Landlord Studio Review: The $1/Unit Escalator, and the Schedule E Bug Nobody Caught (2026)
Sam Tato · Landlord & Founder of Doortrackr
Published October 6, 2026·Last updated October 6, 2026·30 min read
Table of contents
- What is Landlord Studio?
- I tested it: what a fresh account actually feels like
- The Schedule E report deducts CapEx as repairs
- What does Landlord Studio actually cost?
- How does the $1/unit escalator actually work?
- What's gated on the free plan, and what does it actually feel like?
- What do real users complain about?
- What does Landlord Studio genuinely do well?
- Where does Landlord Studio fall short?
- Landlord Studio vs the field: true cost for a 3-property landlord
- So who is Landlord Studio right for?
- The bottom line
- Frequently asked questions
- Is Landlord Studio really free?
- How much does Landlord Studio cost for 5 or 10 units?
- Does Landlord Studio have a Schedule E report?
- Does Landlord Studio charge for rent collection?
- Can you organize expenses by project or job in Landlord Studio?
- Landlord Studio vs Stessa: which is better for a small landlord?
- Is Landlord Studio worth it in 2026?
Landlord Studio is the most SEO-aggressive app in this category. Search any landlord bookkeeping term and they've got a post, a template, and a CTA waiting for you. They clearly understand content marketing. The question is whether the product behind the content holds up for a small landlord who just wants the books done.
I build a competing app, so read this with that bias on the table. To keep myself honest I did two things: verified every pricing and feature claim against their live site, and created a Landlord Studio account and entered real expenses into it. What I found in that account changed the headline of this review. The pricing escalator I came to write about is the second story. The first story is that the Schedule E report, the one report a landlord actually files, deducts a capital improvement as a repair even when you mark it CapEx. More on that below, with the exact steps to reproduce it.
This is the fifth and final review in my competitor series, after TurboTenant, RentRedi, Baselane, Stessa, and Hemlane. If you're still working out how to track rental income and expenses at all, start there first. This review assumes you know what you need the software to do and want to know whether Landlord Studio actually does it.
Quick answer: Landlord Studio Go is a legitimately free tier for up to 3 units with manual income and expense tracking, but the three things a landlord actually needs at tax time are all gated: Schedule E reports require Pro at $12/month, receipt scanning requires Pro, and automated bank feeds require Pro. The $12 price covers your first 3 units, and every unit after that adds $1/month, so a 10-unit landlord pays $19/month and a 20-unit landlord pays $29/month on annual billing. In hands-on testing I confirmed the mobile receipt scanner is genuinely fast, but I also found the web app treats receipts as an afterthought and the Schedule E report included a CapEx-flagged expense in the Repairs total in full. The math works at 2 units. It stops working fast after 5, and the tax report needs checking at any size.
What is Landlord Studio?
Landlord Studio is a New Zealand-founded, US-operated property management app launched in 2016, now claiming 80,000+ landlords on the platform. It's a genuine all-in-one: listing syndication to Zillow and Zumper, TransUnion tenant screening, online rent collection, maintenance tracking, and a rental accounting layer with Schedule E reports. It works on iOS, Android, and desktop web, and it integrates with Xero for landlords who want to pipe their books into real accounting software.
The pitch is that it replaces your spreadsheet, your Zillow listing habit, your Venmo rent collection, and your shoebox in one app. For the property-management side (listings, screening, rent collection) it mostly delivers, and the 4.9-star average across 148 verified reviews on Software Advice reflects that. The accounting side is where the gates live, and where my testing found the problems.
I tested it: what a fresh account actually feels like
I created a free account (a 14-day Pro trial, no credit card required) on October 6, 2026 and ran the workflow a landlord actually runs: record rent, add expenses with receipts, check the Schedule E. Here's what happened, in order.
Rent is gated behind a lease. You cannot record a rent payment until you create a lease: start date, end date, rent amount, and whether you want to collect payments online, with an inline offer of renters insurance through their partner "Sure" sitting in the flow. To be fair, lease-based rent tracking is how most property-management platforms model the world, and for automated collection it's the right structure. But the insurance offer is an upsell parked between you and recording last month's rent, and a landlord who just wants to log that a check cleared has to build the lease scaffolding first. In Doortrackr, income entry is a 10-second form with no prerequisites.
