Guesty vs Hostfully: make the two bills comparable
- A starting subscription does not capture the platform, payment, direct-booking, and add-on bill.
- Both advertise broad distribution on higher tiers.
- Their documented approaches to staff access are materially different and should be tested with your roles.
Official pricing and product material checked 27 August 2026.
The public starting prices are not the same unit
Guesty Lite has a low public starting subscription for one to three listings. Hostfully Growth publishes a per-property starting price, a platform fee, and separate payment and direct-booking percentages. Guesty Pro is quoted; Hostfully Pro publishes a higher starting price and removes the two listed percentage fees.
There is no honest cost winner without your prior twelve months of booking, direct-booking, and payment volume. Permissions need a separate same-duty test. Guesty assigns Full, Partial, or No access by product area. Hostfully starts from four built-in roles. The Hostaway vs Guesty access choice includes a third model on the Hostaway side: user groups with View, Modify, Create, and Delete rights across product areas. To decide Guesty versus Hostfully, configure the same guest, pricing, payment, owner, and administrative duties in both products and reject either one that cannot separate them.
Twenty-property example
Hostfully Growth starts at $300 a month, then adds three moving parts
$15 × 20 properties = $300 base subscription
plus platform fee = amount not stated on the public page
plus 1% payment-gateway fee = apply to the vendor-defined payment base
plus 0.85% direct-booking fee = apply to direct-booking value
This does not make Hostfully expensive or Guesty cheap. It shows what the Hostfully formula needs before it can be compared with a Guesty Pro proposal. Give both vendors the same property count, online-travel-agency booking value, direct-booking value, payment volume, user count, owner count, add-ons, onboarding, and contract term. Require one twelve-month total and the renewal formula.
The inputs come from Hostfully's current pricing page. Guesty's current pricing page publishes the $9 Lite starting point and quotes Pro. Product boundaries come from Guesty's permissions documentation and channel manager; Hostfully's pages document user roles, its direct-booking site, and its channel manager.
What the official material establishes
| Decision point | Guesty | Hostfully |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Lite, for 1–3 listings, starts at $9 per listing per month. Confirm transaction and add-on charges at checkout. | Growth starts at $15 per property per month plus a platform fee, a 1% payment-gateway fee, and a 0.85% direct-booking fee. |
| Higher tier | Pro (4–199 listings) and Enterprise (200+) require a quote. | Pro starts at $25 per property per month plus a platform fee and removes the listed gateway and direct-booking percentage fees. Enterprise is custom. |
| Distribution | Lite lists Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo. Pro advertises 60+ channels. | Its channel manager advertises direct connections to Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and 60+ channels. |
| Team access | Roles use Full, Partial, or No access by product area, with separate main-account and sub-account rules. | Four built-in roles (Property Manager, Booking Agent, Property Sales Manager, and Associate) have varying permission levels. |
| Direct booking and add-ons | Confirm the site, payment, owner, accounting, and add-on scope in the applicable plan or proposal. | A direct-booking site is included with an account. Open application programming interface (API) access, Digital Guidebooks, and devices are shown as configurable add-ons; transaction fees vary by plan. |
“Starting at” is not a twelve-month total. Ask which reservation and payment values each percentage applies to, how the platform fee is calculated, and which add-ons are mandatory for your workflow.
Use one cost sheet and one access test
Give both vendors the same listing count, online travel agency (OTA) reservation value, direct-booking value, payment volume, contract term, onboarding scope, and add-ons. Require a twelve-month total at current volume and at the renewal scenario you expect.
- Create an agent who can answer guests but cannot view payouts or change payment settings.
- Create a revenue user who can change rates only for assigned properties.
- Create an owner view that exposes the agreed properties and figures, but no other owner data.
- Change one permission and confirm its effect in a test login, including any main-account override.
If Hostfully's built-in roles map cleanly, that part of the decision is simple. If they do not, make Hostfully demonstrate the permitted customization and make Guesty demonstrate its more granular model. Choose only after both the access test and total-cost sheet pass.
What would decide it
Guesty's clearer advantage is granular access by product area. Hostfully's clearer advantage is a direct-booking site included with the account and a public per-property starting model. Guesty wins when its proposal prices that finer access competitively. Hostfully wins when its four built-in roles cleanly represent the team and its direct-booking economics produce the lower total. If neither vendor can produce the complete bill or the minimum access boundary before contract, neither has won.
For the wider field, compare these two against the other Airbnb management software candidates using the same reservation and permissions tests.
Book a consultation if the chosen access model is ready to become a recurring role.