Best HMO management software for UK landlords in 2026

Written by the August editorial team. Last reviewed June 2026.

Who this guide is for: UK landlords managing between one and fifteen HMO properties, either as standalone HMOs or as part of a mixed portfolio including single-lets. Landlords managing larger professional portfolios with dedicated maintenance teams should also read the Arthur Online section below. Transparency note: this article is published by August, one of the platforms reviewed. We have aimed to assess each tool against HMO-specific criteria accurately, and we did not receive payment from any provider featured here.

Managing a House in Multiple Occupation is not the same as managing a standard buy-to-let. It is operationally closer to running a small business: multiple tenants under one roof, individual tenancy agreements for each room, room-level rent tracking, separate deposit records per occupant, utility cost allocation across shared spaces, fire-safety obligations that go well beyond a standard rental, and a licensing regime that is at once national, local and constantly changing.

Standard landlord software is built around the whole-property tenancy model: one property, one tenancy, one rent figure, one set of certificates. That model breaks the moment you have three unrelated tenants sharing a kitchen. Room-level billing cannot be approximated from property-level billing, licensing reminders tied to property addresses rather than licence renewal dates miss the point, and compliance checklists built for assured shorthold tenancies do not prompt the fire-door inspection, the weekly alarm-test log or the annual licensing renewal that HMO landlords must track as a matter of statutory duty. This guide compares the leading HMO management software options available to UK landlords in 2026, assessed specifically on how well they handle the HMO-specific requirements that general platforms either do poorly or ignore.

Why HMO management software is different

The complexity of HMO software stems directly from the complexity of HMO compliance. UK HMOs operate under three overlapping licensing regimes, mandatory, additional and selective, each administered at local-authority level with different thresholds, fees, conditions and renewal dates. Mandatory licensing under the Housing Act 2004 applies nationally to any property occupied by five or more persons from two or more households sharing facilities. Additional licensing extends this to smaller three- and four-person HMOs in areas where a council has introduced its own scheme, and the number of councils doing so is accelerating following the December 2024 removal of the requirement for Secretary of State approval. Selective licensing applies to all private rented properties in designated areas, HMO or otherwise, adding a further layer of licence tracking.

For a full breakdown of how these three regimes interact and which applies to your properties, see our complete guide to landlord licensing across England and Wales and our selective licensing guide. To check whether a postcode falls within an active selective-licensing scheme, use our selective licensing checker.

Beyond licensing, HMO landlords face fire-safety obligations that do not apply to standard lets: fire doors with self-closing mechanisms on habitable rooms, interlinked fire detection on every storey, fire extinguishers in communal areas, and in larger properties emergency lighting and thumb-turn locks on escape routes. These are not one-time tasks. Fire detection requires weekly testing by the landlord with a written log, and fire-door inspections should be carried out quarterly. Software that cannot prompt and record these tasks is not fit for purpose in an HMO context.

What to look for in HMO management software

Six criteria separate adequate HMO software from genuinely useful HMO software. The foundational one is room-level tenancy management: the platform must hold individual tenant records, tenancy agreements, rent schedules and deposit records for each room within a single property address, because a platform that can only model one tenancy per property cannot manage an HMO. Next is licence tracking per property, meaning the software records the licence number, issuing authority, expiry date and conditions and reminds you of renewal with enough notice, since a renewal usually means a full application resubmission and a reminder that fires at thirty days is too late. Third is fire-safety prompts: weekly alarm-test logging, quarterly fire-door inspections, annual fire-risk-assessment reminders and emergency-lighting checks, which are licence conditions rather than optional extras. Fourth is multi-deposit management, holding a separate protection record for each tenant with its own scheme reference, protection date and prescribed-information record, because a deposit failure for even one tenant in a five-room HMO can prevent service of a valid possession notice for that tenancy. Fifth is room-level rent tracking, so arrears are visible per room rather than per property, since a net figure that matches the expected total tells you nothing about which tenant is behind. Sixth is void management: the ability to mark individual rooms vacant and track void periods separately, because HMO yield analysis depends on room-level occupancy data.

How the platforms compare

August

Best for: self-managing landlords with light to mid-complexity HMOs, between three and ten rooms, who want compliance, rent tracking and licensing reminders in one platform alongside their single-let portfolio.