Adding an expense is a treasure hunt. There is no "add expense" in the side navigation. I found manual entry through the quick-start menu, and later learned the other path: go to the Properties page, click into the property, and find the expenses section there. If your first instinct is the nav, you will not find it. Once you're in, the form splits one number into three fields: Total Amount, Amount (excl. tax), and Tax. For a Home Depot receipt, that's arithmetic homework the receipt already did.
The vendor field doesn't believe in stores. Landlord Studio calls vendors "Suppliers," and creating one requires a mandatory "Profession" picked from a long dropdown of trades. I tried to add Home Depot. Home Depot does not have a profession, and there is no "Store" option. Anyone who hires a plumber knows what the plumber does; forcing a profession on every supplier is a convoluted feature that slows down the one action the whole app exists for.
Receipts are second-class citizens on the web. There is no receipt scanning on the web app (scanning is mobile-only), no way to take a picture from the web, and no way to preview the receipt image while entering or verifying the numbers. The web workaround: photograph the receipt on your phone, get the file to your computer, upload it, save the expense, open the expense back up, and view the image in a separate browser tab. If you want to double-check the scanned values against the receipt, you're doing it with the image open in one window and the form in another. The mobile app does let you view the image, and to give credit where it's due, the mobile receipt scanning is super fast. It's the best part of the product. It's also paywalled behind Pro.
No job or project grouping. The expense form has no way to tie a receipt to a project. Twelve receipts from a bathroom remodel stay twelve loose expenses. This is the third competitor in a row where I've hit this wall (Baselane and Hemlane have the same gap), and it matters because the difference between a repair you deduct this year and an improvement you depreciate over its recovery period depends on which project a receipt belongs to.
A bug I can reproduce: expenses vanish from the property page. After saving two expenses, I saw them in the expense list. I navigated to the Reports page, came back to the property, and the list was empty. The expenses still existed (they showed up in reports), but the property page no longer listed them. A landlord who doesn't cross-check the reports would reasonably conclude their entries were lost.
Then I found the problem that made me stop and re-run the test.
The Schedule E report deducts CapEx as repairs
Here's the test. I added an expense, checked the form's own CapEx checkbox, and set the category to Repair. Then I generated the Schedule E report. The expense appeared in the Schedule E table, in full, inside the Repairs total, deducted in the current year. Other reports in the same account label that same expense "(CapEx)". Landlord Studio knows it's a capital expense. The Schedule E report deducts it anyway.
This is not a gray area. Under IRS Publication 527, a capital improvement to residential rental property is recovered through depreciation over the recovery period for that type of property (27.5 years for the building and structural components like a new roof, 5 years for appliances and carpeting, 15 for land improvements), not deducted in full in the year paid. A repair is deducted now. A new roof is not a repair, and the entire reason software asks "repair or improvement?" is to keep those buckets separate. If the Schedule E report ignores the CapEx flag, the checkbox is decoration.
Why this matters more than a typical bug: the Schedule E report is the one output a landlord hands to the IRS or their accountant. An error here doesn't cost you convenience, it misstates your return. You would have to be an accountant, or know what you're looking for, to catch it, and I imagine thousands of users are filing off these numbers without catching it. I tested one combination (CapEx checkbox plus Repair category, Pro trial, web app, October 6, 2026), so I can't say how far it goes, but one confirmed case of a capital expense landing in the Repairs total is one too many for the report the whole product is named around. If you use Landlord Studio, open your Schedule E report and spot-check any expense you marked CapEx before you file.
What does Landlord Studio actually cost?
