Yardi Breeze for small landlords: pricing, plans and alternatives

Yardi Breeze pricing: Breeze and Breeze Premier

Yardi publishes Breeze's prices on its own site. There is no unit minimum, only a monthly one, and no charge for setup, training, support or converting data from your old software.

Breeze bills each month for the units you managed the month before, or the minimum, whichever is greater. Premier is billed once a year. Both sit on an annual agreement, and every contract can be cancelled within its first 30 days. Premier adds custom reporting, invoice processing, job cost tracking and investment management; a self-managing landlord rarely needs any of it at $400 a month.

What Breeze costs at 5, 20, 100 and 200 units

The $100 floor is the whole story for a small portfolio. At five units it works out to $20 a unit; at 100 it is $1. Here is the monthly subscription beside a per-unit rival and a flat-price landlord app.

Subscription only, per month, residential units. DoorLoop at its yearly rate; RentRedi on its annual plan. Screening and payment fees come on top and are compared below.

Yardi Breeze vs Buildium and DoorLoop

Three systems that publish their prices, side by side. Breeze is our pick from 50 to a few hundred units: the flat $100 covers you to 100 units, the per-unit rate is the lowest published here, and there is no setup bill. Buildium is the cheaper way in below that.

A dash means the vendor does not offer it; “Not published” means its pricing page does not say. Yardi lists no Breeze trial, but every Breeze contract can be cancelled within its first 30 days.

What the $100 a month buys a small landlord

Breeze is a full property management system, so the minimum buys the whole kit, not a starter tier. Read from Yardi's residential features page, it covers five jobs:

• Listings and applications. Vacant units go to listing sites including RentCafe.com, and applicants apply, are screened and sign leases online. RentCafe, Yardi's resident portal and listing site, is included in the monthly price.
• Screening. In the U.S. it runs through ScreeningWorks Pro, with credit data from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Yardi bills it per report as an add-on. The credit pull is a soft check, the report returns a risk score from 300 to 850 with the records behind it, and you set the application fee yourself. Most results come back in seconds; a criminal hit can take up to three business days.
• Rent collection. Tenants pay by ACH, debit or credit card through the portal, or in cash at participating retailers through PayNearMe. Recurring rent and fees post themselves.
• Accounting. Payables, receivables and a general ledger, escrow and trust accounts, financial statements, budgets, owner reports and 1099 e-filing. This is the part a landlord app does not do, and the reason Breeze costs more than one.
• Maintenance and support. Online work orders with photos, history by unit, vendor assignment and charge-backs to the tenant. Live chat runs Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Central.

What Yardi does not publish

The subscription is clear. The transaction costs are not, and on a small portfolio they can matter as much as the subscription.

Yardi Breeze alternatives for small landlords

Under about 100 units, Breeze's floor sets the price, so the question is whether you need a system at all. Each figure below is from the vendor's own pricing page, read the same day.

• RentRedi is one plan with unlimited properties and tenants: $12 a month billed annually, $20 on a six-month term, or $29.95 month to month, with a 30-day money-back window. Screening is charged to the tenant: $39.99, or $49.99 with income verification.
• Avail Unlimited is $0 per unit. Tenants pay $2.50 per bank transfer and 3.5% on a card; Unlimited Plus, at $9 a unit a month, waives the bank-transfer fee.
• TurboTenant Free costs $0 a month, with subscription plans priced by bands of units: Essentials $149 a year and Pro $199 a year for one to ten units. The two free platforms are compared in TurboTenant vs Avail.
• Buildium Essential starts at $62 a month with a free 14-day trial: the cheaper way into a real system, with per-transaction fees on top ($2.35 per incoming bank transfer on Essential).
• DoorLoop One is $2.50 a unit a month billed yearly ($3.00 month to month), $1.50 a unit above 100 ($1.80 month to month), with a $199 monthly minimum ($239 month to month).
• AppFolio Core starts at $1.49 a unit a month but is sold by quote, with a minimum spend and a 50-unit minimum. How it compares with Buildium is in Buildium vs AppFolio.

The wider field, ten products priced side by side, is in property management software for landlords.

When you do not need Breeze yet

Breeze earns its $1,200 a year when you hold other people's money in trust, send owners their reports, or have someone else entering payments. If you own every door yourself and the tenants pay by bank transfer, those features sit unused. A dated record of each payment does most of the work: the free rent ledger template keeps it, and the rental property cash flow calculator shows what $100 a month does to the margin on a small building.