TurboTenant vs Avail vs Innago: Free Landlord Software (2026)

Do small landlords even need paid software?

You’ve got a few rental units. Maybe two, maybe five. You’re not a property management company — you’re a person who bought some rentals and now spends evenings chasing maintenance requests and late rent texts.

The software market tells you the solution costs $200/month. It doesn’t. Three solid platforms — TurboTenant, Avail, and Innago — handle rent collection, leases, tenant screening, and maintenance tracking for free (or close to it). The catch is that each one is built for a slightly different landlord.

Quick verdict: Innago is the best overall free option for most independent landlords. TurboTenant wins if listing vacancies quickly is your priority. Avail is the pick if you want clean leases and a Realtor.com connection without paying per unit.

Here’s the full breakdown.

What Each Platform Actually Does

Before comparing them, it’s worth understanding what problem each one was built to solve.

TurboTenant was built around the leasing funnel — marketing vacancies, collecting applications, and screening tenants. Rent collection and maintenance came later. It’s syndicated to 30+ listing sites (Apartments.com, Redfin, Doorsteps) and consistently fills vacancies faster than the other two.

Avail (owned by Realtor.com since 2020) was built around lease quality and tenant relationships. It has the most customizable lease templates of the three, and its Realtor.com connection gives it solid listing reach. The free version caps at no monthly fee but charges per-unit on the paid tier.

Innago was built to be genuinely free for independent landlords — no per-unit fees, no feature locks. It covers rent collection, screening, leases, maintenance, renters insurance tracking, and automated invoicing. The trade-off is that it has fewer listing integrations than TurboTenant.

Side-by-Side Comparison

TurboTenant: Best for Filling Vacancies Fast

TurboTenant’s edge is marketing. When you list a unit, it pushes to 30+ sites automatically. On average, landlords using TurboTenant report 28 leads per listing and lease their units in under 30 days, according to the company’s own data (as of March 2026).

The free plan covers listings, applications, and basic rent collection. But there’s a wall: state-specific lease templates require the Premium plan at $99/year (about $8.25/month). If you’re in a state where a boilerplate lease can get you in legal trouble — most states — that’s not optional, it’s required.

The maintenance tracking is basic: tenants submit requests, you get notified, nothing automated. If a tenant sends in a maintenance request at 11pm and you’re asleep, there’s no triage layer.

Best for: Landlords who want to fill vacancies fast and are happy to handle leases, maintenance, and tenant communication manually.

Avail: Best for Lease Quality and Tenant-Friendly Experience

Avail has the cleanest lease creation of the three. The free tier includes customizable lease templates for all 50 states, which is a genuine differentiator — TurboTenant locks that behind a paywall.

The Realtor.com connection gives decent listing reach, but it’s not as broad as TurboTenant’s 30+ site syndication.

The biggest friction with Avail: no mobile app. Everything runs through a mobile web browser, which works but feels dated compared to TurboTenant and Innago. Several landlords on r/Landlord have flagged this as a deal-breaker for on-the-go management.

The Plus tier ($9/unit/month) removes ACH fees for tenants — useful if you want to reduce friction for rent collection. For a 5-unit landlord that’s $45/month, which starts competing with entry-level paid tools like DoorLoop.

Best for: Landlords who want strong lease templates for free and don’t mind the mobile-web-only experience.

Innago: Best Overall Free Option for Most Landlords

Innago is the only platform where “free” means free for everything — rent collection, lease creation, maintenance tracking, renters insurance tracking, automated invoicing for recurring charges, and customer support that includes phone access and an assigned account rep.

The one real trade-off: listing syndication is limited. You’re not getting 30+ sites like TurboTenant. If you have a vacancy, you may need to post manually to Zillow, Facebook Marketplace, or Craigslist. That’s extra work at the start of a tenancy.

Everything after the vacancy is filled? Innago handles it well. Maintenance requests are tracked with work order management. Automated invoicing handles late fees and other charges. Renters insurance verification keeps you covered without the manual back-and-forth.