The pricing page shows three plans, verified live on September 25, 2026:
| Plan | Headline price | What you get | What's gated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | $0 | Up to 3 units, manual income and expense tracking, listing syndication, tenant screening (tenant pays), online rent collection, 10 document slots, standard reports | No Schedule E report, no receipt scanning, no bank feeds, 3-unit cap, single user |
| Pro | $12/mo annual ($144/yr) for first 3 units | Everything in Go plus Schedule E and tax-ready reports, automated bank feeds, smart expense categorization, SmartScan receipt capture, 250 document slots, up to 5 users, 5 bank feeds, 25 automated rules | +$1/unit/month beyond 3 units; unlimited document storage, dedicated account manager, 10+ users, 20 bank feeds all require Pro Plus |
| Pro Plus | $28/mo annual ($300/yr) for first 3 units | Everything in Pro plus unlimited documents, dedicated account manager, up to 10 users, 20 bank feeds, priority listing reviews, unlimited recurring reminders | Same +$1/unit/month escalator beyond 3 units |
Three things worth saying plainly. First, the free tier is not a demo. Three units with manual tracking, listings, and screening at $0 is more than most of this category gives away, and if your books are simple enough to enter by hand, Go can carry a small landlord through a tax year. The catch is that "manual" is doing real work in that sentence: no receipt scanning, no bank feeds, no Schedule E report. You are the automation.
Second, Pro at $12/month is priced to be the obvious upgrade, and at 3 units it is. Schedule E reports, receipt scanning, and bank feeds for $144/year is a fair price. The catch is the escalator. That $12 covers exactly 3 units. Unit 4 costs another $1/month. Unit 5 another. The pricing page does this math for you with a slider, but the headline "$12/mo" is what shows up in every review, every listicle, and every comparison chart on the internet.
Third, Pro Plus at $28/month is the tier where the bookkeeping features stop being the point. Unlimited documents, a dedicated account manager, 10 users, 20 bank feeds: that's property-management infrastructure for someone running a real operation, not a landlord with a duplex and a day job. If you're shopping for bookkeeping, Pro Plus is overkill. If you're shopping for property management, the $1/unit escalator still applies on top of the $28.
How does the $1/unit escalator actually work?
The escalator is the part nobody puts in a headline, so here's the math, verified against the pricing page and Landlord Studio's own help docs on September 25, 2026. All prices are annual billing (monthly costs more; the site advertises "save 20%" for annual):
| Units you manage | Go (free) | Pro monthly | Pro annually | vs Doortrackr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | $0 | $12/mo | $144/yr | DT Free $0 (1 property) or Plus $6.99/mo (2-5) |
| 3 | $0 | $12/mo | $144/yr | DT Plus $6.99/mo ($59.99/yr) |
| 5 | Not available (3-unit cap) | $14/mo | $168/yr | DT Plus $6.99/mo ($59.99/yr) |
| 10 | Not available | $19/mo | $228/yr | DT Pro $14.99/mo ($119.99/yr, unlimited) |
| 20 | Not available | $29/mo | $348/yr | DT Pro $14.99/mo ($119.99/yr, unlimited) |
At 2 units the comparison is a wash: Doortrackr Plus is $6.99/month, Landlord Studio Go is free but manual-only, and Pro is $12. Fair fight. At 3 units, Pro's $12 vs Doortrackr Plus's $6.99 is a $5/month premium for the all-in-one (listings, screening, rent collection included). Also a fair fight, if you want the all-in-one.
At 5 units the escalator starts biting: $14/month versus $6.99 flat. At 10 units it's $19 versus $14.99 (and Doortrackr Pro is unlimited at that price). At 20 units it's $29 versus $14.99. The pattern is that Landlord Studio prices like a property-management platform (more doors, more money) while Doortrackr prices like a bookkeeping tool (flat fee, unlimited receipts, done). Neither is wrong. They're different products wearing similar clothes, and the $12 headline hides which one you're actually buying.
One more fee the headline doesn't mention: rent collection costs $2.50 per transaction on every plan, including the free Go plan. The landlord can absorb it or pass it to the tenant, but it exists on every rent payment through the system. Payouts take 3 to 5 working days with no expedited option. For comparison, Baselane's rent collection is free (with a $2/invoice fee only if deposits go to an external bank) and RentRedi's bookkeeping is a $25/month add-on but its payments layer is the core product. If rent collection is your primary need, Landlord Studio's fee structure is the weakest of the three. If bookkeeping is your primary need, the per-transaction fee is a tax on the feature you came for.