August supports HMO tenancies with individual tenant records, room-level rent tracking and separate deposit records per occupant. Each room is set up as a distinct tenancy within the property, with its own rent schedule, payment history and compliance checklist. The compliance journey is structured at landlord, property and tenancy level, which maps directly to how HMO obligations work: licensing sits at property level alongside the gas safety record, EICR, EPC and insurance, while deposit protection, prescribed information, Right to Rent checks and move-in alarm checks sit at tenancy level for each occupant.

Smart suggested reminders fire from document dates rather than manual calendar entries. When you upload the HMO licence, August reads the document, proposes the expiry date and sets a renewal reminder well in advance, and the same logic applies to gas safety certificates, EICRs and insurance renewals. For fire-safety tasks without a document date, such as weekly alarm tests and quarterly fire-door inspections, reminders can be set on recurring schedules with a log of each completed check. The open banking rent tracking connection, powered by Plaid, imports transactions automatically and matches them to individual room tenancies, handling partial payments and split transfers within the room-level ledger, and the arrears view shows every room’s status across the portfolio on one screen.

August’s selective licensing checker helps you identify whether any property falls within an active licensing zone, and for landlords unsure whether a property even qualifies, our guide to whether your property is actually an HMO is worth reading, since the definition catches more landlords than most expect.

Limitations: August is designed for self-managing landlords with up to around thirty units. For larger or more operationally complex HMOs with a maintenance team, contractor workflows and multi-user access, Arthur Online’s depth is more appropriate. August is built for England and Wales; landlords with Scottish or Northern Irish properties should verify coverage of local licensing requirements.

Pricing: free for up to two properties. See current pricing for paid-plan details.

Arthur Online

Best for: professional HMO operators and portfolio landlords with larger, more complex properties, typically ten or more rooms, where maintenance-team coordination, contractor management and multi-user workflows are required.

Arthur Online is the most established HMO-specific platform in the UK market. It was designed with multi-occupancy properties in mind from the outset and offers genuine room-level management across its feature set: each room has its own tenant record, tenancy agreement, rent schedule and deposit record, maintenance works orders can be raised at room level and assigned to contractors from the platform, and multi-user access allows different permission levels, useful where a maintenance coordinator manages repairs but the landlord keeps financial oversight. Compliance reminders cover HMO licensing, gas safety, EICRs and EPCs, and Arthur integrates with Xero for financial reporting and with Rightmove and Zoopla for void-room advertising. Where operational complexity genuinely warrants agency-grade tools, Arthur’s depth is the strongest available for HMO-specific use cases.

Limitations: Arthur is significantly more complex to set up and operate than self-managing landlord tools. Onboarding takes meaningful time, and the feature set is overkill for landlords managing two or three HMOs without a team. Pricing increases with portfolio size and additional modules. For a direct comparison with August, see our August vs Arthur page.

Pricing: from approximately £1 per unit per month; verify current pricing on the Arthur website.

Landlord Vision

Best for: HMO landlords who prioritise accounting depth alongside compliance and want detailed financial reporting across a mixed single-let and HMO portfolio.

Landlord Vision supports multi-unit properties with room-level rent tracking and document storage. Its accounting suite is the most comprehensive of any dedicated landlord platform, with over fifty accountant-approved reports, full double-entry bookkeeping and confirmed MTD compatibility on the GOV.UK recognised software list. For landlords whose accountants want SA105-ready output and who want compliance reminders alongside their financial reporting, it offers a functional HMO toolkit within a broader accounting-first platform. HMO licence tracking is part of the document and reminder system, though the compliance functionality is reminder-based rather than a guided checklist, so it alerts you when a deadline approaches but does not walk you through what the licence conditions require.

Limitations: the interface is desktop-first and less suited to landlords who manage primarily on mobile, and there is no AI-assisted document reading, so licence and certificate dates require manual entry. For a direct comparison see our August vs Landlord Vision page.

Pricing: tiered by portfolio size; verify current pricing on the Landlord Vision website.

Landlord Studio

Best for: HMO landlords who want mobile-first rent tracking and expense management and whose accountant uses Xero.

Landlord Studio supports multi-tenant properties with room-level income tracking, and its mobile app’s receipt scanning and mileage tracking are best in class. For HMO landlords who primarily manage on their phone and want clean financial records for their accountant without a desktop-heavy platform, its mobile experience is the strongest in this comparison.

