Owning a short-term rental property is one of the best ways to generate secondary income. But recently, the vacation rental market has been hit by the so-called #AirbnbCrash. Booking revenue is way down in 2023 (as much as 50% in some major cities) and hosts are struggling.

We researched the tools that professional hosts are using to stay ahead of the #AirbnbCrash. Two companies kept popping up – Beyond and PriceLabs – who both offer dynamic pricing solutions. These are tools that let you sync short-term rental listings into advanced pricing algorithms that meaningfully outperform hosts who set rates manually.

Both companies boast powerful pricing tools that can increase your revenue (up to 40%!) and have stellar reviews to go with them. But today, we’re going to determine which short-term rental solution is better. If you’re trying to increase your Airbnb revenue, or have been thinking about buying a short-term rental property, you’ll definitely want to keep reading.

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Signing Up & Introductory Offers

Let’s start with the basics of signing up. The good news is that both Beyond and PriceLabs have introductory offers that let you test their algorithms for free. PriceLabs offers a 30-day free trial, while Beyond has recently started offering free dynamic pricing on your first $5,000 worth of bookings.

While both offers let you understand the product before officially signing up, Beyond’s is more generous. Their offer lets you test their dynamic pricing tool at your own pace, instead of being locked out after just a month. This means you can judge Beyond’s performance during peak rental weeks, as well as slower weeks, before committing to their pricing tool.

Beyond’s intro offer is also likely to save you more money than PriceLabs’ offer. Consider an Airbnb host who rents their property 20 days a month for an average of $125/night. With PriceLabs’ offer, this user saves $19.99 over one month. With Beyond, this same host saves $50 and gets free dynamic pricing for a longer period of time (two months).

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Pricing Structures

Where PriceLabs and Beyond differ significantly is in their pricing models. PriceLabs uses a tier-based structure, where your monthly payments increase based on the number of properties you have connected to their platform. This starts at $19.99/mo per property and increases as you add more properties.

In contrast, Beyond charges a flat 1% of booking revenue. This stays the same no matter how many short-term rental properties you have linked to their platform.

Which pricing structure is better depends on an owner's specific portfolio and booking revenue trends. An important consideration, though, is how each company is incentivized to support their customers.

PriceLabs makes more money with each additional property added to their platform. This means they're incentivized to acquire new customers and focus their support on large property managers onboarding many properties at once. If you own multiple rental properties, be sure to calculate the expected fees ahead of time – otherwise, you might find PriceLabs taking a much larger cut than expected.

‍Beyond is incentivized to generate maximum revenue for every property on their platform, big or small, and their pricing structure is naturally aligned with their hosts’ success. Whether you have one property or ten, Beyond’s pricing structure means the company has the same goals as you do – to make as much revenue as possible.

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Customer Reviews

I always consider G2, the leading software review platform, when comparing software tools. Researching Beyond and PriceLabs on G2 offered some valuable insights - for starters, both tools have stellar 4.8/5 ratings. However, Beyond's rating is based on 85 five-star reviews, compared to PriceLabs', which has just 3 five-star reviews.

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It’s hard to say why PriceLabs has so few reviews. They may have less users than Beyond or perhaps their users aren’t compelled enough by their results to leave a review. What’s clear is that Beyond has an enthusiastic user base that overwhelmingly gives their product 5/5 star reviews.

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Additional Tools & Features

Beyond and PriceLabs both offer additional tools for short-term rentals hosts that support their dynamic pricing offerings. An important one is Market Insights, tools that show listing-level data from short-term rental properties all over the world. Both Beyond and PriceLabs have market insights tools available that are great for analyzing local competition and finding new markets to invest in.

Digging deeper, it becomes clear that Beyond is a more comprehensive short-term rental management platform than PriceLabs. For example, when pricing with Beyond you can automatically sync your listings across OTAs with their Relay tool. This means you’ll never get double-booked (if you list your property on both Airbnb and Vrbo, for example) and your prices will dynamically update across platforms.

PriceLabs doesn’t have the same feature – meaning you’ll have to manually make sure your properties are marked as “unavailable” on other platforms once a booking comes in or deal with disgruntled customers who get double-booked.

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Another impressive feature of Beyond is their support staff. They have a team of dedicated revenue management experts on-staff to discuss professional pricing strategies, optimize your listings, and more. PriceLabs’ support offering is far less robust. When looking through their site, I was only able to find a list of pre-written troubleshooting articles and the option to submit a ticket. There was no live support available, nor was there any expert guidance offered.

For a service that’s handling my rental portfolio, I would want the peace-of-mind that I can get from immediate, direct support at any time – not a support ticket with no clear timeline for a response.

Final Thoughts

After careful analysis of introductory offers, pricing models, customer reviews, and other product features, Beyond outperforms PriceLabs in almost every aspect.

Beyond lets you try their dynamic pricing tool for free at your own pace, charges a simple 1% of booking revenue, and has an overwhelming lead in five-star reviews from their customer base. They also offer expert revenue management support to make sure your vacation rental listings are in top shape.

Ready to start pricing your short-term rental like the pros? Beyond is the best place to start.