resty.ai vs Stessa

Free, because you're the product.

Stessa is a genuinely good free tool. It auto-imports bank transactions, gives you a clean dashboard, and a lot of landlords run on it happily — the bank-sync and the price are real strengths we won't pretend away. The thing worth understanding before you commit your books to it is how a free product pays for itself: Stessa earns from the float on rent it collects, from lending and insurance offers shown to you, and from aggregated landlord data. None of that is hidden — it's just a different deal than paying for software.

Side by side

Where each one actually earns its keep.

Price

what the core product costs

Stessa
$0 for the core product (paid Pro tier exists)
resty.ai
$12/mo flat, every feature

How it makes money

who actually pays the bill

Stessa
rent-payment float, lending & insurance referrals, aggregated data
resty.ai
your subscription, full stop

Schedule E depreciation

27.5-year mid-month convention, line 18

Stessa
categorizes income/expense; you add depreciation
resty.ai
MACRS straight-line, computed per property

Renewals & records

insurance, property tax, rental license tracking

Stessa
not a tracked record type
resty.ai
dated records that auto-create reminders

Data-resale stance

is your portfolio data a revenue source

Stessa
aggregated data informs partner offers
resty.ai
never sold; isolated to your account

CSV in and out

import to start, export forever

Stessa
export yes; import is limited
resty.ai
import a CSV in, export every table out

Deposit lifecycle

held, itemized deductions, amount returned

Stessa
tracks the dollar, not the return workflow
resty.ai
status, itemized deductions, returned amount

Compared in good faith against each tool's public product as of June 2026. Tools change — if a row here is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.

The honest version

There's a right answer for you.

Sometimes it isn't us, and we'll say so. Here's the short way to tell.

Choose Stessa if

  • You want $0 and the monetization model doesn't bother you.
  • Automatic bank-account sync is the feature you'd miss most.
  • You'd rather Stessa pull bank transactions than enter or import them.
  • You don't need depreciation or renewal tracking, or you keep those elsewhere.

Choose resty.ai if

  • You'd rather pay $12 a month and be the customer, not the product.
  • You want Schedule E with 27.5-year depreciation already on the line.
  • You want insurance, property tax, and license dates that remind you before they lapse.
  • You want your data isolated and never fed to a lending or insurance partner.

On purpose

We'd rather take your $12 than sell your data.

resty.ai never touches your rent, so there's no float to earn on and no few-day hold on your money. There are no lending or insurance offers wedged into the dashboard, and your portfolio is never pooled into a data set someone else pays for. The deal is simple on purpose: one flat price, every feature, and you're the person we answer to.

Questions

What landlords ask comparing the two.

  • Is Stessa really free?

    The core product is free to use. It pays for itself other ways — float on the rent it collects, lending and insurance referral offers, a paid Pro tier, and aggregated landlord data. That's a fair trade for many landlords; it's just worth knowing the bill is paid by something other than a subscription. resty.ai charges a flat $12/mo and makes money only from that.

  • Does Stessa calculate depreciation for Schedule E?

    Stessa categorizes income and expenses into Schedule E lines but does not compute depreciation for you — you add that figure yourself. resty.ai computes it on the 27.5-year mid-month straight-line convention per property, so the non-cash deduction is already on line 18. Both are estimates for your CPA, not tax advice.

  • Can I move my data from Stessa to resty.ai?

    Yes. Export your income and expenses from Stessa as a CSV and import them into resty.ai to start. And resty.ai exports every table to CSV at any time, so you're never locked in either direction.

See the depreciation and renewals Stessa skips.

Every account opens on a fully worked sample portfolio — walk the Schedule E with depreciation already figured and the renewals already dated before you enter a thing of your own.

Try the live demo

Free 7-day trial · No card to start · Export everything, anytime