Limitations: HMO compliance features are limited, with no guided compliance checklist, no HMO licence tracking as a distinct feature, and no built-in fire-safety task prompts. Where compliance is the primary concern, which for most HMO operators it should be, Landlord Studio needs a separate compliance system. For a direct comparison see our August vs Landlord Studio page.

Pricing: per unit; check current rates on the Landlord Studio website.

HMO compliance in 2026: what your software must track

The compliance burden of an HMO in 2026 is substantially heavier than it was five years ago. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025, in force since 1 May 2026, abolished Section 21 no-fault evictions, so recovering possession of an individual room now requires a Section 8 notice supported by documented evidence. In a shared property with five or more tenants, the standard of record-keeping needed to pursue a legitimate possession claim, payment history by room, communication logs with individual tenants, maintenance response records and compliance certificate dates, demands a system rather than a folder.

The licensing picture has also shifted. Many local authorities in England now operate active selective-licensing schemes following the December 2024 removal of the central-government approval requirement, and many are also running additional HMO schemes that capture three- and four-person properties previously below the mandatory threshold. Landlords who have not reviewed their licensing position since 2023 may be operating unlicensed without knowing it.

Operating an unlicensed HMO is a criminal offence. On conviction the fine is unlimited, and as an alternative to prosecution a council can issue a civil penalty of up to £30,000 per offence. Separately, a tenant or the council can apply for a rent repayment order, and under the Renters’ Rights Act the maximum has doubled from twelve months to two years’ rent, a material increase in exposure for a multi-tenant property. For a current picture of which authorities have introduced new schemes in 2026, see our landlord licensing in 2026 article.

The fire-safety obligations that apply as licence conditions are non-negotiable and regularly inspected by local-authority housing officers. Every HMO licence requires annual submission of a gas safety certificate, electrical appliances kept in safe condition, smoke alarms on every storey, and, since October 2022, a carbon monoxide alarm in any room used as living accommodation that contains a fixed combustion appliance other than a gas cooker. For a full breakdown of alarm requirements, see our guide to carbon monoxide alarm regulations for landlords.

HMO management software and Making Tax Digital

For HMO landlords above the income threshold, the shift to Making Tax Digital adds a further requirement to the software decision. MTD requires digital records of rental income at property level, which for an HMO means per-room income recorded accurately throughout the year rather than reconstructed at quarter-end. A platform that tracks rent per room and exports clean figures by property and period is well positioned for MTD; one that aggregates at property level without room-level granularity creates extra reconciliation work every quarter.

For a full explanation of MTD requirements, income thresholds and the phased extension (£50,000 from April 2026, £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028), see our complete guide to Making Tax Digital for landlords. If you are considering a limited company structure for your HMO portfolio, a common approach given Section 24 mortgage-interest restrictions, our guide to how rental income is taxed in the UK sets out the comparison.

Which HMO management software is right for you

For self-managing landlords with between one and ten rooms across one to five HMO properties, August provides the strongest combination of room-level rent tracking, HMO compliance prompts, licensing reminders and open banking integration in a platform designed for the self-managing market, and the free tier covers up to two properties so you can test whether dedicated software improves your workflow before committing. For larger professional portfolios with maintenance teams, contractor workflows and multi-user requirements, Arthur Online’s depth justifies its setup complexity and higher cost, and it is the most capable HMO-specific platform in the UK for complex operations. For landlords whose primary concern is accounting depth and MTD compliance alongside HMO rent tracking, Landlord Vision’s reporting suite is the most comprehensive available.

For a broader comparison of these platforms across rent tracking, compliance, expenses and general property management beyond HMO-specific features, see our best property management software for UK landlords guide. For a complete overview of the HMO market, investment yields and the evolution of the sector in 2026, see our article on the next HMO evolution for UK landlords.

About this review

Written by the August editorial team, who work with self-managing UK landlords and property professionals across England and Wales to produce practical, accurate guidance on HMO compliance, licensing and property management software. August is one of the platforms reviewed in this article. Where we discuss our own product alongside alternatives, we have aimed to be accurate about what each tool does and for whom it is best suited. Last reviewed: June 2026. About August.

Disclaimer: this article is a guide and not intended to be relied upon as legal or professional advice, or as a substitute for it. August does not accept any liability for any errors, omissions or misstatements contained in this article. Always speak to a suitably qualified professional if you require specific advice or information.