What Tenants Pay to Pay Rent: Platform Fees Compared

Ask who pays the software subscription and every vendor has a page for it. Ask who pays to actually move the rent money and the answers get quiet. On several popular platforms the answer is your tenants — $2 to $2.50 every time they pay rent by bank transfer. This article compares what residents are charged to pay rent, using numbers each vendor publishes on its own pricing page as of July 2026, and explains Forge’s approach: the processor’s actual cost, passed through with no markup (online resident payments are not yet live).

Do tenants pay a fee to pay rent online?

On many platforms, yes. Rent-payment economics split three ways: the platform charges the resident a per-payment convenience fee, the platform charges the manager a per-transaction fee, or the platform includes ACH at no per-payment cost to either side. Which model you are in decides who funds the payment rail — and it is rarely stated as plainly as the per-unit price.

Which platforms charge tenants per rent payment?

TurboTenant’s Free plan charges renters $2 per ACH payment — waived only if the landlord upgrades to a paid plan — plus a 3.49% card fee that no plan removes. Avail’s free Unlimited plan charges tenants $2.50 per bank transfer; the fee disappears on Unlimited Plus, which costs the landlord $9 per unit per month. In both cases the pattern is the same: the plan that is free for the landlord is paid for by the residents.

Who pays when the software is “free”?

Do the resident’s math for them. A tenant paying rent monthly through TurboTenant’s Free plan pays $24 a year for the privilege; through Avail’s free plan, $30. Across a 100-unit portfolio, residents collectively hand over $2,400–$3,000 a year that neither the owner nor the manager ever sees — it is simply extracted from the people with the least say in the software decision. The upgrade that waives the fee is the honest price of the platform; the free tier is a financing arrangement.

The alternative model bills the manager instead. Buildium publishes an incoming EFT fee of $2.35 per transaction on Essential, $1.35 on Growth, and $0.60 on Premium after the first 12 months — at 200 rent payments a month, roughly $5,640 a year on the Essential rate. The resident sees a clean payment screen, but the operator is paying per payment. Neither version of the per-transaction model goes away as you grow; both scale with every door you add.

How each platform prices tenant ACH

A fee and a markup are different questions. Several platforms genuinely charge no one per ACH payment — the cost is folded into a flat subscription. Forge takes a third approach, not yet live: the resident would be charged only the payment processor’s actual cost, never a marked-up number, and the property manager could choose to absorb that cost instead. As of July 2026, by each vendor’s own pricing page or published policy:

• Forge — the resident pays only the payment processor’s actual cost for ACH, never marked up, at $1.10 per unit per month flat, with no monthly minimum and no unit minimum; the property manager can choose to absorb the fee instead of passing it to the resident. Card payments follow the same at-cost, no-markup policy. Online resident payments are not yet live, so this is our published policy rather than a fee anyone pays today.
• Rentec Direct — tenant ACH payments are free for Rentec Pro and PM subscribers; subscriptions start at $55 per month. Cards run 2.95% and its cash-payment network is $4.99 per transaction.
• Avail Unlimited Plus — no tenant fee on bank transfers, at $9 per unit per month, roughly eight times Forge’s per-unit rate.
• DoorLoop Premium — lists free incoming ACH, at $209 per month billed yearly; the lower tiers do not publish an incoming ACH rate.

What should you check before you sign?

1. Open the resident’s payment screen in the demo — not the manager dashboard — and ask what a tenant is charged for ACH, card, and cash payments.
2. If ACH is “free,” ask on which tier, and price the tier: a waived $2 fee that requires a $209-per-month plan is not free.
3. Ask who keeps the card convenience fee — a pass-through at processor cost and a 3.49% platform fee are very different things.
4. Multiply the per-payment fee by 12 and by your unit count to see the annual number, then compare it to the subscription you were quoted.
5. Get the payment-fee schedule in the contract, not just the sales deck — per-transaction rates are the line item most likely to move after you migrate.

The takeaway

A rent-payment fee is a tax on the transaction you most want to be frictionless, and somebody always pays it — the resident on “free” plans, the manager on per-transaction plans, nobody per-payment on flat plans that include ACH, or the resident at cost on platforms that pass the processor’s fee straight through. The vendors’ own pricing pages, linked below, tell you which model you are buying. Price the payment rail before you price the software.

• What Property Management Software Actually Costs in 2026 — minimums, transaction fees, and the real 12-month math
• Forge vs TurboTenant — the full head-to-head, sourced and dated
• Forge pricing — $1.10 per unit, no minimum