Airbnb management companies, compared by who ends up holding your listing
Every other directory sorts these companies by fee, because a fee fits neatly in a column. Fee is not the decision that is hardest to undo. This is: when you sign with a full-service Airbnb management company, your property gets listed in their Airbnb account, not yours. You are not hiring a contractor to run your listing. You are handing over the listing.
That distinction is invisible until you try to leave. The reviews you accumulate belong to the account that received them, and Airbnb has no mechanism for moving them. Superhost status is earned by the account, not the address. Search ranking builds on the listing, and the listing is theirs. Guests message them. Payouts go to them first. Three good years with a manager can end with you re-listing your own house as a brand-new host with zero reviews, in a market where you were previously in the top handful of results. Nobody puts that on a pricing page, and one company in this directory — Grand Welcome — is the only one that writes it down in public.
The confusion has a specific epicentre, and it is the 10% price point. A co-host charges around 10–20% and works inside your account: your listing, your reviews, your login. Evolve charges 10% and does not. It is the intermediate host, listing your property under its own OTA accounts, and owners report they cannot even leave a guest review. Same number, completely different deal. If you take one thing from this page, take that one.
So this directory records every company on that axis first. There are 17 of them, and they are here because they actually distribute to Airbnb — SkyRun and Turno are in our underlying data set but are excluded from this site, because SkyRun's coverage in our record is direct-booking only and Turno is a turnover-cleaning tool with no channel distribution at all. Of the 17 that qualify, 4 let you keep your own account and listing, and every one of those 4 is software rather than a management service. The other 13 become the host of record. There is no middle option in this data set, and pretending otherwise would be the most useful lie we could tell you.
None of which means software wins. Software leaves you holding the liability, the judgement calls and the 11pm phone call about a broken water heater. A 25% manager takes all of that off your desk and charges you the listing for the privilege. Both are defensible. What is not defensible is signing a management agreement believing you will get your listing back, and that happens constantly.
Heads up: this site is operated by TIDY. We include TIDY in our comparisons and tell you when we do. TIDY appears in the table below as a software option, and its profile carries the same criticism as everyone else's.
The directory
| Company | Fee % of gross bookings | Model what they actually do | You keep your listing Yes = it stays in your Airbnb account | Time to first booking | Where they operate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air Concierge | 12–25% | hybrid | No | Not published; onboarding described only as a "laborious process" | Full local service in ~13 West Coast and Southwest markets (San Diego, LA, Orange County, Bay Area, Palm Springs, Tahoe, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Seattle); the Offsite tier is available nationwide outside those markets |
| AvantStay | Not a % of revenue | full-service | No | 2–4 weeks from signing; company claims a first booking within about 6 days | Claims 140+ US markets (a third-party source says 60 — unresolved); AZ, CA, CO, FL, HI, NY, TX, UT and more |
| Awning | 10–18% | hybrid | No | Not published | Claims all 50 US states on a remote, asset-light model; real-estate brokerage licences listed only in CA, TX, AL, FL, GA, NC and TN |
| Casago | Not a % of revenue | full-service | No | Not published | US and Mexico plus Belize, Costa Rica and the Caribbean through the former Vacasa footprint; 70+ destinations claimed post-merger |
| Evolve | 10–15% | half-service | No | Not published; Evolve documents a seven-step onboarding flow without a timeframe | Nationwide US plus some international; properties must pass a qualification screen |
| Grand Welcome | Not a % of revenue | full-service | No | About 2–3 weeks — onboarding manager, walk-through, photography, listing creation, then owner approval before publishing | 70+ locations across roughly 22 US states |
| Guesty | Not a % of revenue | software-ai | Yes | Not published; Lite is self-serve, Pro and Enterprise include onboarding | Global |
| Hospitable | Not a % of revenue | software-ai | Yes | Not published; self-serve signup, generally same day | Global |
| Hostaway | Not a % of revenue | software-ai | Yes | Not published; onboarding and migration are assisted | Global, with a strong US and Canada presence |
| Houst | 12–20% | full-service | No | Under 10 days from booking a call to the listing going live (company figure) — the fastest published onboarding among the managers here | International only — no current US coverage. About 35 cities across 8 countries: UK, Ireland, France, Portugal, UAE, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. |
| iTrip Vacations | Not a % of revenue | full-service | No | Not published | ~100–110 destinations across roughly 23 US states plus Hawaii and Puerto Rico |
| Natural Retreats | Not a % of revenue | full-service | No | Not published | ~16 US destinations skewed to luxury mountain and resort markets — Big Sky, Whitefish, Park City, Breckenridge, Mammoth, Tahoe, Palm Springs, Sun Valley, the Florida Emerald Coast and coastal Carolina |
| Portoro | Not a % of revenue | full-service | No | Not published | Multi-market rather than national — around 11 premium US leisure destinations across 7 states including Vermont, coastal Virginia, the Florida panhandle and northeast Florida, Colorado, Oregon, Texas and Charleston |
| RedAwning | 10–18% | hybrid | No | Not published | Nationwide US on a centralised, remote model with no boots-on-ground restriction |
| TIDY Operator of this site | 3.9% | software-ai | Yes | Claims go-live in about 90 minutes | US nationwide — software, so not limited by market. Also covers mid-term and long-term rentals. |
| Vacasa | 25–35% | full-service | No | Not published | Historically hundreds of markets across the US, Canada, Mexico and Belize; now delivered by independent franchisees |
| VTrips | Not a % of revenue | full-service | No | Not published | ~30 resort markets across 10 states, mostly Sun Belt drive-to beach and mountain destinations (AL, FL, GA, HI, MD, NM, NC, SC, TN, TX) |
Open the full directory index, or read a profile from the table — each one covers the fee reality, the contract, the exit, and who the company is genuinely good for.