What's gated on the free plan, and what does it actually feel like?
The feature-gate map for the free Go tier, per the live pricing page, Landlord Studio's help documentation, and my October 6 account test:
| Feature | Go (free) | Pro | Pro Plus | Doortrackr equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manual income/expense entry | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ every tier |
| Receipt scanning (SmartScan OCR) | ✗ | ✓ mobile only | ✓ mobile only | ✓ every tier, unlimited, web + mobile |
| Schedule E report | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ every tier |
| Automated bank feeds | ✗ | ✓ (5 accounts) | ✓ (20 accounts) | Not applicable (bank-agnostic by design) |
| Job/project expense grouping | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ every tier (job dropdown in the entry form) |
| Automated rules / recurring expenses | ✗ | ✓ (25) | ✓ (unlimited) | Not applicable |
| Document storage | 10 docs | 250 docs | Unlimited | Unlimited receipts every tier |
| Users | 1 | 5 | 10 | 1 (all tiers) |
| Xero integration | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | Not applicable |
| Mileage tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ every tier |
The row that matters most is job/project grouping, because it's a ✗ across every Landlord Studio tier. You can categorize an expense, you can tag it to a property, but you cannot group the twelve receipts from a bathroom remodel into one job with one total from inside the transaction form. The workarounds are a memo field (a note on a line item, not a grouped project) or custom categories in a different section of the site. This matters because the difference between a repair you deduct this year and an improvement you depreciate over its recovery period (27.5 years for the building and structural work, 5 for appliances and carpets, 15 for land improvements, per IRS Publication 527) depends entirely on that grouping. A pile of categorized expenses with no project layer is a pile your accountant still has to sort at $250 an hour. And as the CapEx test above shows, the category flag itself doesn't reliably change what the Schedule E report does with the number.
What do real users complain about?
The review scores are genuinely high: 4.9 out of 5 across 148 verified reviews on Software Advice, 4.9 on Capterra from 144 reviews, 4.6 on the iOS App Store. Responsive customer support comes up constantly, and the company is visibly active replying to reviews. That praise is real and consistent.
The complaints are consistent too, and they cluster in three places. I pulled these from BiggerPockets forums, app store reviews, and comparison reviews published in 2025 and 2026.
First, reconciliation rigidity. A two-year Landlord Studio user on BiggerPockets (Matthew W., two condos) describes being "constantly met with quirks and roadblocks": missing expense categories that have to be added manually, background validations that block entries, and no clean way to override a mistake. His concrete example: a tenant paid several months upfront, he marked the current month's rent as paid, and the system wouldn't let him reconcile the remaining prepayment as rent. "So it sits there in purgatory." His summary of the experience: "I use it currently but also begrudgingly." That's the pattern in the negative reviews across platforms: the software works, but it fights you on edge cases, and edge cases (prepayments, partial payments, corrections) are where landlords actually live.
Second, partial and late payment confusion. Multiple app store reviewers report that partial payments (a tenant paying $800 of a $1,200 rent) confuse the tracking and require manual workarounds to keep the books accurate. Landlord Studio's own help documentation has a full article on managing late fees with nine steps on desktop and seven on mobile, which tells you this is a known friction point. If your tenants ever pay late or partial, expect to spend time untangling it.
Third, the support paradox. The same platform that gets praised for fast chat responses also gets described as sending "a wall of text" when the question is complicated. One app store reviewer was told by support to "move to a different application" when he asked a detailed lease question. Bimodal support: great when the answer is in the help docs, frustrating when it isn't.
There's also a smaller complaint worth naming because it's structural, not fixable: receipts export one at a time. A LandlordPro comparison notes that if you ever leave Landlord Studio, budget an evening to pull your receipt images out, or treat the last export as your permanent record. Your data, your receipts, one click per file.
What does Landlord Studio genuinely do well?
Fairness requires this section, and it's not short.
