We compare the top four short-term rental investment platforms against each other: Beyond Pricing vs PriceLabs vs AirDNA vs Mashvisor.
Following Airbnb’s huge success, real estate investors are now given a wide range of choices of Airbnb data platforms that they can use when they go into the short-term rental business. But do you know which of the platforms is the most reliable? We will help you decide through the article below.
Here, we will do three rounds of matchups:
- First round: Beyond Pricing vs PriceLabs
- Second round: AirDNA vs. Mashvisor
- Third round: A matchup between the data platforms that topped the first two rounds
We will start with a brief background of each platform before reviewing its features and services, pricing, and customer support.
Round 1: PriceLabs vs Beyond Pricing
Both platforms present revenue management solutions, with dynamic pricing as their core product.
Platform Overview
In this section, we will look into both platforms PriceLabs vs Beyond Pricing as a whole: their origin stories and their overall features.
Beyond Pricing
Beyond Pricing is a short-term rental data platform that launched in 2013. The concept was borne out of its co-founder and CTO David Kelso’s need for an Airbnb pricing tool back when he was renting out a room in his apartment. His predicament propelled him to develop a tool for dynamic pricing. Beyond Pricing, now known as Beyond, has multiple products to its name.
BeyondPricing features market data at a large scale and a booking engine that syncs with online travel agency distribution platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo and several property management systems. Currently, it supports more than 340,000 properties located in over 7,500 cities worldwide. Its office is located in San Francisco, California.
Related: How to Become an Airbnb Property Manager
PriceLabs
Price Labs began its operations in 2014 to provide a pricing system based on demand and supply. Using the correct data, the team aims to provide its users with an effective system that would peg reasonable nightly rates for short-term rentals in the quickest way possible.
The company integrates with over 50 property management systems, including Airbnb, Vrbo, Houfy, BookerVille, BookingSync, and many others. Operating out of Chicago, Illinois, it currently serves over 5,000 hosts and property managers in more than 100 countries.
Related: 10 Steps to Setting the Right Airbnb Strategy
Products and Services
We will now take a closer look at the features each platform offers.
Beyond Pricing
Beyond offers several features and services that aim to address the needs of short-term rental management.
Dynamic Pricing
The company’s dynamic pricing service automatically calibrates your prices to optimize income and occupancy. The recommended price is based on your Base Rate or Average Daily Rate (ADR) and accounts for the day of the week, seasonality, and local events that may coincide with the booking date. It also considers last-minute and orphan day discounts. It comes with date override features, which allow you to adjust rates on specific dates based on your preference or perspective. You may input a new rate or specify a percentage increase or decrease of the recommended price.
However, the tool does not automatically adjust the recommended price when a change in the occupancy rate occurs.
Related: Should You Use Airbnb Smart Pricing?
Insights
The Insights service provides short-term rental investors with error-free, real-time data on your real estate investment portfolio, and it comes for free. The service helps you spot trends and issues and get a good grasp of your market through comprehensive short-term rental data. It allows you to filter charts by market, size, and other filters to identify opportunities for improvement and take appropriate action.
Relay
Relay is a service designed for users with several listings in a property management system or a direct channel under a single-user account. It integrates listings across online travel agencies like Airbnb and Vrbo without causing a dent in your profit. You may direct guests to your preferred channel by adjusting prices across the different channels through dynamic markups.
The service saves you time and effort by automatically syncing data on availability, dynamic prices, and reservations between your property management system and channels. The auto-sync feature prevents double bookings, so you also avoid the headache of dealing with irate guests.
Signal
Beyond allows you to develop and manage your own direct booking website using its reservation engine. The website, which also works on mobile devices, is optimized for search engines so that searchers of short-term rentals will find it easily. Moreover, it comes with a user-friendly interface so visitors can navigate through the site smoothly. Updating the website can also be done quickly.
Signal is loaded with several features, including map search, amenities page, favorites and recently viewed listings, reviews, Google Analytics, and flexible stays. The service integrates with Barefoot, Escapia, Streamline, and Track.
Guidance
Beyond offers one-on-one consultation for listing reviews and hands-on pricing optimization. Its team of experts, who are armed with in-depth knowledge of local markets, can assist you in tailoring marketing and revenue strategies for each listing in your portfolio that highlight the uniqueness of each listing. The experts can advise you on formulating booking window strategies, such as minimum stays, last-minute discounts, and more. They can even research for you to help you with the comps.
