Airbnb investors and hosts frequently hear about Airbtics, but are the platform and its various tools worth it for short term rental investors?
In 2023, success in the vacation rental business is equivalent to access to superior data and analytics. Airbtics is one of the many platforms that promise to make the process smoother and more profitable for investors. In this review, we’ll check whether they are really able to do this.
Table of Contents
- What Is the Airbtics Platform?
- What Does Airbtics Do for STR Investors?
- What Airbnb Data Does Airbtics Provide?
- What Tools Does Airbtics Offer to STR Investors?
- How Much Does Airbtics Cost?
- What Are the Main Airbtics Competitors?
- Airbtics Reviews
- Is Airbtics Worth It for STR Investors?
- Frequently Asked Questions
Here, we’ll take a detailed look at the Airbtics website and all its different tools and functionalities. We’ll see in what ways the platform helps STR investors and where it fails to support them. We’ll consider the pricing and whether it makes sense for hosts.
Importantly, we’ll review the main Airbtics alternatives in the US market and analyze whether they do a better job or not.
Let’s get started!
What Is the Airbtics Platform?
Airbtics is a short term rental data analytics website. The platform allows investors to analyze the investment potential of markets and properties across the US, as well as globally.
The company was founded by Jae Seok An in 2019. While working as a software engineer, Jae was an Airbnb Superhost himself who saw a gap in reliable Airbnb rental data and analytics. He attempted to fill the said gap by creating a company that takes care of it, using his software development skills and experience.
What Does Airbtics Do for STR Investors?
To decide if STR investors should use Airbtics, we need to look closely at what the platform does and how it benefits vacation rental owners.
Airbtics helps investors in three main ways:
1. Conduct Airbnb Market Research
Airbtics allows STR investors to do Airbnb market analysis. It can help them decide if a market that they have in mind makes sense for buying a short term rental property based on their expected ROI metrics.
The Airbnb market data includes the following points:
- Revenue potential with historical trends
- Occupancy rate with historical trends
- Nightly rate with historical trends
- Revenue potential by property size
- Property size distribution (by number of bedrooms)
- Property type distribution: Entire house, apartment/condo, private room, shared room, or hotel
- Channel distribution: Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and TripAdvisor
- Downloadable list of active Airbnb listings
- Annual expenses
- Net profit before tax
- Cash on cash return (if you enter your own down payment)
- Gross rental yield
- Net rental yield
The market-level Airbtics research can be customized using these filters:
- Property type
- Number of bedrooms
- Number of bathrooms
- Professionally managed or not
- Number of Airbnb guests
- Minimum stay
- Number of reviews
- Rating
- Amenities: Parking, pool, hot tub, gym, pets, washer, dryer, and kitchen
- Booking.com listings
2. Perform Airbnb Property Analysis
With the help of Airbtics, vacation rental investors can also analyze the investment potential of individual properties. It is done with the Airbtics Airbnb Calculator.
To start the property-level Airbnb rental analysis, you need to enter the following:
- Address
- Number of bedrooms
- Number of bathrooms
- Type: Entire house or apartment/condo
- Availability of a swimming pool
The property data points include:
- Monthly rent
- Occupancy rate
- Nightly rate
- Annual expenses
- Cash on cash return (if you enter your own down payment)
- Gross rental yield
- Net rental yield
- Net profit before tax
- Operating expenses, including property tax, lodging tax, maintenance, insurance, electricity, WiFi, and gas. Others – like management fee, mortgage payment, and HOA fee – need to be entered by you.
- Startup costs, including closing costs and home furnishing, need to be entered by you.
While the analysis provides a lot of important Airbnb data points, many others are not readily available and need to be estimated and provided by the investor.
3. Apply Airbnb Dynamic Pricing
The final thing that Airbtics helps STR investors with is setting up dynamic pricing for their existing listings. In this way, the platform supports not only investors who are about to buy a rental property but also active hosts in their Airbnb property management efforts.
The Airbtics tool shows the recommended Airbnb daily rate for the next year based on a number of comps in the area.
What Does Airbtics Not Allow Investors to Do?
While Airbtics helps with many time-consuming tasks related to Airbnb data analysis, the available features do not allow investors to do everything necessary to guarantee a successful deal.
There are a few very important steps of the real estate investing process that Airbtics does not cover.
1. Find a Market Based on Specific Criteria
Unlike other top short term rental data analytics platforms, Airbtics does not provide the opportunity to search for the best markets for Airbnb. Instead, the tool simply allows investors to analyze markets that they’ve already identified using other sources and tools.
