and payment fees.
Frequently asked questions
Is Corbica a TurboTenant alternative?
Yes, at a different price point and a different depth. Corbica includes the leasing front door — applications, screening, e-sign leases — plus full rent collection, maintenance and inspection workflows, and double-entry accounting with tenant and owner portals. TurboTenant is free for landlords and stronger at listing syndication; Corbica starts free for 5 units and then charges from $59/month.
Is TurboTenant cheaper than Corbica?
Substantially, yes. TurboTenant's landlord plan is $0 and its premium plans were published at $149/year (Essentials) and $199/year (Pro) for 1–10 units on 25 August 2026, rising in bands to $349 and $999/year above 60 units. Corbica is free to 5 units and then $59/month for Starter. For a ten-unit landlord that is roughly an eight-fold difference.
What do TurboTenant's renters pay?
Per its published renter pricing on 25 August 2026: a $55 screening fee for applicants of free-plan landlords, or $45 if the landlord is on a premium plan; a $2 ACH fee on rent payments, waived for renters of premium-plan landlords; and 3.49% on credit or debit card. Optional renter add-ons are rent reporting at $4.99/mo and renters insurance from $11/mo.
What does Corbica charge tenants?
Nothing extra for paying rent by bank transfer. Card payments add a 3.25% convenience fee to the tenant's total, with a $5 minimum. Screening is landlord-paid by default; you can pass the cost to the applicant, and where state law caps that fee Corbica enforces the cap. The ACH platform fee comes out of the landlord's rent instead — 2.9% capped at $10 per payment on Free down to no platform fee on Business.
Does TurboTenant do accounting?
More than it is usually given credit for. Its Pro plan lists automated transaction tracking, an Accounting Insights dashboard, fixed asset and depreciation tracking, and Schedule E and Form 8825. What it does not publish is a double-entry general ledger with a chart of accounts, a balance sheet, a trial balance or owner statements.
What does Corbica do that TurboTenant doesn't?
The financial and operational back office: a true general ledger, owner portals and statements, work orders that carry through to vendor bills and journal entries, inspections with tenant sign-off feeding deposit dispositions, bank reconciliation, and — higher up the plans — Plaid feeds, a Tax Center, 1099 preparation and three-way trust reconciliation.
Is Corbica really free?
Free for up to 5 units, including rent collection, tenant and owner portals, and maintenance requests. The general ledger, reports, screening and e-signing are on the paid plans, which start at $59/mo (Starter). TurboTenant's free plan is more generous on unit count and on listings; ours includes owner statements, which theirs does not.
Which should a landlord with three rentals choose?
If you mostly need to advertise vacancies, screen applicants and collect rent, TurboTenant's free plan does that at no cost and Corbica's free plan does it too — pick on which interface you prefer and whether owner statements matter. The case for paying for Corbica shows up when you need books rather than records: a balance sheet, reconciled accounts, reporting to a partner, or a CPA who wants a trial balance.
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