Baselane vs Stessa vs SealedFolio: Which Landlord Tool Fits Your Portfolio?

Baselane vs Stessa: the short answer

That is the two minute version. The rest of this page is the detail behind it: what each tool actually costs once rent starts moving, what comes out at tax time, and which of the three fits a portfolio your size. The Baselane and Stessa figures below are the numbers those two publish themselves, and vendors move them. Confirm the current rates on each vendor's pricing page before you commit a portfolio. The SealedFolio numbers are ours and they are on the SealedFolio brand facts page in full.

Baselane, Stessa and SealedFolio in one line each

Baselane vs Stessa pricing, including the fees that are not on the pricing page

Baselane and Stessa both market themselves as free, and both charge you somewhere else. Baselane charges on the rent it moves. Stessa charges for the reporting that used to be included. SealedFolio charges a flat subscription and nothing on top, which is worth exactly as much as your rent volume makes it worth. Here is the whole cost picture side by side.

The row that decides most Baselane vs Stessa arguments is the sixth one. A landlord with two units and no card payments will never feel Baselane's fees. A landlord with eight units collecting by ACH hands Baselane $192 a year in transfer fees, more than SealedFolio Pro's $179, and still has no Schedule E report at the end of it. SealedFolio's breakdown of what free landlord software actually costs works through that arithmetic on a larger portfolio.

Baselane: banking first, bookkeeping second

Baselane raised $44.3M to build integrated banking for landlords. Baselane is less a portfolio tracker and more a landlord-focused financial institution: bank accounts, debit cards and rent collection built into one product, with expense categorization attached to whatever moves through those accounts. If you have ever run rent through a personal checking account and then spent a weekend untangling it in April, that is the problem Baselane was designed around.

What Baselane does well

• Dedicated landlord banking accounts (FDIC-insured via Thread Bank)
• Online rent collection, tenants pay via bank transfer or card
• Automatic transaction categorization from bank transactions
• Tenant screening (credit, background, income verification)
• Debit card for property expenses
• Separate accounts per property or entity, so the money is split and not just the report
• Basic financial reporting tied to banking activity

Baselane's limitations

• 3.49% fee on card rent payments, on a $2,000 rent, that's $70/month per unit
• $2 per ACH transfer
• No Schedule E or T776 tax reports
• No mortgage tracking or amortization
• No local storage, all data on Baselane's cloud servers
• No AI document scanning
• Limited to banking-adjacent analytics, not deep portfolio intelligence
• VC-backed with fee pressure from investors

Baselane pricing

Baselane offers free banking accounts with a premium tier for additional features. The transaction fees are where Baselane earns: 3.49% on card rent and $2 per ACH transfer mean the free banking product has a real price for an active landlord. On a 5-unit portfolio with $2,000/unit in monthly rent, ACH fees alone total $120/month, $1,440/year.

Best for: Landlords who want all-in-one banking and rent collection and don't mind cloud storage. Best suited to US-based landlords setting up dedicated property banking accounts. SealedFolio's SealedFolio vs Baselane comparison goes deeper on the fee arithmetic and on what Baselane's cloud model means for your rent roll.

Stessa: the free baseline

Stessa launched in 2017 as a simple, free income and expense tracker for rental property owners. Its free tier attracted hundreds of thousands of users who wanted something better than a spreadsheet without paying for it. Roofstock acquired Stessa in 2022, which is the fact that turns most Stessa conversations into a data question rather than a feature question.

What Stessa does well

• Bank account syncing that automatically imports transactions from your financial institution
• Automatic transaction categorization (with some manual correction needed)
• Basic income statement and cash flow reports
• Schedule E preparation support
• Online rent collection via Stessa Cash Management accounts
• Mobile app for on-the-go access

Stessa's limitations

• Acquired by Roofstock, creating data monetization concerns
• Advanced reporting (rent rolls, detailed analytics) moved to paid tiers
• No mortgage comparison tool
• No legal form templates
• No maintenance tracking or work orders
• No Canadian tax (T776) support
• No local storage or encryption, all data on Roofstock's servers

Stessa pricing

Stessa has a free tier and a "Stessa Pro" paid tier (approximately $15/month or $144/year). Some features that were previously free have moved to the paid tier. The free tier remains functional for basic tracking but limits more detailed reporting and analytics.

Best for: A beginner landlord with 1-2 properties who wants to track income and expenses without spending money on software. Understand that your data is inside a real estate marketplace with monetization incentives. SealedFolio's SealedFolio vs Stessa comparison covers what changed after the Roofstock acquisition and how to move a portfolio off Stessa without retyping three years of transactions.

