· Independent
ACH rent collection costs you between nothing and $28.20 per unit per year depending on the plan you sit on. Cards cost 2.95% to 3.50% of rent, which on a $1,500 rent is over $500 per unit per year.
Loistrofi Editorial — Sep 3, 2026 — 9 min read
On a 10-unit portfolio collecting rent by bank transfer, the payment fee costs you between $0 and $28.20 per unit per year. Rentec Direct's Pro plan includes one free incoming ACH per active property per month. TenantCloud bills its ACH fee to the tenant, at $1.95, $1.75 or $1.50 per payment depending on plan. Buildium charges you $2.35, $1.35 or $0.60 per incoming EFT, again by plan. Cards are a different order of magnitude.
Who pays matters as much as how much. Rentec Direct states card fees "can be paid by the tenant or manager (your choice)". TenantCloud's published ACH rates are marked "paid by a tenant". Buildium's page lists its EFT and card rates without saying who bears them, so treat those as your cost until someone at Buildium tells you otherwise in writing.
Every vendor here prices online payments per transaction, not per unit. So the number you need before you compare anything is not your unit count — it's your annual payment count. Ten units on 12-month leases, each paying once a month, is 120 incoming transactions a year. That is the number that multiplies against $2.35 or $1.35 or $0.50. Multiply it wrong and you will pick the wrong plan by several hundred dollars.
Then adjust for the things that split a rent payment into two or three transactions: roommates who each pay their share separately, tenants who pay half on the 1st and half on the 15th, and separate payments for late fees, pet rent or utility reimbursements. A four-bedroom student house where everyone pays their own share is 48 transactions a year, not 12. On Buildium Essential at $2.35 each, that single house costs $112.80 a year to collect from.
If you manage on behalf of owners, money leaves as well as arrives, and outgoing transfers are priced separately. Buildium charges $0.99 per outgoing EFT on all three plans — Essential, Growth and Premium. Twelve owner distributions a year across five owners is 60 outgoing transfers, or $59.40. Rentec Direct lists outgoing ACH at $2.00 on Starter and free on Pro and PM. Rentec also charges $0.50 for ACH Verify, one time per new bank account added, so ten new tenant accounts is a one-off $5.
| Plan | Subscription, 12 months | ACH/EFT on 120 payments | Card rate | Your year-1 total | Per unit / year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rentec Starter | $300 ($25/mo, up to 10 properties) | $240 ($2.00 each) | 3.50% | $540 | $54.00 |
| Rentec Pro | $540 (annual, from $50/mo list) | $0 within fair usage | 2.95% | $540 | $54.00 |
| TenantCloud Starter | $180 (annual) | $234, paid by your tenants | not published | $180 | $18.00 |
| TenantCloud Growth | $350 (annual) | $210, paid by your tenants | not published | $350 | $35.00 |
| TenantCloud Pro | $600 (annual) | $180, paid by your tenants | not published | $600 | $60.00 |
| Buildium Essential | $744 (from $62/mo) | $282 ($2.35 each) | 2.99% | $1,125 incl. $99 bank setup | $112.50 |
| Buildium Growth | $2,304 (from $192/mo) | $162 ($1.35 each) | 2.99% | $2,466 | $246.60 |
| Buildium Premium | $4,800 (from $400/mo) | $0 for first 12 months | 2.99% | $4,800 | $480.00 |
Assumptions, so you can redo this with your own numbers: 10 units, one ACH rent payment per unit per month, 120 payments a year, no card payments, no owner distributions. Buildium's monthly figures are the published "starting at" prices, and its page does not say how they scale with unit count — so treat the Buildium column as a floor, not a quote. Rentec Pro's $540 assumes annual billing ($50/mo list, less the $60 annual saving the page advertises).
Buildium's three plans move the incoming EFT fee in big steps: $2.35 on Essential, $1.35 on Growth, and free for 12 months then $0.60 on Premium. At 120 payments a year that is $282, $162 and $72 respectively. The saving from Essential to Growth is $120 a year in transaction fees — against a subscription difference of at least $1,560 a year ($192 minus $62, times 12). You do not upgrade Buildium plans to save on payment fees. You upgrade for the features, and the fee drop is a rounding error.
Two Buildium line items catch small portfolios. Bank account setup is $99 per business bank account on Essential, which for a manager running one operating account and one trust account is $198 before a single payment clears. Growth includes 10 free business bank accounts and Premium includes 100. And Premium's free EFT is a 12-month promotion: from month 13 you pay $0.60 per incoming transfer, so your year-two run rate at 120 payments is $4,872 rather than $4,800.
Rentec's free incoming ACH on Pro and PM comes with a stated fair-usage rule: one free incoming ACH per active property each month, with excess payments at $0.50 each. For a portfolio where one tenant pays one rent, that is genuinely free — 120 payments, $0. For a portfolio of shared houses it is not. Three roommates paying separately on 10 properties is 360 transactions a year: 120 free, 240 at $0.50, or $120 a year. Still cheap, but not zero.