It is a major drawback for beginner Airbnb investors who don’t have enough knowledge and experience to know which markets provide the highest ROI.
2. Search for Profitable Properties for Sale
Another thing that Airbtics does not do for STR investors is to help them look for short term rental properties for sale. Once again, hosts can analyze the potential of properties they own or consider purchasing. But there is no database of MLS listings or off market properties that hosts can search through and filter through based on their requirements.
That makes Airbtics less sophisticated than other websites.
Related: How to Do an MLS Listings Search: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide
3. Conduct Detailed Vacation Rental Property Analysis
Moreover, real estate investors cannot get all the Airbnb analytics that they need in order to know if a certain property will make for a good vacation rental investment location.
Airbtics provides many key data points, but others are missing, including cash flow and cap rate. Meanwhile, the cash on cash return can be calculated only after an investor enters the property price and the investment property down payment.
In addition, not all required startup costs and recurring expenses are available, so investors need to conduct a lot of additional research to get all numbers.
4. Analyze Long Term Rentals
Last but not least, Airbtics only works with properties listed on Airbnb. It doesn’t cover long term rental properties.
However, sometimes investors want to know that their property will continue generating profit in case they need to change their rental strategy. It usually happens in markets where short term rental regulations become too restrictive, so owners feel pressured to switch to long term rentals instead.
What Airbnb Data Does Airbtics Provide?
Our Airbtics review shows that the website offers the following data points to STR investors:
- Monthly Airbnb revenue
- Annual revenue
- Occupancy rate
- Nightly rate
- Property size distribution
- Property type distribution
- Channel distribution
- Annual expenses
- Cash on cash return (if you enter your own down payment)
- Gross rental yield
- Net rental yield
- Net profit before tax
- Some operating expenses
Some numbers are available at the market level, while others are calculated at the property level.
What Markets Does Airbtics Data Cover?
Airbtics provides Airbnb data on the entire US market as well as internationally. The platform’s global coverage sets Airbtics apart from many alternatives.
Where Does Airbtics Get Short Term Rental Data From?
The Airbtics team gets data in two main ways.
First of all, primary data is obtained by a data web scraping software that gets the numbers directly from the Airbnb website. Second, secondary data is provided by Airbnb hosts and Airbnb property managers.
Airbtics does not provide Vrbo data.
How Often Does Airbtics Update Data?
The data on the Investment Dashboard is updated on a monthly basis. Meanwhile, the data on the Pricing/CompSet Dashboard is updated on a weekly basis (every Wednesday).
Is the Airbtics Vacation Rental Data Reliable?
According to Airbtics, their data correlates 97% with Airbnb’s official numbers, which is considered good accuracy.
The company uses data science and machine learning algorithms that are constantly being trained in order to guarantee the expected level of short term data accuracy.
There are a number of tools that the Airbtics platform provides to Airbnb investors.
Following is a description of each:
Airbnb Market Analysis Tool
Although this Airbtics tool doesn’t have a specific name, the website offers an entire section that allows vacation rental property investors to research and analyze markets. They can be cities or neighborhoods. Users are able to draw their own custom market.
The tool provides all the short term rental market data points listed above.
The data points include some important numbers like Airbnb revenue, the average daily rate, and the Airbnb occupancy rates. But it also misses a few crucial numbers like property prices, cash flow, and cap rate. Meanwhile, cash on cash return is only available if you enter your own property price and down payment.
The good thing about this Airbnb market analysis tool is that investors can get a quick glimpse of what Airbnb performance they can expect in the market of their choice. The biggest limitation, however, is that they cannot search for the best vacation rental markets based on their criteria.
Airbnb Calculator
Another tool developed by the Aibrtics team is the Airbnb calculator. The platform’s Airbnb estimator allows investors to calculate the expected revenue, nightly rate, and occupancy rate for a property based on the address, size, and amenities. It can be very helpful for those with existing properties or those who have a specific property in mind.
At the same time, Airbtics does not help investors with investment property search, which is a major drawback, especially for beginners.
Furthermore, the Airbtics Airbnb calculator does not feature a mortgage calculator. Investors can enter their monthly mortgage payments for more detailed rental property analysis. But there are no preset numbers available based on regional averages.
Dynamic Pricing
A tool that’s designed to make the management of vacation rentals easier is the Airbtics dynamic pricing option. Airbnb hosts or property managers can connect their listings to get real-time suggestions for the optimal daily rate for their listings in the next year. It is based on the nightly pricing set up by comparable properties in the area.