PriceLabs
PriceLabs, which supposedly pioneered the dynamic pricing for short-term rentals, currently offers three core products:
Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic Pricing is PriceLabs’s core service that enables automatic updating of rates based on market data and listing performance. It recommends rental rates based on the ADR, day of the week, demand, occupancy, and seasonality. It also considers far-out date premiums, last-minute discounts, and orphan date discounts. The pricing tool bases the demand on the occupancy rate of Airbnb listings within the neighborhood and automatically adjusts the recommended price based on occupancy rate movements.
You may customize some components of the recommended price to suit your preference. Some of the components include far-out date premiums, last-minute discounts, orphan date discounts, day of the week, occupancy rate, and more. It also features a Portfolio Occupancy Rate Adjustment Tool, which customizes occupancy rates for a group of listings.
Market Dashboards
The Market Dashboards are fully automated tracking systems of vacation rental and Airbnb data worldwide. It provides a snapshot of market trends in areas covered by your dashboard, allowing you to recognize seasonal changes in booking patterns. You will find data for the past 7 or 30 days in your market, covering the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
- Average occupancy percentage
- Estimated revenue
- Number of active listings
- Number of bookings
- Median booking window
- Median length of stay
The dashboard also features a map that displays the estimated location of all current active listings in the report. Each dot you see on the map represents a listing, and clicking or hovering over each of these dots will show you the listing details such as its average rate, the number of bedrooms, and other relevant information.
Other features include a comp set, a summary table of listings and other metrics, supply and demand, market history, occupancy trends, length of stay and lead time, amenities, policies, and fees.
Portfolio Analytics
The Portfolio Analytics service is available to anyone, whether they’re a user of PriceLabs Dynamic Pricing or not. It offers real-time data on key Airbnb and vacation rental metrics, such as monthly revenue and duration of stay, allowing users to make sound comparisons and determine market trends. The service is helpful for the following purposes:
- Reporting
- Guiding revenue strategy
- Recognizing underperforming listed rental properties
- Comparing prices and trends against the market
Pricing Plans
The affordability of any product or service is always crucial to any purchasing decision.
Beyond
Beyond does not charge a flat or upfront fee and offers a 30-day free trial. It does not ask for credit card details for setting up an account, but you need to specify a payment method upon the expiry of the trial period. Any bookings made before signing up with them will not be included in Beyond’s charges.
You are given two payment options: Pay on Book or Pay on Stay. Upon the expiry of your 30-day trial, charging will default to Pay on Book, meaning you will be charged 1% of all bookings based on reservations made. If you choose to switch to Pay on Stay, you will be charged 1.49% on the guest’s check-in day. Beyond’s charges are based on the nightly rate, the cleaning fee, plus any other fee you will charge the renter.
PriceLabs
PriceLabs Portfolio Analytics is offered for free.
Dynamic Pricing comes with a 30-day trial period, and you can set up an account with PriceLabs without providing your credit card details. It charges a flat monthly price of $19.99 for one listing. You can check out the flat rate for more than one listing through its calculator. The calculator will also display the rates for three clusters: Brazil, Canada-Europe-UK-US, and the rest covered by PriceLabs.
Market Dashboard starts at $9.99 per month, and you get a 30-day free trial of one dashboard when you add listings.
Customer Support
Customer support plays a critical role in selecting a service provider. Customers would like to be assured that their questions will be answered and their concerns addressed. Let’s see who provides better support in the following Beyond Pricing vs. PriceLabs matchup.
Beyond
No customer support over the phone is available, but customers can send an email instead. Its Support Center also provides detailed information about its products and services. Members may log in to their Beyond account to chat with a team member who can assist them. Additionally, potential customers who would like to know more about its products and services may attend the Getting Started webinar on YouTube.
PriceLabs
Aside from its Knowledge Base section, Price Labs offers the following channels to learn more about the company through the following resources:
- Interactive Webinar
- Help Center
- PriceLabs YouTube channel
For customer support, you have to go to the Contact Us page or submit a ticket through the Help Center.
Recap: Beyond Pricing vs PriceLabs
Beyond boasts of a broader reach at 7,500 cities worldwide. Although both companies offer comprehensive market insights and dynamic pricing as their main service, Beyond takes its offerings to a higher level by allowing direct booking through its customized websites and providing consultations with its experts. However, Beyond does not automatically update its price recommendations when the occupancy rate in the market fluctuates; it needs to be done manually by the user.
