Stessa Review: Free Landlord Accounting on a Duplex

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Stessa is free, pulls transactions from your bank, and produces a tax package in January. This review is written for a house hacker: one building, one mortgage, one unit you live in, and maybe a furnished unit on a 30-day platform.

Everything below comes from Stessa’s pricing page, its help center and its own fee disclosures, read in September 2026 and linked at the bottom. Where Stessa does not publish a number, I say so.

What Stessa costs in 2026

Three plans, and the free one is not a trial. As of September 2026 the pricing page lists Essentials at $0, Manage at $15 a month or $12 billed yearly, and Pro at $35 a month or $28 billed yearly [1]. All three allow unlimited properties.

The catch: the Schedule E report is on Manage, not Essentials. The free plan gives you a “basic tax package,” which is your income and expenses by category. If the whole point is handing your CPA a Schedule E in January, budget $144 a year [1].

Stessa rent collection fees: what the tenant pays

Rent collection is free for the landlord on every plan. What the tenant pays depends on where the money lands. If rent is deposited into a Stessa Cash Management account there is no ACH fee. If you route it to an outside bank, the tenant pays up to $2 per ACH payment. Card payments cost the tenant 3 percent [2].

What Stessa does not say: how many days ACH takes to clear. The pricing page calls the paid feature “accelerated rent payments” with no day count [1]. A competitor’s page puts it at about three days paid and five or more free, which I could not confirm on Stessa’s own site [4]. Late fees can be automatic, manual or off on every plan [3].

Tenant screening cost on Stessa

Screening runs through RentPrep. A credit report is $29, a background check is $29, and the complete package is $49. Income verification adds $10, or $15 with employment verification. The default is that the applicant pays, and the credit and complete packages can be set to landlord-paid instead [5].

That is less than the $55 TurboTenant charges applicants on its free plan ($45 if the landlord upgrades) and more than Zillow’s $35, all applicant-paid. Screening two applicants a year, the difference is small.^[S1]

Stessa is an accounting app that added rent collection. Most of its rivals are rent collection apps that added accounting.That is the whole difference, and it decides who should use it.

Does Stessa handle an owner-occupied duplex?

Yes, with manual work. Stessa’s own house-hacking guide tells you to add your unit as a lease with the tenant name “Owner-Occupied” and rent of $0.01, so the occupancy numbers stay right without adding fake income [6].

Every shared expense is then split by hand. The mortgage, insurance, water and the roof each arrive as one transaction, and you use the Split tool on each to assign a percentage to the rental unit [6]. No rule does this automatically; the mortgage article describes the same one-at-a-time process for principal, interest and escrow [7].

The usual starting point is the rental unit’s share of the building’s square footage, or one unit out of two when the units are the same size. Pick one method with your CPA and apply it the same way to every bill.

What this means for you: on a duplex that is maybe eight to twelve splits a month, which is fine. On a fourplex it adds up. Stessa says it does not give tax advice, so the percentage is on you and your CPA [6].

Does Stessa work for a furnished or short-term unit?

Partly. Stessa does not connect to Airbnb, Vrbo or Furnished Finder directly. For Airbnb it has a CSV importer: you download the transaction history and upload it. For anything else, the payouts arrive through the bank feed as deposits and you categorize them [8].

The guide warns that Airbnb reports two line items per stay and that using both the CSV and the bank feed creates duplicates [8]. A Furnished Finder tenant usually pays you directly, so the bank feed is the whole picture. Stessa will not track nightly rate or occupancy; you enter one projection and it estimates monthly income from that [8].

Stessa Cash Management: the bank account

The cash management account is at Thread Bank. The pricing page lists up to 1.88% APY on Essentials and Manage and up to 3.24% on Pro, and the FAQ says the 3.24% applies at $250,000 and up as of April 1, 2026 [1][3]. The account matters less for the interest and more for the $2 ACH fee it removes.

What Stessa is bad at

• Splits are manual. Every mixed-use bill on an owner-occupied building is a hand edit. No percentage rule.
• No Schedule E on the free plan. The report most people want is $144 a year.
• Leases are paid. The lease library and eSignatures start on Manage, and Manage allows one eSignature a month [1].
• No direct short-term rental connection. CSV import for Airbnb, bank feed for everything else.
• Unpublished clearing times. “Accelerated” is not a number.
• Screening is pricier than Zillow’s $35 at $49 for the full package, though cheaper than TurboTenant’s $55 free-plan fee.

Stessa vs the alternatives for a house hacker

If rent collection and tenant screening matter more than the books, TurboTenant’s free plan is stronger; I covered it in the TurboTenant review. If you want the bank account at the center, with a Schedule E report on the free plan, Baselane is a solid option built for that.

The fee table for eight apps is in best rent collection apps for small landlords. My rule: Stessa if you already keep books and want them automated; a rent collection app if you have never kept books and need the rent to arrive first.

The ledger these tools are meant to replace is in how much the tenants actually covered, and the case for a furnished unit is in short-term vs long-term rental. Other tools I have looked at are on the resources page.

Frequently asked questions

Is Stessa really free?

Stessa’s Essentials plan is defined as a free tier with no time limit covering unlimited properties, bank feeds, rent collection, late fees, screening and a basic tax package. The Schedule E report, lease forms and faster clearing are on Manage at $12 a month billed yearly, as of September 2026.

What does Stessa charge for rent collection?

Stessa rent collection is free for the landlord. The tenant pays nothing by ACH when rent is deposited into a Stessa Cash Management account, up to $2 per ACH payment when it goes to an outside bank, and 3 percent on a credit or debit card, as of September 2026.

Can Stessa track a duplex you live in?

An owner-occupied duplex in Stessa is defined by adding your own unit as a lease at $0.01 rent, then splitting each shared expense by percentage with the Split tool. The split is manual for every transaction, and Stessa leaves the percentage to you and your CPA.

Does Stessa connect to Airbnb or Furnished Finder?

Stessa has no live connection to Airbnb, Vrbo or Furnished Finder. Airbnb income is added by uploading a CSV of the transaction history; any other platform’s payouts arrive through the connected bank account and are categorized there.