AirDNA Review
AirDNA is the name most STR investors say first when they mean "market data" — a scraped-listing analytics platform covering 120,000+ global markets, with pricing that stays hidden until you sign up.
Pros
- Massive, well-documented coverage — AirDNA states it tracks over 10 million short-term rental listings across 120,000+ global markets and serves 85,000+ customers, a scale independently echoed in GetApp's current listing
- A genuinely usable free tier — explore any market, get 12 months of historical data, and access Rentalizer with no credit card required to start
- Refreshes daily — AirDNA says it analyzes 100% of active Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com listings every day for pricing, availability and host data
- Deepest historical lookback in the category on the top Advanced tier — pricing and occupancy data back to 2017, 5-year individual-listing performance, and a Repeat Rent Index
- Surfaces its own uncertainty instead of false precision — a "Comp Set Strength" score flags whether a Rentalizer projection rests on tightly clustered, reliable comps or scattered ones
Cons
- Exact pricing is invisible until you commit — the public pricing page and the in-app pricing calculator both blocked our access, the help center publishes tier features but zero dollar figures, and third-party sites that do quote prices for it contradict each other under tier names AirDNA no longer uses
- Runs on scraped listing data, not confirmed reservations — AirDNA's own help center admits fast-changing methodology means "inconsistencies occur," and its claimed "two times the accuracy" improvement has no published baseline
- Its own public review record is thin and rough — Capterra and GetApp both show just 3 verified reviews at 1.3 out of 5, citing data-accuracy complaints, unresponsive support, and one report of being billed after cancellation without authorization
- The deepest data tier (Advanced) is sold as an annual subscription only, with no monthly option
- Now private-equity owned (Alpine Investors, since March 2022) with two CEO changes since the founder stepped down — Demi Horvat in 2022, then Rohit Bezewada in August 2024
AirDNA (at airdna.co) is the name most short-term-rental investors reach for first when they mean "market data" — a Denver-based analytics platform that scrapes Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com listings to estimate revenue, occupancy and average daily rate for any market or address worldwide. Its Rentalizer tool is the product most owners have actually touched, even if only through the free version; a fuller stack of dashboards, comp sets and dynamic pricing sits behind paid Research, Host and Advanced tiers. By its own account, in a 2022 Alpine Investors acquisition announcement, AirDNA tracked over 10 million listings across 120,000+ global markets and served 85,000+ customers; a current GetApp listing still independently describes that same 10-million-listing, 120,000-market coverage today.
Pricing
Not published anywhere we could reach. Both airdna.co/pricing and the in-app pricing calculator at app.airdna.co/data/pricing returned an HTTP 403 block on every attempt during our research. AirDNA's own subscription-plans help article confirms four tiers by name and feature instead — Free (every market, 12 months of history, Rentalizer access), Research (36 months of history, custom market mapping, CSV export, comp sets), Host (adds benchmarking, Smart Rates dynamic pricing, up to 3 listings synced through Uplisting, multi-OTA management, a direct-booking site), and Advanced (data back to 2017, 5-year listing-level performance, a Repeat Rent Index) — but lists no dollar figures for any of them. It states only that subscriptions are "annual and monthly products" that "automatically renew," with Research and Host billed monthly or annually and Advanced sold as annual-only; you can cancel anytime before renewal. Third-party sites that do quote AirDNA dollar figures — Awning, Mashvisor and BNBCalc among them — disagree with each other by wide margins and use tier names ("Explorer," "MarketMinder") that don't match AirDNA's current Free/Research/Host/Advanced structure at all, which reads as those figures being stale rather than a reliable read on what AirDNA charges today. The honest answer: create a free account or talk to sales if you need a real number.
Who it's for
AirDNA is built for people deciding where to buy or how a listing stacks up against nearby comps, not for the day-to-day work of running a stay. Rentalizer — the tool most owners actually touch — projects revenue, ADR and occupancy for a specific address or market using nearby comparable listings, and flags a "Comp Set Strength" score so you can see whether that projection rests on tightly clustered, reliable comps or scattered ones. That makes it a fit for STR investors scouting a market before they buy and current hosts benchmarking their own performance against comps. It is not built for messaging guests, managing tasks, writing reviews or handling upsells — nothing in any tier touches guest communication.
What we could verify
The tier and feature breakdown above comes directly from AirDNA's own help center, and the 10-million-listing, 120,000-market coverage claim is corroborated independently by GetApp's current listing, not just AirDNA's own 2022 press release. AirDNA's help center is also candid about a real limitation: its data-updates article states plainly that fast-moving listing data means "it can be a challenge to apply the relevant changes to our data methodologies so quickly that inconsistencies occur," even while claiming a "Model 5.0" update delivers "two times the accuracy for mid and long-term stays" — no baseline is published for that multiplier. On independent reviews, the picture is thin and rough: Capterra and GetApp, which pull from the same underlying dataset, both show AirDNA at just 1.3 out of 5 from 3 verified reviews, citing data-accuracy complaints, unresponsive support, and one reviewer describing being billed after cancellation without authorization. We tried G2 for a larger independent sample, but g2.com/products/airdna/reviews returned an HTTP 403 block on every attempt, so we could not confirm a G2 rating here. We also confirmed, through a March 2022 PR Newswire release, that Alpine Investors (a private equity firm) acquired a stake in AirDNA, and through a ShortTermRentalz report that founder Scott Shatford is no longer CEO — he handed the role to Demi Horvat in 2022, who was succeeded by Rohit Bezewada in August 2024.
How it compares to our top pick
AirDNA and BnBGenius aren't solving the same problem, and it's worth saying that plainly rather than forcing a comparison. AirDNA is a market-research and analytics tool — it tells you what a market or comp set earns, before or after you own a property. BnBGenius is a no-PMS AI operations layer for hosts who already have guests booked: an AI phone concierge, a task loop, automated review writing, and gap-night or late-checkout upsells, for a flat $10/month after the first 500 messages are free. Neither replaces the other — AirDNA won't answer a 2am guest question or write a review request, and BnBGenius won't tell you whether a listing in Scottsdale is worth buying. An investor doing due diligence on a market and a host running the day-to-day of an active listing are simply different jobs; some owners end up using tools like both, one before or during a purchase decision and one for daily operations after. For the full field of pricing tools, PMS platforms and AI messaging software we've reviewed, see our best Airbnb host software ranking.