PriceLabs charges a flat rate for its services, unlike Beyond, which bills users based on the bookings and booked prices. Beyond also plugs in a cleaning fee to its rate. Although the charge is only 1% (Pay on Book) or 1.49% (Pay on Stay), the dollar value may come out higher than what PriceLabs charges.
The Verdict: Beyond Pricing vs PriceLabs
Beyond Pricing is the better option with only its pricing plan going against it.
Round 2: AirDNA vs Mashvisor
AirDNA and Mashvisor are two of the more popular Airbnb calculators. The section below follows the same format used in the Beyond Pricing vs Pricelabs comparison.
Platform Overview
Just like in the previous round, we take a look at the overall qualities of AirDNA and Mashvisor.
AirDNA
AirDNA is a data analytics provider for the short-term rental industry. Scott Shatford, CEO and co-founder, ran his own short-term rental business in Southern California. He experienced running the business blindly with no market intelligence to guide his actions.
A data analyst, Shatford developed a means to monitor vacation rental metrics the Airbnb listings. In 2015, AirDNA was born, providing Airbnb hosts, property managers, and real estate investors with relevant insights and analytics. Its technology allows accurate tracking and forecasting of a property’s income potential.
The tool is available in 120,000 global markets. The company is based in Denver, Colorado.
Mashvisor
Mashvisor is a cloud-based property intelligence software. It began in 2014 to empower short-term rental investors through automation and comprehensive real estate data analysis. Its efforts are centered on timely and accurate delivery of real estate analytics to guide investors, especially novice investors, in making smart decisions in their investments. It promises to turn three months of research into 15 minutes only. Mashvisor’s partners include Airbnb, Auction.com, iGMS, Lodgify, Roof stock, and Vacasa.
Products and Services
Next, we will compare both platforms’ features against each other.
AirDNA
AirDNA’s products and services are clustered into its Market Minder.
The service is a market intelligence and short-term rental analytics tool that allows first-time and savvy investors to make informed real estate investment decisions. It gives you helpful insights into the Airbnb market, including historical market performance trends and property insights on Airbnb occupancy rate. It is also useful for rental comp creation and analysis, pacing Airbnb data, and unlimited searches.
The Market Minder also features the following:
My Properties
The My Properties tool helps optimizes short-term rentals. When you connect your listings to it, you can create a comp set by setting up filters for your search. Filters include:
- Amenities
- Distance and location,
- Size and guest capacity,
- Experience
- Performance metrics
- Property quality.
The following metrics will be displayed on your My Properties dashboard after setting your comp set. The metrics predict your property’s performance in the next few months, and the data is updated weekly so you can take proper action as needed.
- Future Occupancy
- Booked Rate
- Lead Time
Smart Rates
Smart Rates is Market Minder’s dynamic pricing tool that recommends personalized pricing strategies to optimize your listings’ revenue and occupancy. The suggested rate is based on market demand, seasonality, booking lead time, days of the week, and other applicable variables.
Rentalizer
The Rentalizer tool is among Market Minder’s investment tools, the AirDNA calculator. By typing in the address of a property, you will be given a projection of your property’s annual revenue on Airbnb and Vrbo, including:
- Average daily rate
- Occupancy rate
- Future property appreciation or depreciation
- Seasonality effect on profits
- Competitive analysis of rentals in the neighborhood
AirDNA also offers customized downloadable data for its Enterprise Solutions clients.
Mashvisor
Mashvisor offers the following features:
Property Finder
Using Mashvisor’s Property Finder, you can search for properties in up to five cities all at once. Our AI will then sort the listings from the highest cash on cash return.
Mashvisor’s Property Finder tool helps you search for the best short-term rental investment property in the neighborhood that you would like to invest in. It provides you with a roster of properties in your chosen location that meet your budget requirements and investment goals and are projected to give you an attractive Airbnb income potential.
Rent Analysis
Mashvisor’s Rent Analysis section provides a list of active Airbnb listings and other rental comps along with their historical rental income in the last 12 months.
Rent Analysis provides you with a historical rental income for all properties logged in the location of your choice. The data shows you the peak and slow months for renting out properties, enabling you to strategize for the lean months. You may select Airbnb if you are only interested in those properties.
Insights
Every listing page contains an Insights section where Mashvisor’s AI scores the neighborhood, the property’s investment valuation, and other insights you need to decide on whether to buy the property.
When you click on the Insights tab, you will be redirected to a section that displays the property’s score based on Mashvisor data. The Mashmeter and the investor valuation scores account for the property’s predicted returns: the cap rate, cash on cash return, neighborhood rating, property design, and rent appreciation rate.
