OpenRent for landlords: what it costs, what it does, and what it leaves to you

OpenRent is a genuine, established online letting agent, not a scam. It has traded since 2012, is registered in England as OpenRent Ltd, and lets more UK properties than any other single agent. For a landlord the practical question is not whether it is legitimate but where its service stops. OpenRent finds you a tenant and creates the tenancy. It does not run the tenancy afterwards. This guide covers what each package costs as at September 2026, what referencing actually checks, what landlords report in practice, and the point at which the work comes back to you.

What OpenRent is and how it works

OpenRent is an online letting agent that advertises your property, handles applications, and creates the tenancy, while you do the viewings yourself. That division is the whole model: you supply the time, OpenRent supplies the portal access and the paperwork, and the fee is a flat charge rather than a percentage of rent. It differs from a high street agent in that it takes no ongoing commission and offers no property management as standard, and it differs from a listing site in that it can draft the contract, register the deposit and collect the first month's rent. The distinction matters when you compare it against what a letting agent actually does on a full management basis.

You create the listing yourself, usually in under an hour with your own photographs. OpenRent checks the advert against portal guidelines, publishes it, and routes enquiries to you. You arrange and conduct viewings. When you pick a tenant, you either handle the tenancy yourself or activate Rent Now, at which point OpenRent takes over the referencing, contract, deposit registration and first rent collection.

What OpenRent costs in 2026

OpenRent charges flat fees per let, with no commission on rent. These are the published prices, verified against OpenRent's pricing page on 10 September 2026, and they are inclusive of VAT.

Two points are easy to miss. Rightmove is not included in any package: it is a £70 upgrade on top, and OpenRent's own guidance says most properties let without it. And referencing is charged per person, so a couple plus a guarantor is £90, not £30. A typical full let for a couple therefore runs to roughly £118 rather than the £58 headline. That is still far below a tenant-find-only agent fee, and you can put a figure on the difference with our property management fees calculator. Prices change, so confirm current rates before you commit.

Is OpenRent legit and safe?

OpenRent is a real, long-established company and the risk to a landlord using it is operational rather than existential. OpenRent Ltd has traded since 2012 from a registered office at 20 Wenlock Road, London, and states it has processed over £2.2 billion in rent. Letting agents in England must belong to a government-approved redress scheme, and any agent holding client money must also hold client money protection. OpenRent states that it operates client money protection on rent it collects. Before you hand over money, check its current scheme memberships on its own site, as with any agent.

The genuine risks are narrower than "is it a scam". You are the one meeting strangers at viewings, so treat identity and affordability checks as your job rather than the platform's. And because you never meet an OpenRent representative, everything runs through email and an online dashboard, which is exactly what its critics dislike.

What landlords actually say about OpenRent

Landlord sentiment is strongly positive on price and speed, and consistently negative on reaching a human. OpenRent displays a Google rating of 4.9 from more than 7,700 reviews, and Trustpilot carries over 8,000. Read the detail and a clear pattern emerges: landlords praise the cost saving against a percentage-based agent, the speed of enquiries, and the tenancy creation flow, while complaints cluster on customer service being hard to reach and responses feeling automated. Review counts move, so check the live scores rather than trusting a figure quoted in any article, including this one.

It is worth reading the tenant-side reviews too, because they tell you something about your own applicants' experience. On allAgents, which skews heavily towards tenant complaints, the recommendation rate sits far below the Google and Trustpilot picture, with recurring grievances about holding deposits retained after a failed reference and about couples being referenced jointly. Those complaints land on your listing as much as on OpenRent, so understand the holding deposit rules before you take one.

OpenRent referencing: what it checks

OpenRent referencing costs £30 per person and produces two reports covering a credit check and risk score, linked address and identity information, right to rent advice, county court judgments and an affordability rating, with the comprehensive tier adding a previous landlord reference and an income and employment check. Guarantors are referenced at the same price. The output is a recommendation, not a decision: you choose whether to accept.