How to read this table
Fee is a percentage of gross bookings where a company publishes one. A dash means no published percentage exists — for Vacasa, Casago, iTrip, AvantStay, VTrips, Grand Welcome, Natural Retreats and Portoro, every number you have read online is reported or estimated, never published, and the franchise networks among them genuinely have no national rate to publish. We would rather show you a dash than launder somebody's guess into a column.
Model is the shape of the company. Full service means they do everything physical and charge accordingly. Half service means marketing and booking only, with cleaning and turnovers left with you — Evolve is the one to watch here, because its price implies less separation than exists. Hybrid means tiered or aggregated, usually remote coordination of local vendors you may end up sourcing. Software means it runs on top of the account you already have.
You keep your listing is the column this site exists for. Yes means the property stays in your Airbnb account and the reviews stay yours. No means the company becomes the host of record. One caveat worth flagging: Air Concierge does not disclose account ownership anywhere public, so we record No as the category default and mark it unverified on its profile rather than pretending we checked.
Time to first booking and Where they operate are taken from what each company publishes. Most publish nothing about timing. Houst's coverage line is the one to read carefully: it appears in US directories constantly and has no US coverage at all.
How we vet these companies
Four rules, and they are the reason some of these entries are shorter than the marketing copy they replace.
- Published beats reported. A rate is only recorded as a fee when the company publishes it. Everything else is described as reported or estimated in the prose and left blank in the table. Owner forums and review blogs are useful evidence about experience and poor evidence about price.
- Corporate structure is a fact about your contract. Franchise networks — iTrip, Grand Welcome, Casago, SkyRun — do not have a national service. Ownership matters too: Awning and RedAwning are one company, so we say so in both profiles rather than letting you build a shortlist of two.
- The exit gets as much space as the entrance. Contract term, notice period and what happens to the listing when you leave are recorded for every company, including the ones where the honest answer is that nothing is published.
- Nobody pays for placement, and the operator gets no discount. This site is operated by TIDY, which is disclosed in the footer of every page, in the table above and in TIDY's own profile — where the cons list is the longest of any company here, because percentage-of-revenue pricing genuinely is a weakness against flat-rate software.
Which way should you go?
Start with how involved you are willing to be, not with the fee. If you want the property to be genuinely somebody else's problem, you are shopping in the full-service column and the listing is the price of admission — so shortlist on contract terms and local operator quality, which is what the buying guide walks through, question by question. If you would rather keep control and automate the work, you are in the software column and the comparison is a different one entirely; we set the two philosophies against each other here.
Company facts last verified 2026-08-28 and sourced on each profile page. Fees, coverage and contract terms change frequently — treat this directory as a starting point for questions, not as a substitute for reading the agreement you are being asked to sign.
Questions hosts actually ask
If I hire an Airbnb management company, do I keep my own listing?
Almost never. Of the 17 companies in this directory, 4 let you keep your own Airbnb account and listing, and all 4 of those are software products rather than management services. Every full-service, half-service and hybrid firm here becomes the Airbnb host of record, which means the listing, the reviews and the guest relationships sit in their account.
Is Evolve a co-host? It only charges 10%.
No. Evolve's 10% Core rate is close to what a co-host charges, which is why hosts assume it works like one, but Evolve is the intermediate host and lists your property under its own OTA accounts. Owners report they cannot see or leave guest reviews or modify reservations directly, and reviews and Superhost status do not transfer back to you when you leave.
Can I transfer my Airbnb reviews to or from a management company?
Not on Airbnb. Grand Welcome's own homeowner FAQ states it plainly: VRBO reviews can sometimes transfer, but Airbnb offers no review-transfer process. If you move a well-reviewed listing into a manager's account, you are retiring that review history, and when you leave you start again from zero.
What do Airbnb management companies actually charge?
Published rates in this directory run from 10% at Evolve Core, RedAwning Essential and Awning's marketing tier, up to 18% at RedAwning Full Service and roughly 20–25% at Air Concierge End-to-End. Vacasa, Casago, iTrip, AvantStay, VTrips, Grand Welcome, Natural Retreats and Portoro publish nothing at all; figures circulating for those firms are reported or estimated, not published. Software sits far below all of it, from $0 to about $40 per listing per month, or 3.9% of bookings in TIDY's case.
Is Vacasa still Vacasa?
Not in the way the brand implies. Casago bought Vacasa in April 2025 and by August 2026 had sold nearly all of the roughly 32,000 units to local franchisees and regional operators. Signing with Vacasa today generally means signing with an independent franchisee on that franchisee's terms, and vacasa.com is being repositioned as a consumer booking brand. Vacasa's own site does not disclose this.
Are Awning and RedAwning two different companies?
No. RedAwning acquired Awning in April 2024 and the two brands run identical 10%, 15% and 18% fee tiers. If both are on your shortlist, you have one option, not two.
How long does it take to go live after signing?
Where anyone publishes a figure at all: Houst says under 10 days, Grand Welcome about 2–3 weeks, AvantStay 2–4 weeks from signing with a first booking claimed around six days after launch, and TIDY claims about 90 minutes because it is software connecting to a listing you already run. Vacasa, Casago, Evolve, iTrip, RedAwning, Awning, VTrips, Natural Retreats and Portoro publish no timeframe.
What is the cheapest way to have someone else run my Airbnb?
Cheapest and hands-off are different questions. The cheapest arrangements are software plus your own cleaner, which keeps you as host of record and costs from nothing to a few hundred dollars a year. The cheapest genuinely hands-off arrangement is a full-service manager at 18–35% of gross revenue, and the price of that convenience is your listing.