Purchase Analysis
Also found on every listing page, the Purchase Analysis section provides a breakdown of income, expenses, cash flow, etc. for both rental strategies to help you decide which is more optimal for that property.
In the Purchase Analysis tab, you will find essential calculations for performing property analysis so you can determine if it is a smart investment.
- Financing/Mortgage Calculator: It helps you decide if you should buy the property through financing or pay for it in all cash.
- Rental Strategy: It tells you if your property will be better for an Airbnb business or a traditional rental.
- Expenses: It allows you to calculate your one-time and monthly recurring expenses.
Reports
Mashvisor publishes market reports about various states and major cities in the US to include an overview of the housing market performance, best locations for real estate investing, and other relevant information.
Property Marketplace
The Property Marketplace tool focuses on the efficient search for off-market properties and determining if these properties have good investment potential.
Heat Map
Mashvisor’s Real Estate Heatmap provides a quick overview of the best- and worst-performing parts of a city based on your set criteria.
The Heat Map is a tool that presents the ideal investment location through color-coding, making it easier to identify neighborhoods that satisfy your investment goal at a glance. It employs predictive analytics to locate the best investment properties in a neighborhood. The search is based on the filters that you establish.
Airbnb Income Calculator
Designed to help first-time investors, the Airbnb Income Calculator performs real estate market analysis and investment property analysis to estimate a short-term rental property’s income and profitability potential. The data comes from Airbnb, Zillow, Realtor.com, and other partners.
Pricing Plans
Price is an important factor for savvy investors when deciding on which platform to use. We then see which one is more cost-efficient.
AirDNA
AirDNA pricing includes three plans for hosts and investors with only one market:
- $19/month with less than 100 active listings
- $39/month with listings ranging from 100 to 1000
- $99/month with more than 1000 active listings
It also offers two options for its Global Plan:
- Option 1: $599/month
- Option 2: $999/month, billed annually
Both options entitle users to unlimited access to:
- MarketMinder in 191 countries
- Investment, pacing, and pricing data on 10 million active listings in 120,000 global markets
Mashvisor
Mashvisor offers three pricing plans, all with a 7-day free trial.
Lite Plan
Priced at $17.99/month, the Lite plan is intended for those who would like to analyze individual properties.
Standard
The Standard plan is for investors who want to discover investment opportunities based on their target profit and personalized expense profile. The fee is set at $49.99/month.
Professional
The Professional plan is ideal for bulk research and client management and is priced at $74.99/month.
Customer Support
Because of how packed their features are, some users may get overwhelmed and have questions on how to maximize their subscriptions. How easy would it be to reach each platform’s customer support?
AirDNA
Customers may reach AirDNA by calling, using the chat feature on the website, sending an email, or submitting a form on the Contact Us page.
They may also learn more about AirDNA through its various resources, such as FAQs, videos and webinars, and more.
Mashvisor
Mashvisor’s customer support can be reached via phone call, email, and Twitter. You may also submit a form on the Contact Us page. But we recommend checking out the FAQs section first to see if your question has already been answered there.
Mashvisor’s Knowledge Center features Investor Blogs, Agent Blogs, Real Estate News, and Analytics to keep you informed on its products and services and updated on the real estate market.
Recap: AirDNA vs Mashvisor
Mashvisor provides a number of services that begin with locating an ideal neighborhood. The company’s analytics are more comprehensive. It also offers three pricing packages that suit various customer needs and a free trial. However, Mashvisor does not offer dynamic pricing, unlike AirDNA.
AirDNA vs Mashvisor: Is Mashvisor Better Than AirDNA?
In the above AirDNA vs Mashvisor matchup, the latter emerges as the better option because of its wide range of services and comprehensive analytics. Mashvisor’s pricing packages also give it an advantage over AirDNA. To learn more about the two platforms, check out the video comparison below:
Round 3: Beyond Pricing vs. Mashvisor
Beyond’s advantage is that it offers a dynamic pricing tool, which Mashvisor lacks. Added advantages are the direct booking on a customized website and the consultation with team experts.
However, Mashvisor takes care of the start-to-end analytics, which is not available in Beyond. With its structured pricing plan, Mashvisor is the best choice in our three-way matchup.
If you want to leverage excellent analytics to make your investment profitable, try Mashvisor’s real estate investment tools. Schedule a demo with us now.
