Stessa Pricing, Broken Down: What the Free Tier Actually Costs You

Stessa's pricing page says "free to get started," and it means it. What it says more quietly is that the free tier caps receipt scanning at five per month, saves the Schedule E report for the $12 tier, and saves the features that actually organize your books for the $28 tier. Here is what each tier costs, what each one gates, and what a small landlord actually pays.

Quick answer: Stessa has three plans: Essentials (free), Manage ($12/month billed annually, $15 monthly), and Pro ($28/month billed annually, $35 monthly). Receipt scanning is capped at 5 scans/month on both Essentials and Manage. Schedule E reports start at Manage. Project expense tracking and unlimited scanning are Pro-only. A landlord who needs receipts plus Schedule E plus job organization pays $28/month, or $336/year. Verified against Stessa's live pricing page on August 24, 2026.

I build a competing app, so read this with that in mind. I also used Stessa before I built it, paid the $28, and quit in frustration. Every price below is linked to Stessa's own pages, and their pricing page wins any disagreement.

How much does Stessa cost?

Three tiers, all with unlimited properties:

Plan	Billed annually	Billed monthly	Annual cost
Essentials	Free	Free	$0
Manage	$12/mo	$15/mo	$144/yr
Pro	$28/mo	$35/mo	$336/yr

Source: Stessa pricing page, verified August 24, 2026.

The headline numbers are honest. What matters is which features sit behind which number, because the features a landlord actually needs for tax time are spread across all three tiers on purpose.

What does the free Essentials plan include?

More than most free tiers, less than the headline suggests. Essentials includes unlimited properties, automatic bank feeds, basic financial reports, vacancy marketing, tenant screening, maintenance tracking, online rent collection, and document storage. That is a genuinely usable free product for tracking rent and storing files.

Two limits matter for bookkeeping:

Receipt scanning is capped at 5 scans per month. Buy a fridge, a faucet, and three Home Depot runs in the same month and you are done scanning until the 1st. Manual entry still works, but the receipt photo is the whole point of scanning.
The accountant tax package is "basic." The Schedule E report, the one formatted the way the IRS form actually looks, is not included. That starts at Manage.

Everything else on Essentials is real: unlimited properties, unlimited document storage, bank feeds. If you only need to watch rent come in and you are fine entering expenses by hand, the free tier works. The moment you want the receipt scanner to be the workflow, five scans a month is a demo, not a plan.

What does Manage add for $12 a month?

Manage is $12/month billed annually ($144/year) or $15/month billed monthly. It adds:

Schedule E report (the big one)
60+ legal forms and templates
1 eSignature per month
Accelerated rent payments
Priority chat support
Lease template

Here is the trap, and I say this as someone who fell for a version of it: Manage still caps receipt scanning at 5 per month. You are paying $144 a year, you get the Schedule E report, and you still cannot scan your sixth receipt. The two features a landlord needs together, receipts captured and the tax report that uses them, are split across two different paywalls. Manage gets you the report without the receipts. Pro gets you both, at $28.

Stessa's own plan-picker copy says Manage is "for investors looking to automate repetitive tasks, save on legal and CPA fees." Accurate, as long as the repetitive task you want to automate is not scanning receipts.

What does Pro add for $28 a month?

Pro is $28/month billed annually ($336/year) or $35/month billed monthly. Everything in Manage, plus:

Unlimited receipt scanning (the cap finally lifts)
Project expense tracking (group expenses by job or renovation, not just by property)
All advanced reports
Advanced transaction tracking
Budgeting and pro-forma analysis
Unlimited chart history
Unlimited portfolios
7 eSignatures per month
Higher cash-management APY (up to 3.24%, tiered by balance)
Priority tenant screening and phone support

This is the tier where the product becomes what the marketing describes. It is also where I have a personal receipt, pun intended.

The $28 wall, from someone who paid it

Before I built Doortrackr, I was a Stessa user. I had a renovation on one of my units and I wanted to group the expenses for that job together, so at tax time I could see the project as a project instead of forty loose transactions. That feature is called Projects. It is Pro-only.

