August vs Landlord Studio: which fits your portfolio?
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A comprehensive comparison to help you choose the right landlord software for your property portfolio.
August and Landlord Studio are the two platforms a self-managing UK landlord is most likely to shortlist, and they overlap more than most pairings. Both are HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital, both track income and expenses, and both offer a genuinely free tier. The difference is in what each plan contains and where each product's centre of gravity sits. August is UK-built and puts automated Open Banking rent tracking, a guided England and Wales compliance checklist and an AI assistant on every plan, including the free one, with flat tiers from £8.99 to £29.99 per month. Landlord Studio is a bookkeeping-led platform serving the UK, US and New Zealand, strongest at receipt scanning, mileage tracking and accountant-friendly reporting with a live Xero integration, priced per unit from £12.00 per month after its free 3-unit GO plan. If your priority is UK compliance and hands-off rent tracking from your phone, August is the stronger fit. If your priority is granular expense capture for tax, receipt scanning and mileage logging, Landlord Studio earns its place.
Free for up to 2 tenancies, no credit card required.
The comparison at a glance
Competitor facts verified 20 July 2026. Confirm current plans with each provider before deciding.
Built for
Self-managing UK landlords
UK-only focus
Free tier
Free plan, up to 2 tenancies, including Open Banking rent tracking, the compliance checklist and the tenant app
Paid pricing
Tiered by plan:
£8.99/month (Growth, 5 tenancies)
£14.99/month (Portfolio, 20 tenancies)
£29.99/month (Portfolio+, unlimited tenancies)
Rent tracking
Automatic reconciliation via Open Banking through an FCA-regulated Plaid feed, included from the free plan
Tenants pay in-app with no fees
MTD for Income Tax
HMRC-recognised
Included in the price of every paid plan
Quarterly submissions from the web app
UK compliance
Guided checklist for England and Wales reflecting the Renters' Rights Act 2025
AI-suggested reminders from your uploaded documents
Bookkeeping tools
Automated income and expense tracking with open banking and matching algorithm
Live Xero integration and CSV export
AI assistance
August Intelligence on every plan including free, covering contract scanning, expense scanning, suggested reminders, questions on your own portfolio data
Mobile and web
Native iPhone app
Full web product
Native Android app
Tenant experience
Free tenant app and web product
Rent payments and notifications, documents, maintenance with photos
Document storage
5 documents free
100 on Growth and Portfolio
Unlimited on Portfolio+
Multi-user and team access
Single user today
Multi-user and team access is on the roadmap
Scale and proof
3,000+ UK landlords and tenants
Data on exit
Export at any time
Pricing: standard rates
August prices by plan: Growth at £8.99 per month covers up to 5 tenancies, Portfolio at £14.99 covers up to 20, and Portfolio+ at £29.99 covers unlimited tenancies, each with a 30-day free trial and a 14-day money-back guarantee, billed monthly or annually and cancellable anytime.
Landlord Studio prices per unit: PRO from £12.00 per month and PRO Plus from £24.00 per month, each plus £1.00 per additional unit per month, with a 14-day PRO trial that reverts to the free GO plan. Per-unit pricing is friendly at small sizes and grows linearly with your portfolio, so a landlord at 20 units is paying meaningfully more than the PRO base rate, and at larger sizes the gap to August's flat £14.99 or £29.99 widens with every unit added.
Landlord Studio prices per unit and August per tenancy, so an HMO landlord should count rooms on one and tenancies on the other before comparing.
Check your own portfolio size on each before deciding. All figures are each provider's published standard rates as of 20 July 2026. Verify current pricing with each provider. See August pricing in full.
Where Landlord Studio genuinely wins
A comparison you can trust has to say where the other product is better, so here it is plainly.
Expense capture
If your bookkeeping runs on paper receipts and business mileage, Landlord Studio is ahead: its AI receipt scanner and mileage tracker are mature tools available on every plan, including the free one, and August does not offer either today.
Multi-country
It serves landlords with property in the US or New Zealand, which August does not.
Longevity
If deep double-entry accounting is what you are really weighing, our August vs Landlord Vision comparison covers that trade-off, and landlords comparing accounting-first platforms may also want the August vs Hammock comparison.
Where August wins
Compliance that guides rather than reminds
Landlord Studio stores your compliance documents and reminds you when dates approach. August's compliance checklist goes further for England and Wales. It guides you through what needs doing and why, covering gas safety, EICR, Right to Rent, deposit protection and the changes brought by the Renters' Rights Act 2025, which commenced on 1 May 2026, and August Intelligence reads your documents and suggests the reminders you have not set.
For a product serving three countries, UK statutory depth is a harder promise to keep, and it is the axis where a UK-only platform holds a structural advantage.
Mobile, done properly
August ships purpose-built native iOS and Android apps with full feature parity, because most self-managing landlords run their portfolio from a phone, not a desk. But it is also supported by a solid web product.