The mobile app is the best in this category for on-the-go capture. SmartScan receipt scanning on Pro is super fast in my own testing, the GPS mileage tracker is a feature most landlord apps skip entirely (and mileage is a real deduction most landlords leave on the table), and the interface is modern and clean. If your primary workflow is "scan receipt in the Home Depot parking lot, log it, move on," Landlord Studio's mobile experience is genuinely good.
The free tier is honest. Three units, manual tracking, listings, screening, rent collection, at $0 with no credit card. That's a real product, not a trial wearing a free tier's clothes. For a landlord with one or two units who's currently using a shoebox, Go is a meaningful upgrade at zero dollars.
The all-in-one scope is the widest in this price range. Listings syndicated to Zillow and Zumper, TransUnion screening at $45 to $55 (tenant can pay), rent collection, maintenance tracking with a tenant portal, and the accounting layer on top. No other sub-$15/month tool covers that much surface area. If you actually want one app for everything, Landlord Studio is the only one at this price point that tries.
Customer support, at its best, is the fastest in the category. The 4.9-star reviews consistently mention response times in minutes and a team that pushes app updates to fix reported issues. For a small company competing with Roofstock-owned Stessa, that responsiveness is a real differentiator, and the bugs I found are exactly the kind of thing a responsive team can fix.
Where does Landlord Studio fall short?
The gaps are structural, and they all trace back to the same decision: Landlord Studio is a property-management platform that added accounting, not a bookkeeping tool that added accounting. The accounting works, but it's shaped by the platform's priorities, and in one confirmed case it gets the tax math wrong.
The Schedule E CapEx error is the serious gap. A capital expense deducted as a current-year repair is a misstated return, and the tool's own CapEx checkbox doesn't prevent it. Every other gap in this section costs you time or money. This one costs you accuracy on the one document you file.
The escalator is the headline pricing gap. A bookkeeping tool charging by the unit is pricing the wrong dimension. Your tenth unit does not generate ten times the receipts of your first. It generates one unit's worth of receipts. Charging $1/month per unit beyond 3 means the landlord with a 10-unit portfolio pays $228/year for the same Schedule E report and receipt scanner that a 3-unit landlord gets for $144. Doortrackr's flat $6.99 (2 to 5 properties) or $14.99 (unlimited) is priced on the actual cost driver: the software, not the door count.
The rent-collection fee is the hidden gap. $2.50 per transaction on every plan, 3 to 5 working day payouts, no split payments, no expedited option. For a landlord collecting $1,500/month on a single property, that's $30/year in fees on the free plan, which is fine. For a landlord collecting $6,000/month across four properties, that's $120/year in transaction fees on top of the subscription, which is the subscription. The all-in-one pitch (listings, screening, rent, accounting) quietly carries a toll on the one transaction that matters most.
The project-grouping gap is the bookkeeping gap. No job layer on any tier. No way to group a renovation's receipts into one project with one total from the entry form. The workaround (memo fields, custom categories in a separate settings section) requires you to know the mechanism exists and set it up in advance. The whole point of job-level grouping is that you decide repair vs improvement at the moment of entry, while you still remember what the receipt was for. A tool that makes you do it later is a tool that makes you do it at tax time, which is the shoebox problem wearing a nicer interface.
The daily-use friction is the compounding gap. Expense entry hidden from the nav, mandatory professions for stores, three amount fields for one receipt total, no web receipt preview, receipts that vanish from the property page after you visit Reports, prepayments in purgatory, partial payments requiring workarounds. None of these is fatal alone. Together they mean every receipt costs you a little more time than it should, which is exactly how a shoebox gets refilled.