On G2 and Capterra, Innago consistently scores around 4.8/5 — higher than both TurboTenant (4.5–4.6) and Avail. The support structure — phone access, educational resources, one-on-one demos — is unusual for a free product and genuinely useful for landlords who aren’t tech-native.

Best for: Most independent landlords. Especially those managing 1–10 units who don’t want to pay anything and need solid ongoing management tools, not just leasing tools.

The Maintenance Gap Nobody Talks About

All three platforms handle maintenance requests the same way: tenant submits, landlord gets notified, landlord figures out the rest.

That works until you’re managing more than a handful of units, or you have tenants who submit “emergency” requests for a dripping faucet at 2am.

What none of these free tools do is triage. They can’t tell you whether a leaking pipe is a genuine emergency that needs a same-night plumber call or a minor issue that can wait until Monday. That distinction matters — both for your time and your repair bill.

Tools focused specifically on maintenance triage exist for this exact gap. RentBoxAI is built for US landlords who want an AI layer that pre-qualifies maintenance requests before they hit your phone — asking tenants diagnostic questions, categorizing urgency, and suggesting standard fixes before you dispatch anyone. It doesn’t replace the management software above; it handles the specific problem of maintenance triage that all three platforms leave to you manually.

If maintenance callbacks and late-night “emergencies” are your biggest pain point, that’s worth looking at alongside whichever of the above you choose as your core platform.

Our Take: The Proptech Marketing Gap

The “best landlord software” space has a problem: almost every comparison article online is written by one of these companies about their own competitors. TurboTenant writes about Innago. Innago writes about TurboTenant. Avail’s parent company (Realtor.com) has its own interests in play.

The actual independent signal comes from r/Landlord, r/realestateinvesting, and r/PropertyManagement, where landlords consistently recommend Innago for ongoing management and TurboTenant for filling vacancies. That tracks with the feature sets.

What these tools do well: collecting rent, generating leases, screening tenants. What they don’t do well: anything that requires judgment. Maintenance prioritization, tenant conflict resolution, deciding whether to renew a lease — those stay with you no matter which software you pick.

The proptech industry oversells the automation story. These are mostly form management tools with a payment layer. They’re useful. They’re just not going to replace your judgment or your time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is TurboTenant actually free?

The core plan is free — listings, applications, tenant screening, and basic rent collection. State-specific lease templates require the Premium plan at $99/year. Most landlords in regulated states should budget for the Premium plan.

Does Avail have a mobile app?

No. Avail is mobile-web only. You can access it from a phone browser, but there’s no dedicated iOS or Android app as of March 2026. This is one of the most common complaints from landlords who test it.

Is Innago really free for unlimited units?

Yes. Innago’s business model charges fees on optional services (tenant credit card payments, certain background check types) and screening report fees paid by tenants — not landlords. The core platform — rent collection, leases, maintenance, invoicing — costs nothing regardless of unit count.

Which has the best tenant screening?

All three offer credit, criminal, and eviction history checks — paid by the applicant, which is standard. Screening report fees run $30–$55 depending on the platform and package. TurboTenant includes TransUnion-backed full screening; Innago and Avail offer similar depth. The differences are small; use whichever platform you choose for its management features, not specifically for screening.

What if I need more than one platform?

Some landlords use TurboTenant for vacancy marketing (listing syndication), then switch to Innago or Avail once the unit is rented for ongoing management. This is more setup but works — there’s no rule requiring a single platform for both phases.

The Bottom Line

For most independent landlords managing under 10 units, Innago is the default choice. It’s genuinely free, covers everything from leases to maintenance to invoicing, and has better support than the alternatives. You’ll need to handle vacancy marketing manually or supplement with a tool like Zillow’s free listing.

If filling vacancies fast is your biggest challenge right now, start with TurboTenant for the listing syndication, and plan to pay $99/year for the lease templates if you’re in a state where they matter (most states).

Avail earns a place if you want free state-specific leases and your tenant base tends to be more tech-savvy — the Realtor.com ecosystem can drive quality applicants. Just be ready for mobile-web-only management.

The best landlord software is whichever one you’ll actually use. All three beat the alternative: managing everything in your email inbox.