A tenant app tenants actually use
August includes a free native tenant app for paying rent, reporting maintenance with photos and accessing documents securely. Landlord Studio provides a tenant portal with a tenant app for payments and maintenance requests. August's difference is that its native tenant app is free, and rent payments through it carry no fees.
Price at scale
At 15 tenancies, August's Portfolio plan is £14.99 against £24.00, and at 20 tenancies it stays at £14.99 while PRO reaches roughly £29.00. August's Portfolio+ at £29.99 sits below PRO at roughly £34.00 at 25 units, before widening again with every unit added, to roughly £59.00 at 50 tenancies against August's unchanged £29.99.
AI on every plan
August Intelligence is included from the free tier: it scans tenancy agreements, suggests reminders and answers questions about your own portfolio. Landlord Studio is not positioned as an AI-led platform.
Making Tax Digital: both are ready
Both platforms are HMRC-recognised. Our Making Tax Digital hub explains how quarterly submissions work in August. Landlord Studio's MTD support is live with a direct HMRC integration, and it deserves credit for that. The difference is plan economics. August includes MTD submissions in the price of every paid plan, while Landlord Studio's free GO plan is reported to charge per submission, with submissions included on PRO. Confirm current terms with Landlord Studio if you plan to file from a free account. Either way, a landlord above the £50,000 qualifying income threshold now needs recognised software, and both products clear that bar.
Switching: the three questions that matter
How hard is migration?
Moving costs an afternoon, not a project. August's smart contract scanning reads your tenancy agreements and sets up properties and tenancies for you, and the bank connection brings your rent history in for the current tax year.
Am I locked in?
There is no annual lock-in. August bills monthly if you want it, cancels anytime, carries a 14-day money-back guarantee, and your data exports whenever you ask.
Can I trust the smaller product?
August is newer and UK-only by design, with over 3,000 UK landlords and tenants on the platform and an FCA-regulated feed underneath the rent tracking. Landlord Studio's larger number is a worldwide figure across three markets.
The verdict
Choose Landlord Studio if your priority is bookkeeping: receipt scanning, mileage tracking, accountant-ready reporting, property outside the UK, or a free plan for up to 3 units where manual entry is acceptable. Both platforms integrate with Xero, so that alone should not decide it.
Choose August if you self-manage UK property and want the admin automated: Open Banking rent tracking and guided England and Wales compliance from the free plan, Making Tax Digital included in every paid plan's price, an AI assistant on your own portfolio data, a tenant app your tenants will actually use, and flat tiers from £8.99 to £29.99 per month that do not grow with every unit you add.
If you are evaluating a broader range of tools, our guide to the best landlord software for UK landlords covers the leading options side by side.
Frequently asked questions
What is the main difference between August and Landlord Studio?
August is UK-built for self-managing landlords, with automated Open Banking rent tracking, guided England and Wales compliance and AI assistance on every plan, priced in flat tiers from free to £29.99 per month. Landlord Studio is a bookkeeping-led platform serving the UK, US and New Zealand, strongest at receipt scanning, expense capture and Xero-based reporting, priced per unit from £12.00 per month after its free 3-unit GO plan (verified 20 July 2026).
Do both platforms support Making Tax Digital?
Yes. Both August and Landlord Studio are HMRC-recognised, with MTD for Income Tax live from April 2026. August includes quarterly submissions in the price of every paid plan. Landlord Studio's paid plans include submissions, and charges are reported on its free plan, so confirm current terms with the provider if you plan to file from a free account.
Does August or Landlord Studio have the better free plan?
It depends what you want free. Landlord Studio GO covers 3 units with manual income and expense tracking, mileage tracking, AI receipt scanning, online rent collection and tenant screening, but no automated bank feeds. August's free plan covers 2 tenancies and includes automated Open Banking rent tracking, the guided compliance checklist and the free tenant app.
Is Landlord Studio cheaper than August?
At very small portfolios the free tiers make them comparable. On paid plans, Landlord Studio's per-unit model (from £12.00 per month plus £1.00 per additional unit) starts close to August's Growth plan at £8.99, but grows with every unit, while August's Portfolio and Portfolio+ plans stay flat at £14.99 and £29.99 per month. The larger the portfolio, the wider the gap in August's favour (rates verified 20 July 2026).
Can I move from Landlord Studio to August easily?
Yes. August's smart contract scanning sets up properties and tenancies from your existing documents, the bank connection brings in the current tax year's rent history, and there is no annual contract, with a 30-day free trial and a 14-day money-back guarantee while you run both side by side.
About this comparison: August publishes this page and we have a commercial interest in you choosing August. To keep it useful, we verify every Landlord Studio fact against their published pricing and plans and say plainly where they win. Competitor facts last verified 20 July 2026. Last reviewed 20 July 2026.
