Real estate investing has been revolutionized by Airbnb and other short-term rental websites. As more investors turn to Airbnbs as part of their investment portfolios, they search for effective rental analytic tools such as AirDNA.
AirDNA is a fantastic tool, but there are other options to consider. An AirDNA alternative can help you collect the financial information you need to make the best Airbnb decisions.
Let’s take a close look at each major AirDNA alternative on the Internet.
AirDNA Overview
When you buy short-term rental properties, you need tools to check your profit margin and know your properties’ price targets based on the local competition.
AirDNA does this for you. It provides the most accurate rental information on any property—anywhere. It’s a popular analytics platform because it’s so versatile. AirDNA is used by everyone from property managers to vacation rental investors to commercial investors.
To put it simply, AirDNA is an impressive market research platform that helps you know what other investors are up to. Scoping out the competition to see what works and doesn’t work from them can only help you.
Few are surprised that AirDNA is a leading real estate investment platform for investors who buy short-term rental properties. This tool helps investors collect data on various markets, set a profitable pricing strategy, and check the potential of short-term rental properties in your region.
Collecting accurate data is essential to build the most profitable rental investment portfolio.
For instance, if you price your Airbnb at $150 per night and competitors pick $75 per night, your property may sit vacant.
But if you price your rental at $200 per night and competitors charge $300, you’re leaving income on the table.
Investors also rely on AirDNA because they can locate rentals in regions with a lot of expensive properties as well as less expensive tourist properties. The app can help you find the best places to buy the best short-term rental.
The services the platform provides are:
- MarketMinder: Keeps tabs on all Airbnbs globally and provides insights into your rental market. You also can keep tabs on other markets.
- Investment Explorer: It merged Airbnb data and property values of a certain region so you can make the best investments in an area that is now profitable.
How Accurate Is AirDNA Data?
The analytics tool is highly accurate. It’s estimated that AirDNA culls property information from at least 4 million properties.
Plus, AirDNA’s data is updated every month. So you have access to the most updated data about Airbnb rentals everywhere.
However, we should mention that Mashvisor gets average values in different ways than AirDNA. Mashvisor uses verified Airbnb properties and medians. Data is obtained from MLS directly and no outliers are used.
What About Mashvisor?
Mashvisor is an Airbnb data analysis website that helps real estate investors locate the best deals and ensure a high ROI. Mashvisor is useful for long-term and short-term rentals, so it’s a helpful tool for most investors.
Our software provides loads of detailed market data and the analytic tools to make critical investment decisions.
Some of the features of Mashvisor that our subscribers enjoy include:
- Estimate the potential cash flow of investment properties
- Find new investment properties, including ones that are undervalued
- Evaluate the performance of various markets
- Optimize your real estate portfolio and cashflow
Remember, AirDNA focuses on vacation rentals. It is dedicated to the short-term rental business. AirDNA mostly serves vacation rental real estate investors who need to analyze and keep pace with the latest trends in short-term rentals.
As noted earlier, Mashvisor offers data on many types of investment properties, including Airbnbs. Some features you can count on are:
- Investment property research tools – Search Engine and Property Finder
- Rental analysis
- Neighborhood analysis
- Rental comparables and several reports
- Mortgage and finance calculator
- Heat map
Use the Property Finder to find the ideal Airbnb investment property
The Mashvisor dashboard has everything in one convenient location so you can spend your time on your business, not analytics. Many say they have so much time to focus on growing their business when they rely on Mashvisor for their research needs.
AirDNA Alternative 1 – Wheelhouse
Wheelhouse is a top-notch pricing tool that can help you get in on a new market trend by relying on Airbnb market data in various markets.
Wheelhouse uses several helpful features you can customize according to your investment strategy. Some users say choosing Wheelhouse helped them boost their Airbnb income by 20% or more.
This platform has automated Airbnb data analysis, so using it is a breeze. It’s user-friendly, and getting used to it doesn’t take long.
Some users note that one of its most interesting offerings is its Rev.Score. It tracks an asset’s performance by looking at the anticipated income and comparing it to the property’s real-world revenue. Once you have this information, you can decide which potential property you want to bid on.
Wheelhouse features an algorithm that alerts you to events and sudden rental demand in your region. Then, it adjusts your prices right away without you lifting a finger. Imagine being able to change your property’s prices on the fly! Many users marvel at maximizing profitability automatically.
It has two payment options: percentage of bookings and fixed premium.
This means if you have a lot of listings with many guests, you can reduce costs by paying with the fixed premium option. If you only have a single Airbnb, you pay for what you use.
AirDNA Alternative 2 – DPGO
DPGO is impressive AI software that is effective in analyzing hundreds of different markets. It’s an effective Airbnb research tool that is made for Airbnb owners and vacation rental investors who need to adjust their prices based on what their competition does.
It’s great that DPGO offers a free 30-day trial. Users feel more confident to give the tool a try if there’s no upfront cost. If you don’t like it, you can cancel with no obligation.