Landlord Studio vs the field: true cost for a 3-property landlord
The true-cost table, using my standard test case (3 properties, needs receipt scanning and Schedule E reports, annual billing where available). Verified against each vendor's live pricing page in September 2026:
| Tool | Headline price | True cost at 3 properties | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doortrackr Plus | $6.99/mo | $6.99/mo ($59.99/yr annual). Unlimited receipts, Schedule E, job grouping, every feature, no gates. | Bookkeeping only. No listings, screening, or rent collection. |
| Landlord Studio Pro | $12/mo | $12/mo ($144/yr annual) for 3 units. Schedule E, receipt scanning, bank feeds included. | +$1/unit/mo beyond 3. $2.50/transaction rent fee. No job grouping on any tier. Schedule E included CapEx in the Repairs total in our test. |
| Stessa Pro | Free tier advertised | $28/mo ($336/yr annual). Schedule E requires $12 Manage, but 5-scan receipt cap stays. Unlimited scanning + Projects require Pro. | The free tier caps receipt scans at 5/month and gates Schedule E. Manage is the trap tier. |
| Baselane | Free tier advertised | $0 for Schedule E (genuinely free). $20/mo Smart tier for AI matching and tagging. | Banking lock-in: $2/invoice ACH fee if rent deposits to an external bank. No job grouping. |
| RentRedi | $12/mo | $12/mo annual for basic expense tracking + Schedule E. Full accounting (REI Hub) is +$25/mo. | The $12 plan's books are basic. Real double-entry accounting costs $37/mo total. |
| TurboTenant Pro | Free tier advertised | $199/yr (~$16.58/mo). Full accounting (Schedule E, P&L, depreciation) is Pro-only. | Free tier has no accounting at all. Pro is the only tier with books. |
The pattern across all six: every tool in this category either gates the bookkeeping features behind a higher tier, charges per unit, charges per transaction, or locks you into their banking. Doortrackr's answer to all four is no: no gates, no escalator, no transaction fees, no bank required. That answer costs $6.99 a month. It also means Doortrackr does less: no listings, no screening, no rent collection, no maintenance portal. If you want the all-in-one, Landlord Studio at 3 units is the best-priced option in this table. If you want the books, the books are cheaper elsewhere, and this is the only tool in the table where I've personally caught the tax report adding a capital expense to a deductible total.
So who is Landlord Studio right for?
Landlord Studio is right for a landlord with 1 to 3 units who wants one app for everything (listings, screening, rent collection, and basic books), who plans to enter expenses manually on the free tier or upgrade to Pro for the automation, and who will personally verify the Schedule E report before filing. If that's you, the free Go plan is a genuine no-brainer to try, and Pro at $144/year is fair if the all-in-one scope is what you're buying.
It starts being the wrong tool at 4 units, where the escalator kicks in and you're paying $13/month for what Doortrackr does at $6.99. It's clearly the wrong tool at 10+ units, where $19 to $29/month buys you property-management features you may not need layered on top of books that still can't group a renovation. And it's the wrong tool at any size if your primary pain is tax-time receipt chaos, because the receipt scanning and Schedule E report (the two features that fix that pain) are both behind the Pro paywall, the job grouping that determines repair vs improvement doesn't exist on any tier, and the Schedule E report I tested deducted a CapEx-flagged expense as a repair.
The honest summary: Landlord Studio is a good property-management app with an accounting layer that has real, confirmed problems, priced like the property-management app it is. If you came for the books, you're paying for a lot of app you didn't ask for, and you still have to audit the one report you came for.
The bottom line
Landlord Studio earns its 4.9 stars on the property-management side. The mobile app is good, the free tier is real, the support is fast, and the all-in-one scope is genuinely unmatched at this price. If you need listings, screening, rent collection, and books in one place and you have 3 or fewer units, it's a reasonable choice.
But the $12 headline is a 3-unit price wearing a universal costume, and the Schedule E report has a confirmed case of deducting a capital improvement as a repair even when you flag it CapEx. The escalator, the $2.50 rent transaction fee, the gated Schedule E and receipt scanning, and the missing job layer are all the same story: the bookkeeping is a feature of the property-management platform, not the product. I know what bookkeeping mistakes cost at tax time because I lived them before I built the thing I actually wanted: a receipt in, scanned, verified against the image, grouped by job, in 30 seconds, for $6.99 a month flat, whether you have 2 properties or 20.