SealedFolio: intelligence that stays on your device

SealedFolio starts from a different premise than either Baselane or Stessa: your real estate financial data is sensitive, and it belongs on your device rather than on a cloud server owned by a company that answers to investors. SealedFolio has no hosted portfolio database to breach, subpoena or shut down.

What SealedFolio does well

• Complete portfolio analytics: ROI, cap rate, cash-on-cash, equity tracking, occupancy rates
• 13+ report types including Schedule E (US), T776 (Canada), rent roll, CapEx, general ledger, income statement, balance sheet
• Mortgage comparison tool, model up to 3 scenarios side by side
• What-if scenario analysis for investment modeling
• AI document scanning, local LLM reads mortgages, receipts, leases, tax bills
• Legal form templates for leases, notices, and addendums
• Full tenant management with payment ledgers
• Encrypted local vault, no hosted SealedFolio portfolio database
• Core workflows work offline
• CSV/OFX/QFX import, with optional Plaid bank import
• Multi-profile team access with role-based permissions

SealedFolio's limitations

• No built-in online rent collection (use Venmo/Zelle/check, record manually or import via CSV)
• No built-in banking account or rent-collection product; optional Plaid import requires your Plaid credentials
• Mac only, no Windows, mobile, or web app currently
• Not free, paid license required

SealedFolio pricing

SealedFolio is a paid Mac application on flat subscription pricing. SealedFolio Pro is $19 a month or $179 a year and handles up to 3 properties with full dashboards, tax reports, document scanning and ROI calculations. SealedFolio Portfolio is $39 a month or $297 a year for unlimited properties, bulk import, advanced analytics and custom tags. No transaction fees, no cut of rent, and no charge that scales with how much money moves through your portfolio.

Best for: Investors with 3+ properties who care about data privacy, want deep analytics and tax reports, need Canadian T776 support, or have hit the ceiling of a free cloud tool. At eight units collecting rent by ACH, Baselane's $2 per transfer works out to $192 a year, which is more than SealedFolio Pro's $179 and buys you no Schedule E report.

Baselane vs Stessa vs SealedFolio: full feature matrix

Baselane, Stessa and SealedFolio split cleanly across three jobs: moving rent, tracking a portfolio, and producing tax output. This matrix groups the rows that way so you can look only at the group you care about. SealedFolio is scored honestly, including the two rows where SealedFolio loses.

Baselane vs Stessa at tax time: what actually comes out

Baselane vs Stessa gets decided in April more often than landlords expect. Baselane gives you clean, categorized banking activity, which is a good starting point and not a tax schedule. Stessa maps categories to Schedule E lines, so a Stessa export lands closer to what a preparer wants. Neither one hands you a finished Schedule E, and neither supports T776 if your rentals are Canadian. SealedFolio generates Schedule E and T776 as reports from your own categorized transactions, along with the general ledger, income statement, balance sheet, rent roll and CapEx schedule that a preparer usually asks for next.

If you want to sanity check the numbers before you commit to any of the three, SealedFolio's free Schedule E calculator runs rental income, expenses and depreciation through the actual form lines in your browser. SealedFolio's Schedule E guide for 2026 walks through each line and what belongs on it.

Which tool matches your investor profile?

Choose Stessa if you are a beginner with 1-2 properties

Stessa fits the landlord who just closed on a first or second investment property, wants income and expenses tracked without paying for software, and wants bank syncing so nothing gets typed in by hand. Tax reporting matters to this landlord but the portfolio is not complex yet. Stessa's free tier does that job, and the trade you are making is that your rent roll sits inside a real estate marketplace. Watch for features moving behind the Pro paywall as the platform matures.

Choose Baselane if rent collection is the bottleneck

Baselane fits the landlord who wants rent pulled automatically by ACH or card, separate bank accounts per property, a debit card tied to property spending, and tenant screening in the same login. Baselane is built for exactly that. Model the fees first: 3.49% on card payments and $2 per ACH transfer, which on five units at $2,000 rent is $120 a month before anything else. If most of your tenants pay by card, run that percentage against your annual rent roll before you commit.

Choose SealedFolio if you have 3+ properties and want the analysis, not the plumbing

SealedFolio fits the investor with a growing portfolio, an annual tax report that has become real work, and a habit of modelling scenarios before buying. It also fits anyone uneasy about uploading a full net worth to a startup's servers. SealedFolio gives you 13+ report types, mortgage comparison across 3 scenarios, on-device document scanning and an encrypted vault on your Mac, from $19 a month. The honest catch: SealedFolio collects no rent, so you keep using Venmo, Zelle, check or your own bank, and bring transactions in by CSV, OFX or QFX. There is also no mobile app.