Helpful tools included with DPGO are:
- Real-Time Market Data: This tool is especially effective to analyze local market data. It doesn’t offer data for every market worldwide. Instead, it offers personalized data for some of your most critical areas.
- Growth Performance: You can monitor how a single asset performs or your entire rental portfolio. Doing so will improve the profitability of your listings over time.
- Yield Management: This critical feature lets you track many local market trends.
- Personal Strategy: You can expand the tool’s AI recommendations by using your preferred investment strategies. Choose from at least 30 different settings.
AirDNA Alternative 3 – Smartbnb
This is another effective, automated research tool that appeals to many property managers and Airbnb hosts. It’s made to automate many day-to-day operations tasks. For example, it can send automatic messages to clients, reminders for cleaning, and handle property reviews.
You also can analyze myriad operational metrics and evaluate your Airbnb business’s profitability.
The tool is automated, so it can often reduce your host workload. For example, Smartbnb can run your communications and many administrative tasks at scale. That way, you can focus on expanding your business and not handling routine administrative tasks.
AirDNA Alternative 4 – Skuuudle
Skuuudle is a popular comparative intelligence tool that helps investors evaluate and research what their competitors are doing. It also collects information from online sources in your area to manage your prices for ideal profitability.
Some of the features Skuuudle offers include:
- Data evaluation and visualization
- Price management
- Reporting and statistics
- Product catalog
- Cost analysis
- Data visualization and evaluation
This is a highly developed AirDNA alternative that collects information and offers the investor detailed insights into their marketplace.
Note there is no free trial, however.
AirDNA Alternative 5 – Airbitics
This is a popular Airbnb data analytics tool that works for many hosts who need to keep track of properties and improve their guests’ stay.
Users also can find more Airbnbs to buy based on the data in the tool’s platform. So you will get a better idea of where to find the most profitable properties.
AirDNA Alternative 6 – Transparent Pricing
Transparent is useful for analyzing ideal pricing strategies based on your occupancy rates, competitor pricing, and demand. You also will learn where your guests come from, so this helps with marketing.
When you know where your guests live, you can devise more effective marketing campaigns to attract more people. It also has an Airbnb return on investment calculator that shows how much a property is worth and the cash flow you can derive from it.
AirDNA Alternative 7 – Beyond Pricing
This tool is similar to Wheelhouse. It’s an app that helps investors get the ideal price for their Airbnb or other short-term rentals.
To get the best price, you only need to put in basic information, and in less than a minute, the property has the best price to stand up to your competition. It also allows you to use the best property management systems and booking platforms.
AirDNA Alternative 8 – Do It Yourself!
If you aren’t on board with paying for Airbnb analytics software, you still can get the data you need to make critical investment decisions. And you can do it for free.
Of course, doing it all yourself requires a lot of legwork on your own. Your results may not be the same as what these AirDNA alternatives can give you with their algorithms. But it’s possible.
The ideal way to collect information on your competition is by looking through Airbnb, Booking.com, Homeaway, and VRBO, among others to see what other investors are charging.
It’s not as user-friendly as simply glancing at an AirDNA alternative dashboard. And you may not have comprehensive information on estimated revenue and occupancy rates. But you still can glean important information. And it always is good for your knowledge base to do some of your own pricing and revenue research.
Another option: Try several different pricing strategies over a month or two and see what gains the most bookings and revenues. For example, you can try weekend rates, high season discounts, offseason specials, last-minute deals, and more. Vary things and see what nets the most bookings.
And remember to keep track of your data. Experimenting with different pricing strategies is fun, but tracking the data can be boring. But that’s where the gold is! You can keep track of the data you collect on Google Sheets.
After a few months, you will have some actionable data that tells you which pricing methods work best for each property.
Which AirDNA Alternative Is Best?
The AirDNA alternative you choose depends on the property and neighborhood, as well as your business goals and budget. If you have several properties, you may want to bring in a management service to handle bookings, confirmation, and customer service if you have several properties.
But if you need to find ideal properties for short-term rentals, you should pick tools that find ideal neighborhoods and properties.
If you have enough cash flow for AirDNA, you’ll be happy with it. But if you have a lower budget, one or more of the alternatives we describe here could fit the bill.
Summary
When you operate a short-term rental property company, you should have several analytics alternatives to help improve your profitability and find new areas in which to invest.
It can be challenging to operate in the short-term rental market because of narrow profit margins. But when you rely on an AirDNA alternative mentioned above, you have more information at your fingertips to make the best investment decisions.
Always remember that Mashvisor is another proven AirDNA alternative you can rely on for gauging pricing and revenues. Use our platform to find the most lucrative Airbnb properties and other investment properties.
With Mashvisor, you don’t need to do your own research anymore – we do it all for one low monthly fee. Our tool puts more than 450,000 listings at your fingertips, and 15 minutes of research can give you all the information you need to buy your next property.