Two limits matter. Referencing normally happens inside Rent Now after a holding deposit is placed, so you are committing an applicant before you know the result, which is what produces the deposit disputes above. And OpenRent references one applicant group at a time, so a fallback candidate has to be referenced separately. If you would rather compare the market before defaulting to the built-in option, our comparison of tenant referencing services sets out what the main providers check and charge, and you can also credit check a tenant yourself.

What OpenRent does not do

OpenRent gets a tenant into the property and then, unless you buy add-ons, steps back. That is the single most important thing to understand before you use it. It does not track whether rent arrives, chase arrears, hold your certificates, warn you when a gas safety certificate or EPC is about to expire, log maintenance, or keep the records you need at tax time. Its Management Plus product covers emergency repairs up to three fixes a year, which is a narrower thing than management.

From working with self-managing landlords who arrive at August after a first let through an online agent, the gap shows up in month four rather than month one: the tenancy is running fine, but nobody owns the calendar. The certificate that expires eighteen months later is the one that catches people, because the platform that set the tenancy up has no reason to remember it. Keeping compliance reminders and certificate tracking in one place from day one is what stops that becoming a scramble.

What the Renters' Rights Act changed about using OpenRent

Since the Renters' Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026, three things about letting through any online agent have changed, and the responsibility for all three remains yours. You must state a specific rent in the advert and cannot invite, encourage or accept an offer above it, so open-ended pricing is unlawful, as set out in the rental bidding rules. Fixed terms are gone, so what OpenRent drafts is an assured periodic tenancy. And with Section 21 abolished, ending a tenancy means establishing a ground under Section 8, which makes your choice of tenant far more consequential than it was.

The statutory framework is in the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and the government's guide to the Act. Separately, the holding deposit you take through Rent Now is capped at one week's rent by the Tenant Fees Act 2019, and the grounds on which you may keep it are narrow. You must also complete a right to rent check before the tenancy begins; OpenRent's referencing gives advice on this, it does not discharge the duty. Position current as at September 2026. Our Renters' Rights Act hub covers the wider changes.

Who OpenRent suits, and who it does not

OpenRent suits a landlord who can attend viewings, wants portal reach without a percentage fee, and is comfortable running the tenancy themselves afterwards. It works particularly well for a single property in a liquid market, for a relet where you already know the drill, and for anyone who has looked at a tenant-find-only agent fee and decided the flat fee is better value.

It suits less well a landlord who cannot get to the property for viewings, one letting somewhere with thin demand where the Rightmove upgrade becomes necessary and the cost advantage narrows, and anyone who wants a named person to call. Across the portfolios we see, the landlords who get the most out of it are the ones who pair it with something that runs the tenancy afterwards, using OpenRent for the let and rent tracking with late-payment alerts for the two or three years that follow. For choosing where to advertise in the first place, our guide to where to advertise a rental propertycompares OpenRent against the other fifteen routes.

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenRent free for landlords?

The basic listing on OpenRent's own site is genuinely free with no obligation to upgrade. Reaching Zoopla and the partner portals costs £29, Rightmove is a further £70, and full tenancy creation through Rent Now is £58. Referencing is £30 per person on top.

Does OpenRent list on Rightmove?

Yes, but not as standard. Rightmove is a £70 optional upgrade on any package, and OpenRent's own guidance says most properties let without it. Zoopla and its partner sites are included in the paid advertising packages.

Is OpenRent better than a letting agent?

It is cheaper and faster for a landlord willing to do viewings and run the tenancy. A full management agent costs a percentage of rent every month and handles the ongoing work; OpenRent charges once and hands the tenancy back to you. Compare the two on total cost over a tenancy, not on the headline fee.

What happens after OpenRent creates my tenancy?

Everything after move-in is yours: rent monitoring, arrears, certificate renewals, maintenance, inspections and records for tax. Add-ons cover rent collection and emergency repairs, but not compliance or record-keeping. You can start for free with August to keep all of that in one place from the first month.

Disclaimer: pricing and service details verified against OpenRent's published pricing on 10 September 2026 and subject to change. This article is a guide and not intended to be relied upon as legal or professional advice.