So I upgraded. I paid $28 a month to combine expenses into projects. I still cannot quite believe that sentence. And here is the part that got me: even after paying, the feature was buried. The UI is complicated, the reports are complicated, and I spent what felt like a full weekend learning the software before I was doing actual bookkeeping. I quit in frustration and eventually built the thing I wanted, which is a story for a different post. The point here is the pricing shape: the feature that answers "what did that kitchen remodel actually cost me, and what do I capitalize" lives behind the highest tier, and it is not simple once you get there.

If you are evaluating Stessa, that is the question to ask the pricing page: not "what does it cost" but "what tier is the feature I will actually need on, and what is the learning curve once I pay for it."

What is the true cost for a small landlord?

Depends what you need the software to do. For a landlord with 2 to 5 rentals who wants to scan receipts as they happen, organize expenses by property and job, and hand their accountant a Schedule E report:

What you need	Tier that has it	Monthly (annual billing)	Per year
Track rent + store documents	Essentials	$0	$0
Schedule E report	Manage	$12	$144
Schedule E + more than 5 receipt scans	Pro	$28	$336
Schedule E + unlimited scans + job/project tracking	Pro	$28	$336

The honest read: Essentials is a real free tier for rent tracking. Manage is the tax-report tier that still caps your scanner. Pro is the bookkeeping tier, and it costs $336 a year. There is no tier where you get unlimited receipt scanning without also paying for pro-forma analysis and seven eSignatures a month, features a 3-unit landlord will never open.

For comparison, since you are clearly shopping: Baselane's Schedule E reports are genuinely free on their Core plan, no gate, though the catch there is banking lock-in and a $2-per-invoice ACH fee if your rent lands in your own bank. Doortrackr Plus is $6.99 a month flat with unlimited receipts, job tracking, and Schedule E reports on every tier, because I got tired of this exact pricing shape. That is the bias on the table, and the links are right there to check me.

Is Stessa worth it?

For some landlords, yes. Being straight about it:

Stessa is a fair deal if you want one dashboard for rent collection, tenant screening, listings, and basic finances, you are comfortable on the free tier's 5-scan cap or you genuinely need the Pro feature set, and you do not mind learning a dense interface.

The pricing works against you if your core need is bookkeeping: receipts captured fast, expenses organized by property and by job, and a clean Schedule E at tax time. That exact combination costs $28 a month, the free and $12 tiers are deliberately built to bump you into it, and by most accounts (plus my own) the software asks for a weekend of learning before it saves you time.

The free tier is not a scam. It is a funnel. Know which rung of it you actually need before you connect your bank accounts.

Is Stessa really free?

The Essentials plan is free with unlimited properties, bank feeds, basic reports, and online rent collection. The limits that matter for bookkeeping: receipt scanning caps at 5 scans per month and the Schedule E report is not included. Both are on Stessa's pricing page.

How much is Stessa Pro?

$28 per month billed annually ($336/year) or $35 per month billed monthly. Pro adds unlimited receipt scanning, project expense tracking, all advanced reports, budgeting and pro-forma tools, and priority phone support.

Does Stessa's free plan include Schedule E?

No. Essentials includes a "basic tax package," but the Schedule E report starts on the Manage plan at $12/month billed annually. Pro adds CapEx reporting on top of Schedule E.

How many receipt scans do you get on Stessa's free plan?

Five per month, on both Essentials and the $12 Manage plan. Unlimited receipt scanning is Pro-only at $28/month billed annually.

Can you track expenses by project or renovation on Stessa?

Only on Pro. Project expense tracking is listed as a Pro feature on the pricing page. On Essentials and Manage, expenses organize by property, not by job.

What is the cheapest way to get Schedule E reports?

Not Stessa. Baselane includes Schedule E reports on its free Core plan, though it pushes you toward banking with them. Doortrackr includes Schedule E on every tier including the free one (1 property) and Plus at $6.99/month for up to 5 properties. If you specifically want Stessa, the cheapest Schedule E path is Manage at $12/month billed annually.

Disclosure: I founded Doortrackr, which competes with Stessa. All Stessa prices and features above were verified against stessa.com/pricing on August 24, 2026, and are linked inline. If their page disagrees with anything here, their page wins.