Rentec Starter is a flat $25/mo for up to 10 properties and tenants, with ACH at $2.00 per incoming payment. At 120 payments that is $300 plus $240, or $540 a year — the same total as Rentec Pro on annual billing, where ACH is free. Two things push you to Pro anyway: the page says Pro and PM "grow with you as you add more units", so 10 units may already price above $50/mo, and it also says an account upgraded to Pro or PM cannot be downgraded to Starter.
On cards, Rentec is the only vendor here that publishes a split by plan: 3.50% on Starter, 2.95% on Pro and PM for Visa, Mastercard and Discover, and 3.50% for American Express on every plan. If your residents are card payers, that 0.55-point gap between Starter and Pro is worth $99 a year on $18,000 of collected rent.
TenantCloud is the only one of the three whose ACH rate is explicitly marked as paid by the tenant: $1.95, $1.75 and $1.50 per payment down the three published plan tiers. Your cost is the subscription and nothing else. On annual billing that is $180 a year on Starter ($15/mo), $350 on Growth ($29.17/mo), and $600 on Pro ($50/mo). Ten units on Starter costs you $18 per unit per year all in, while your tenants collectively pay $234.
The Business plan starts at $100/mo with custom ACH pricing, and TenantCloud says the final price depends on unit count and which premium features you pick. That is a quote, not a price. Do not budget against $1,200 a year until you have it in writing.
Percentage fees are what actually decide this. On a $1,500 monthly rent, 2.99% is $44.85 per payment, or $538.20 per unit per year. At Rentec's 2.95% it is $531; at 3.50% it is $630. Ten units all paying by card at 2.99% is $5,382 a year — more than the highest subscription on this page. Whichever platform you choose, the decision that moves real money is whether card fees land on you or on the resident, and whether you allow cards at all.
So build your estimate in two layers. Layer one is the fixed cost: subscription plus flat ACH fees, which for 10 units lands between $180 and $4,800 a year across these vendors. Layer two is the card exposure, which is a function of your rent roll and your convenience-fee policy, not of the software. A platform that saves you $120 a year on ACH and quietly puts 2.99% on your side of the ledger is the more expensive platform.
If you have 10 or fewer properties, everyone pays by bank transfer, and you want the smallest number on your own P&L, pick TenantCloud Starter at $180 a year, because the $1.95 ACH fee is charged to the tenant and your cost per unit per year is $18.
If your tenants are shared-house residents who each pay separately, pick a per-transaction plan you can model rather than a "free" one — Rentec Pro's free ACH covers one payment per property per month and charges $0.50 beyond that, so 360 payments a year on 10 properties costs $120, not $0.
If you manage on behalf of owners and need trust accounting, pick Rentec PM from $50/mo, because outgoing ACH is free on PM against Buildium's $0.99 per outgoing EFT, and because a 60-distribution year on Buildium adds $59.40 before you count the $99-per-bank-account setup.
If you are choosing Buildium, choose it for the platform and accept the payment fees as they are. Essential at $62/mo plus $2.35 per incoming EFT plus $99 per bank account is $1,125 in year one for 10 units — nine times TenantCloud's cost to you — and the cheaper EFT rates on Growth and Premium never repay their subscription gap at this size.
If more than a third of your residents insist on cards and you are absorbing the fee, do not pick on subscription at all: pick the lowest published card rate you can get, which here is Rentec Pro or PM at 2.95%, and put a card policy in your lease renewals this year.
- Ask each vendor, in writing, who is permitted to pay the ACH and card fee on your plan — Buildium's page lists rates without naming the payer, and your state may restrict passing card fees to residents.
- Get a unit-count quote from Buildium and from Rentec's on-page calculator before comparing, since Buildium's $62/$192/$400 are "starting at" figures and Rentec Pro/PM "grow with you as you add more units".
- Confirm how a split rent payment is counted: two roommates paying separately on one property, and whether the second one is a billable transaction or covered by Rentec's one-free-per-property fair usage.
- Count your bank accounts and multiply by Buildium's $99 setup fee on Essential — operating plus trust plus a reserve account is $297 before you collect anything.
- Ask what a returned or failed payment costs. None of the three pricing pages we read stated an NSF or returned-ACH fee; Rentec points to a separate pricing transparency page for incidental bank fees.
- Diary the Buildium Premium anniversary if you go that route: incoming EFT is free for 12 months, then $0.60 each, which is $72 a year at 120 payments.
For a 10-unit portfolio where rent arrives by bank transfer, we would take TenantCloud Starter at $180 a year and let the tenant-paid $1.95 ACH fee do its job. $18 per unit per year is the lowest verified cost to you on this page by a wide margin, and rent collection is the one job every tier of every one of these products already does.
The moment you are collecting for third-party owners, we would switch to Rentec PM from $50/mo, because free incoming and outgoing ACH plus trust accounting removes the two fees that scale fastest — per-payment collection and per-distribution payout. And we would only reach for Buildium when the maintenance, inspections and API features are the reason for the purchase, since at 10 units you are paying $1,125 in year one for a payment rail you can rent for $180.
Loistrofi does not take vendor briefings or speak to sales teams. Every figure here comes from a page the vendor publishes itself, checked on Sep 3, 2026. Where a number could not be confirmed at source, it is marked rather than smoothed over.
