Comparison
PacRent vs Stessa
At a glance · 12 rows compared
Verified November 9, 20266
PacRent
5
Stessa
1
Even
Stessa is the hardest of the three to argue against on price, because its free tier does things we charge for. It is built around tracking a portfolio you already own; we are built around running one, including filling it.
Pricing
- PacRent Pro
- $19/mo · $190/yr
- Stessa
- Essentials free; Manage $12/mo annual ($15 monthly); Pro $28/mo annual ($35 monthly)
- Pricing model
- Flat, unlimited properties on all plans
Stessa pricing quoted from their pricing page, read November 7, 2026: “Essentials free; Manage $12/month annual ($15 monthly); Pro $28/month annual ($35 monthly)”. Prices change — check theirs before deciding.
Row by row
PacRent and Stessa, side by side
Ordered by what decides the choice, not by what flatters us. The first rows are the ones most people pick on.
Free tier
StessaPacRent
2 properties, full LTR and STR analysis, 10 searches a day
Stessa
Unlimited bank feeds, mileage, rent collection, autopay and late fees — at $0
This is the strongest row on the page and it is theirs. If your needs are inside their free tier, use it.
Paid price
StessaPacRent
$19/mo, or $190/yr
Stessa
$12/mo annual on Manage, including Schedule E
Cheaper than us, with the tax report included.
Bank feeds
StessaPacRent
None. Schedules and AI receipt reading instead.
Stessa
Unlimited, on every plan including free
Listing a vacancy
PacRentPacRent
Per-unit listing pages, embeddable, Facebook Marketplace, PacRent Rentals marketplace, applications attached
Stessa
Not mentioned on their site
Stessa tracks what you own. Filling a vacancy is not what it is for.
Entering expenses
PacRentPacRent
Photograph a receipt and it is read and categorised. Leases are read too.
Stessa
Their site describes manual expense tracking
Expense categories
PacRentPacRent
Hierarchical chart of accounts, 35 accounts, each mapped to a Schedule E line, with org-custom sub-accounts
Stessa
Describes itself as single-entry accounting
Neither of us has a double-entry general ledger with a balance sheet. Buildium and DoorLoop do, and mean that when they say full accounting.
Mortgage principal and interest
PacRentPacRent
Included. Read off the statement, recomputed from the balance each month.
Stessa
Automatic only for directly connected lenders that transmit the component data; otherwise split each transaction by hand
Stessa's own staff said so on their community forum in 2020, and users in the same thread still report it not splitting for their linked lenders. It can do it — conditionally.
Before you buy: LTR and STR underwriting
PacRentPacRent
Full analysis with market data, before purchase
Stessa
Budgeting and pro-forma analysis, on Pro only
The only encroachment on underwriting by a management platform in this set — but it models a property you hold, not one you are considering.
Owner time tracking
PacRentPacRent
Hours and mileage, for the REP test
Stessa
Mileage yes, on every plan including free. Hours no.
Short-term rentals
StessaPacRent
STR underwriting before purchase; STR management is not built
Stessa
Short-term rental support in the product
Lease agreements
EvenPacRent
Generated for the state and the city ordinance. Pro includes about 33 a month, 50 on annual billing, then roughly $0.38 each
Stessa
$15 one-time per lease, or unlimited on Manage from $12/month
“$15 one-time fee per lease. Or a Manage subscription starting at $12/month for unlimited leases” — their own page, read November 11, 2026
Their $15 is the pay-as-you-go price — a Manage or Pro subscriber pays nothing per lease, and unlimited at $12/month is cheaper than our $19 if leases are all you want. The difference worth weighing is not price but provenance: theirs start from attorney-designed templates tailored to the state, ours are generated and reach the city ordinance as well as the statute. Depth against a lawyer's name on the template. Stessa argues the point directly, and it is a fair argument to put.
Customer proof
StessaPacRent
None published
Stessa
Claims users save up to $4,000 and 100+ hours a year
We have no equivalent figure and will not invent one.
Where Stessa wins
The rows we do not have an answer to
If one of these is the thing you most need, Stessa is the better choice and we would rather you knew that here than found out after paying us.
The free tier is genuinely good
Unlimited bank feeds, mileage, rent collection, autopay and late fees, at no cost. If that covers you, the honest advice is to take it.
“Essentials free” — Stessa, read November 7, 2026
Cheaper paid tier, with Schedule E
$12/month on annual Manage against our $15.83, and the tax report is in it.
Bank feeds everywhere
On every plan, including the free one. We have none at any price.
Published customer savings
Up to $4,000 and 100+ hours a year, on their marketing. We have no comparable claim, so we are not making one.
Where PacRent wins
What you get here that you do not get there
We fill the vacancy
Per-unit listing pages you can embed or share, Facebook Marketplace, our own marketplace, and the application attached to the listing. Syndication is not mentioned anywhere on Stessa's site.
The receipts enter themselves
Photograph it and it is read, categorised and matched to a supplier. Leases are read too. Stessa's own site describes manual expense tracking.
Categories that map to tax lines
A hierarchical chart of accounts where every account carries its Schedule E line, so a figure lands where the form expects it rather than in a column you re-map in April.
Underwriting, not pro-forma
Analysis of a property you are considering, with market data, before you own it — and in the same account that runs it afterwards.
The one every rival has and we do not
All three connect to your bank. We do not.
Money that moves through PacRent is already captured: rent is recorded as it settles, the Stripe webhook posts the processing fee straight into the chart of accounts, and receipts are read by AI with supplier matching. The costs that repeat — mortgage, insurance, HOA dues, utility autopay — run off schedules you set once, and a mortgage statement is read for its balance, rate and payment, then kept as the evidence behind them.
And the limit of that: What a feed still catches that this does not is an irregular cost paid straight from your bank and never photographed. That is a real gap, not a reframed one.
Which to pick
A straight answer, both ways
Choose Stessa if…
Your needs fit inside their free tier, bank feeds are the thing you most want, or you are tracking a portfolio you already own rather than growing one.
Choose PacRent if…
You need to fill a vacancy, you want receipts and leases read rather than typed, or you underwrite properties before buying them.
Whichever you pick, take your data with you when you go. Ours exports as every record in your account and imports back — a promise worth checking before you commit to anyone, us included.
Our own metered bit, declared
Credits buy AI, not the product
It would be hypocritical to warn you about metered upcharges and not explain ours. Pro includes 500 AI credits a month, 750 on annual billing. A document scan costs 10, a property search 5, a mileage calculation 1 — so 500 is 50 scans, or 100 searches, or any mix. A five-door landlord scanning five leases a year and twenty receipts a month uses about half of it.
If you do run out, 200 more cost $5 — about 25 cents per extra scan. Rent collection, leases, tenants, payments and reports are never metered and do not stop.
Decide it with your own portfolio in front of you
The free tier takes two properties and the full analysis tools, so you can test this against a real property rather than a feature table. Nothing is metered that matters, and the export is there the day you want to leave.
Every Stessa figure on this page is quoted from their own documentation with the date it was read. We re-read all of them quarterly; next review February 2027. Found something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.