However, Airbtics doesn’t explain the logic behind its dynamic pricing tool. It’s not clear whether it boosts mainly the occupancy rate like Airbnb Smart Pricing, or it also works on the rental income and return on investment.
To connect an Airbnb listing to Airbtics, hosts need to get Airbtics for Chrome from the Chrome web store.
Related: The Importance of Nightly Pricing for Airbnb Hosts
API
Airbtics provides APIs that can serve the needs of large-scale vacation rental investors, property managers, and financial analysts. APIs cover both market data and listings data.
They are available for free on RapidAPI.
How Much Does Airbtics Cost?
Using the Airbtics platform requires a paid monthly subscription with no free trial. The company offers three different plans with access to the same type of Airbnb data. The plans are based on the number of markets to which investors get access.
- 1-Market Plan: Gives access to data on a single market, defined as a city, neighborhood, or a couple of neighborhoods with up to 20,000 Airbnb listings. The price is $89 per month.
- 5-Market Plan: Gives access to short term rental on five different markets, as defined above. The cost is $179 per month.
- Country Plan: Gives access to the market data for an entire country. The price is $399 per month.
Each plan provides the following data:
- Full access to the dashboard for the region
- Property-level data
- Historical performance data
- Future booking data
- Guest demographics
- Weekly data updates
Each new month, an investor can choose whether to renew the same markets or start analyzing new short term rental locations.
What Are the Main Airbtics Competitors?
Within the short term rental data analytics niche, there are a few major Airbtics alternatives. Each of them comes with different pros and cons.
Here, we’ll compare Airbtics to its major competitors:
Airbtics vs AirDNA
AirDNA is definitely one of the most popular names in the industry.
First, the AirDNA MarketMinder is similar to the Airbtics market research and analysis tool. It helps investors get a general overview of a city or neighborhood and its potential to host Airbnb vacation rentals. The tool’s main data points include the average daily rate, occupancy rate, and monthly revenue.
Second, the AirDNA Rentalizer is the equivalent of the Airbtics Airbnb calculator. Hosts can enter a property address to access comps, seasonal trends, and occupancy projections.
Third, the Airbnb Smart Rates is meant to do the same work as the Airbtics dynamic pricing. An Airbnb host can add a property to get customized recommendations for the best nightly rate for each day. Suggestions are based on multiple factors like comparables, seasons, and holidays.
In terms of short term rental data, AirDNA uses both Airbnb and Vrbo analytics. The market coverage is global. The focus is once again on vacation rentals alone, with no long term rental data.
All in all, our review of AirDNA vs Airbtics shows that both platforms perform very similar tasks. However, AirDNA seems to offer a little bit more detailed analysis.
Related: Is AirDNA Worth It? What Are Other Top Alternatives?
Airbtics vs AllTheRooms
Another Airbtics competitor worth mentioning in this review is AllTheRooms.
The AllTheRooms Market Overview can provide several data points, including the average daily rate, the occupancy rate, the monthly revenue, and the overall market revenue. The short term rental market analysis shows the distribution of listings by property type, rental type, number of bedrooms, and top amenities. There is both historical and future Airbnb data.
AllTheRooms also has the Revenue Calculator, which is the name for its popular Airbnb calculator tool. The input data comprises the address, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and the number of guests.
The output data points include average daily rate, occupancy, annual revenue, operating expenses, and net operating income. The Revenue Calculator can compute the cap rate if the host enters the property price.
Meanwhile, AllTheRooms does not offer an Airbnb dynamic pricing tool, which makes it less sophisticated than Airbtics.
In terms of data coverage, AllTheRooms works globally and with different property types.
Airbtics vs Mashvisor
The third alternative to Airbtics is Mashvisor, a leading residential real estate,and rental data analytics platform.
Mashvisor allows investors to do all of the following:
- Search for the best short term rental investment locations based on their own requirements with the help of Mashvisor’s Market Finder
- Analyze the investment potential of neighborhoods and zip codes with the real estate heat map analysis and neighborhood analytics pages
- Learn about the short term rental regulations in all top US markets
- Look for the most profitable short term rental properties for sale with the Property Finder and the investment property search engine
- Conduct detailed Airbnb rental property analysis on any residential property in the US market with the Airbnb Calculator
- Optimize and automate Airbnb pricing with the Dynamic Pricing tool
- Use and analyze bulk data with APIs
Mashvisor offers a wide array of tools for new and seasoned real estate investors, including the Market Finder, Property Finder, Airbnb Calculator, and Dynamic Pricing tool.