Choose SealedFolio if your rentals are Canadian

SealedFolio is the only one of the three that produces T776, the Statement of Real Estate Rentals, for a Canadian return. Neither Stessa nor Baselane supports Canadian tax reporting at all, which usually ends the Baselane vs Stessa question before it starts for anyone with property north of the border.

Can you run Baselane and SealedFolio together?

Baselane and SealedFolio combine well, and plenty of landlords run both: Baselane for banking and rent collection, SealedFolio for analytics and tax reports. Export transactions from Baselane monthly as a CSV, import into SealedFolio, and you get the reporting depth without your portfolio intelligence living on a cloud platform. The same pattern works with Stessa's Cash Management accounts if you already have those set up.

Baselane vs Stessa vs SealedFolio: frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Baselane and Stessa?

Baselane is a landlord banking platform first: business checking, debit cards and online rent collection, with expense categorization built around those transactions. Stessa is a portfolio tracker first: bank syncing, income and expense categorization and tax-season reporting, with rent collection added on top. Baselane moves the money, Stessa reports on it, and SealedFolio analyzes it inside an encrypted vault on your own Mac rather than on a vendor's server.

Is Baselane actually free?

Baselane charges no monthly subscription for its banking accounts, but accepting rent is not free: card payments carry a 3.49% fee and ACH transfers cost $2 each. On five units renting at $2,000 a month, ACH fees alone come to $120 a month, or $1,440 a year. SealedFolio charges a flat subscription instead, $19 a month on Pro or $39 a month on Portfolio, and takes no percentage of rent.

Does Stessa offer banking?

Stessa offers Cash Management accounts for holding rent and property funds, so Stessa is not purely a tracker. Baselane's banking product goes further, with accounts and debit cards you can split per property. SealedFolio has no banking product at all and expects you to keep banking where you already bank, then pull the transactions in by CSV, OFX or QFX.

Does Baselane report to the IRS?

Platforms that process rent payments, Baselane included, can be required to issue IRS information returns, and you should confirm the current thresholds with Baselane and your accountant rather than assume. The part that decides your return is simpler: rental income is reportable whether or not a form is issued, and neither Baselane nor Stessa fills in Schedule E for you line by line. SealedFolio builds a Schedule E report from your own categorized transactions.

What is the best alternative to Stessa?

The best alternative to Stessa depends on which part of Stessa you want to replace. If the gap is rent collection and banking, Baselane is the closest swap. If the gap is that your rent roll and financials sit on Roofstock's servers, SealedFolio holds the same portfolio data in an encrypted vault on your Mac and adds Schedule E, T776 and 13+ report types.

What is the best bookkeeping software for landlords?

For free basic bookkeeping on a small portfolio, Stessa's free tier covers income and expense categorization. For bookkeeping and rent collection behind one login, Baselane is the closer fit. For deeper reporting without your books living on a cloud server, SealedFolio runs the general ledger, income statement, balance sheet and Schedule E locally on your Mac.

Can I use Baselane or Stessa with multiple LLCs?

Baselane is built around opening distinct banking accounts per property or entity, which separates the actual money and not only the reporting. Stessa groups properties into portfolios, so the reporting can be split by entity while the banking stays wherever you hold it. SealedFolio separates entities inside the local vault and runs each report per property or per entity, and your bank accounts stay exactly where they are.

Which landlord software is best for Schedule E tax preparation?

SealedFolio generates a Schedule E report automatically from your categorized transactions and also produces T776 for Canadian rentals. Stessa produces tax-season reporting that maps to Schedule E categories. Baselane's reporting is built around banking activity rather than a finished tax schedule. Whichever tool holds your books, check the totals before you file.

Bottom line on Baselane vs Stessa vs SealedFolio

Baselane, Stessa and SealedFolio each win a different argument. Stessa wins on price for a beginner with one or two properties. Baselane wins when collecting rent is the actual problem and the fees are smaller than the hassle they remove. SealedFolio wins when the portfolio has grown past what a free tracker reports on, when tax season needs Schedule E or T776 rather than a category export, or when you have decided that a rent roll and a net worth statement should not sit on someone else's server. SealedFolio's case against keeping rental data in the cloud lays out that last argument in full.

Want to see how Baselane, Stessa and SealedFolio stack up against DoorLoop, TenantCloud, Buildium and AppFolio? SealedFolio's full ranking of the best rental property software in 2026 covers the whole field, including when an operations platform beats a portfolio tracker.