Pricing and product documentation checked 27 August 2026. No affiliate links.
AirDNA is the lower-risk default on published evidence
Both products let you explore a market and analyze a specific property. That means the usual verdict, “AirDNA for the market, STR Insights for the door,” does not decide anything. We found no head-to-head validation in the public material cited here.
Recurring research assigned to an Airbnb virtual assistant requires an approved individual login, written comparable-listing rules, and operator review of the inputs. Neither retail page establishes suitable delegated or team access, and AirDNA's current terms prohibit password sharing. Confirm individual access with the vendor before either product is viable for that role.
For owner-run research, the differences we can verify are price, geography, data documentation, export options, and how easily you can test the workflow. On those facts, AirDNA Research is the lower-risk self-service starting point. Its annual plan costs $1,199.99 less, covers markets outside the United States, and supports CSV exports. STR Insights earns its premium only if the demo materially improves a real U.S. underwriting decision enough to justify the difference.
What the public plans establish, and what remains open
Feature availability can depend on the plan. Confirm the exact tier before buying.
| Decision input | STR Insights | AirDNA |
|---|---|---|
| Published research price | $194.99 monthly, $449.99 quarterly, or $1,599.99 annually | Free plan, or Research at $125 monthly or $400 annually |
| Coverage | U.S. only; vendor reports 1M+ rentals across 12K+ markets | Global; vendor reports 10M+ listings across 120K+ markets |
| Before you pay | Scheduled demo; no public free tier or time-limited trial | Permanent free plan plus recorded and live demos |
| Exports | Spreadsheet, PDF, and application programming interface (API) access are not documented publicly; ask in the demo | Research exports market and property charts to CSV; Rentalizer supports PDF |
| Owner prospecting | No public owner-contact or lead-workflow documentation found | Available in the separate, quote-based Property Manager product |
| Team access | Seats and contractor access are not documented publicly | Retail seats are not documented publicly; the terms prohibit password sharing |
Sources: STR Insights pricing, STR Insights software, AirDNA pricing, AirDNA coverage, AirDNA exports, AirDNA Property Manager, and AirDNA terms.
Do not buy either product on an accuracy slogan
STR Insights says its rental metrics come from Airbnb and Vrbo and are checked weekly. AirDNA says it collects public Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com listing data daily and validates its model with reservation data from more than 100,000 partner properties. AirDNA publishes more methodology. That is useful for auditing a number, but it does not prove that AirDNA will forecast your property correctly.
A forecast is only as useful as its comparable listings, revenue definition, treatment of blocked nights, and data recency. If the product cannot show those inputs, the number is difficult to defend no matter how precise it looks.
Read the vendors' own descriptions of STR Insights data and AirDNA data sources.
A fair test before you subscribe for a year
- Name the job. Decide whether you are shortlisting a market, underwriting one property, or building an owner-prospect list. Owner prospecting requires AirDNA Property Manager. The $400 Research plan does not include it.
- Prepare identical inputs. Use one market you know, one serious candidate market, one thin or unusual market, and five addresses with the same property type and occupancy assumptions.
- Start reversibly. Run AirDNA Free first. If you need custom comparable listings or exports, pay for one month of Research before committing annually.
- Bring the same inputs to the STR Insights demo. Ask the rep to show the selected comparable listings, booked-versus-blocked treatment, revenue definition, data date, exports, and access options.
- Check a property you already know. Compare both outputs with actual booking records where possible. Normalize revenue definitions before judging the result.
- Choose the product whose inputs you can explain. If you cannot inspect the comparable listings or explain why an estimate changed, do not use it to pursue or reject a property.
Define the research handoff after access is approved
Give the assistant a written research request that names the market, property type, comparable-listing rules, required exports, and the decision the work will inform. The assistant can collect the evidence and put both products on the same basis; the operator still approves the comparable set and makes the investment decision.
For rate-setting rather than market research, use the Airbnb pricing tool comparison; it is a different decision.