If your shoebox is the problem, Doortrackr is free for 1 property, $6.99 for up to 5, and every feature works on every tier. If your whole operation is the problem, Landlord Studio's free tier is worth the download. Just go in knowing which problem you're actually solving, and check the Schedule E math before you file it.
Frequently asked questions
Is Landlord Studio really free?
Yes, the Go plan is genuinely free for up to 3 units with no credit card required, including manual income and expense tracking, listing syndication, tenant screening (tenant pays the fee), and online rent collection. What's not included: receipt scanning, automated bank feeds, and the Schedule E tax report all require the Pro plan at $12/month. The free tier is a real product, but the bookkeeping automation is paywalled.
How much does Landlord Studio cost for 5 or 10 units?
Pro covers your first 3 units at $12/month (annual billing). Each additional unit costs $1/month, so 5 units is $14/month, 10 units is $19/month, and 20 units is $29/month. Pro Plus follows the same escalator starting at $28/month. Monthly billing costs more than annual. These figures were verified on Landlord Studio's live pricing page on September 25, 2026.
Does Landlord Studio have a Schedule E report?
Yes, but only on the paid Pro and Pro Plus plans. The free Go plan includes basic income and expense reports but not the Schedule E tax report. One caution from hands-on testing: in a Pro trial account on October 6, 2026, an expense flagged CapEx with a Repair category appeared in full in the Schedule E Repairs total, so verify the report's numbers before filing rather than treating it as authoritative.
Does Landlord Studio charge for rent collection?
Yes. Landlord Studio charges $2.50 per transaction on every plan, including the free Go plan. The landlord can absorb the fee or pass it to the tenant. Payouts take 3 to 5 working days with no expedited option. For comparison, Baselane's rent collection is free (with a $2/invoice fee only for external-bank deposits) and Doortrackr doesn't handle rent collection at all.
Can you organize expenses by project or job in Landlord Studio?
No. Landlord Studio has expense categories and property-level tagging, but no job or project grouping on any tier. You cannot group the receipts from a renovation into one project with a running total from inside the transaction form. Workarounds include memo fields and custom categories, but neither produces a grouped project total. This matters because repair vs capital improvement tax treatment (per IRS Publication 527, and see my Schedule E expense categories walkthrough) depends on knowing which expenses belong to which project.
Landlord Studio vs Stessa: which is better for a small landlord?
They're built for different things. Landlord Studio is the better all-in-one: listings, screening, rent collection, and maintenance are all built in, and the mobile app is stronger. Stessa is the better pure-finance tool: automatic bank feeds on the free tier, unlimited properties, and a cleaner reporting dashboard. Both gate the features that matter most (Stessa caps receipt scans at 5/month and gates Schedule E behind $12 to $28/month tiers; Landlord Studio gates scanning and Schedule E behind Pro at $12/month plus the per-unit escalator). For a detailed Stessa teardown, see my Stessa review. For a side-by-side of the whole category, see best accounting software for rental property.
Is Landlord Studio worth it in 2026?
At 1 to 3 units with manual entry, the free Go tier is worth trying: it's a real product at $0. At 3 units on Pro, $144/year for Schedule E, receipt scanning, and bank feeds is fair if you also use the listings, screening, and rent collection. Above 3 units, the $1/unit escalator and $2.50/transaction rent fee make it progressively harder to justify against flat-fee alternatives, and at any size you should spot-check the Schedule E report after our hands-on test surfaced a CapEx expense in the Repairs total. The answer depends on whether you're buying a property-management platform (where Landlord Studio competes well) or a bookkeeping tool (where the gates, the escalator, and the report accuracy work against it).
Disclosure: I founded Doortrackr, which competes with Landlord Studio in rental property bookkeeping. Pricing and feature claims were verified against Landlord Studio's live pricing page, help documentation, and user reviews on September 25, 2026, and hands-on findings come from a Pro trial account I tested on October 6, 2026. Where a claim could not be verified, it's labeled as reported user feedback or an observed test result. If Landlord Studio's pricing page disagrees with anything here, the pricing page wins.
Keep your expenses organized all year — not just at tax time.
Try Doortrackr free.
Sign up free