How Does Mashvisor Compare to Airbtics?
As you can see from this Mashvisor review, the platform features significantly more tools than Airbtics and all other major competitors, including AirDNA and AllTheRooms. Most importantly, investors can search for the best markets and the best properties for short term rental investments.
Moreover, Mashvisor provides more Airbnb data points than Airbtics at the market and property level, including:
- Property price
- Startup costs breakdown
- Rental income
- Recurring expenses breakdown
- Financing details (down payment, mortgage type, interest rate, and monthly mortgage payments)
- Cash flow
- Cash on cash return
- Cap rate
- Airbnb occupancy rate
- List of comps
Another significant benefit of Mashvisor over Airbtics is that the former works for both short term and long term rental properties. It means that investors can find a market and a property that work with both strategies in case they decide to switch gears down the road.
Like Airbtics, Mashvisor also offers subscription plans that are charged quarterly or annually for affordability. The different plans are based on access to tools rather than markets, as all plans cover all US markets.
The prices range from $24.99 per month for the Lite plan to $99.99 per month for the Professional plan (annual subscription). Considering that it includes thousands of cities and neighborhoods and more tools, the Mashvisor pricing is much cheaper than the Airbtics pricing.
To get started with the best Airbnb data analytics platform, sign up for a 7-day free trial of Mashvisor.
Airbtics Reviews
Before deciding whether STR investors should use Airbtics, we need to take a look at customer reviews of the platform.
Our research shows very few reviews of Airbtics on review websites. Specifically, there are three reviews on Capterra and five reviews on Trustpilot. While both ratings are excellent, eight reviews are not enough to be certain that the Airbtics products are able to truly help Airbnb investors make better investment decisions.
Is Airbtics Worth It for STR Investors?
In conclusion, Airbtics looks like a legitimate platform to serve the basic needs of Airbnb investors and hosts. It seems able to fulfill its mission of empowering vacation rental owners to make smarter decisions.
However, there are a few important functions that Airbtics and most of its main competitors miss. Specifically, investors cannot search for top-performing markets and listings for sale, and they don’t get access to all must-have data points without having to enter some of their own data. It makes Airbtics harder to use and benefit from for beginner investors.
Those who’d like to take advantage of all the best Airbnb tools and data points should check out Mashvisor. The platform helps investors find and analyze markets and properties, learn about Airbnb laws, and automate dynamic Airbnb pricing. All in all, Mashvisor offers more data than any other tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
In case there are any Airbtics-related questions that this article does not address, you can find the answers here:
Is Airbtics Free?
No, Airbtics is not free. Investors need to pay a monthly fee depending on the number of markets they want to analyze.
There are three subscription plans, including:
- 1-Market Plan: $89/month
- 5-Market Plan: $179/month
- Country Plan: $399/month
What Is Airbtics?
Airbtics is a data-driven platform that allows investors to analyze the potential of short term rental markets, as well as vacation rentals. It covers the global market and can work with different property types, including entire properties and private or shared rooms.
According to the company’s profile, Airbtics is based in London, the United Kingdom. It was founded by Jae Seok An, an experienced software engineer.
The most important Airbtics tools include Airbnb analytics, Airbnb calculator, dynamic pricing, and API.
Both investors looking for properties to buy and hosts with existing Airbnb listings can take advantage of the real-time analytics provided by the company.
Who Is the Founder of Airbtics?
The founder of Airbtics is Jae Seok An, who established the company in 2019. At the time, Jae was a software engineer at WhatsApp and an Airbnb Superhost.
He thought that there was a lack of accurate short term rental data in the market for his own investments, so he decided to fill the void by creating Airbtics.
In this sense, the story behind the idea and the establishment of Airbtics is very similar to the story behind all other major Airbnb data analytics platforms.
How Much Money Do Airbtics Hosts Make?
It is not possible to say how much money Airbnb hosts using Airbtics make. The company aims to make the process of buying and owning short term rentals easier and more profitable. However, the rental revenue can vary widely. It depends on the market, the type of property, the size of the property, the availability, the average daily rate, and the occupancy.
For example, Istanbul vacation rentals generate very different rental income from Lahore Airbnb properties, Rosarito, Mexico Airbnb rentals, or a short term rental in Richmond, VA, in the US. The same holds true for an entire single family home available for booking year-round compared to a room in an apartment available for a few weeks per year.
