Updated 22 October 2026
The key facts
In this article:
A landlord letting a property without a high street agent has more choice than ever. OpenRent, Hello Neighbour, Rentr, 99home, MakeUrMove, LettingaProperty.com and others all offer a route to a tenant, with headline prices running from free to about £150. The Independent Landlord, Suzanne Smith, puts the typical cost of using an online letting platform at "somewhere between £60 and £130, instead of a month's rent or so" in her guide to finding tenants without an agent. That is a saving that can make a difference between profit and loss so it is worth having, but only if the service you pick does what you need. A competitive market rewards a little homework, and the most useful homework is the kind you would do before any significant purchase: check the price of the whole job, read the small print, and ask people who have already bought it.
Two services can advertise the same £29 and deliver very different things. One may include Rightmove while the other charges £70 extra for it; one may include the tenancy agreement and deposit registration while the other sells them separately. Before you compare, decide what you need: an advert only, or a tenant moved in with the paperwork done, plus whichever extras you want, such as referencing, an inventory or rent guarantee insurance. Then price that same job at each provider. Our comparison of OpenRent and Hello Neighbour and our guide to our own packages show how the numbers move once you do.
The law already does part of this for you. Under section 83 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a letting agent must publish its fees on its website, with a description of each fee clear enough to understand what it covers and the amount including VAT. It must also state which redress scheme it belongs to and, where it holds client money and which client money protection scheme it uses. If you cannot find those details on a provider's site, that tells you something.
The fee list is only the start; the terms of business decide what happens later. When Suzanne Smith compared the termination clauses of 16 letting agents, she found exit fees ranging from £250 to a full month's rent, commission that continues after the landlord has left (for up to 60 months at one firm), ongoing letting fees charged even when another agent handles the renewal, and notice periods of up to six months. As she put it, it "underlines just how important it is for landlords to read the small print".
When you read a provider's terms, look for the answers to a handful of practical questions. What exactly is included, and what is charged as an extra? Who runs the viewings, and what happens if they cannot attend? How much notice do you need to give to leave, and is there an exit fee? Will you be charged again each year the tenancy continues? Where is the deposit held, and how are complaints handled? Hello Neighbour's terms and conditions, management agreement, complaints procedure and client money protection details are all published on our legal and privacy page.
Few landlords have a friend who has tried every letting service, so review sites do the job instead. Trustpilot is the obvious place to start, since every service in our comparison except Rentr has reviews there, and on 13 October 2026 the main DIY services scored as follows.
| Service | Trustpilot score | Number of reviews |
|---|---|---|
| 99home | 4.7 | 1,836 |
| Hello Neighbour | 4.6 | 659 |
| MakeUrMove | 4.5 | 739 |
| OpenRent | 4.4 | 8,608 |
| LettingaProperty.com | 4.4 | 697 |
| Visum | 4.4 | 143 |
| Quicklister | 4.3 | 10 |
The scores sit within half a point of each other, so the headline number on its own does little to separate one service from another. The detail does more. Look at how many reviews there are and how recent they are, what share are one-star, whether the company replies to criticism, and whether the reviews were invited by the company or left unprompted. Trustpilot shows all of this on each profile. Ours, for example, shows 73 reviews in the last 12 months, 90% of all reviews at five stars and 5% at one star, a reply to every negative review, and a note that we have not been inviting customers to review us recently, so the reviews are unprompted. Most useful of all, read what reviewers describe: the specific service they bought, what went well and what did not.
The review that best sums up the advice in this article came from a landlord who has let a London property through us since 2022. Mark Low wrote on Trustpilot on 8 October 2026 that they were initially hesitant about an online model with no high street office, so they compared our "service, attitude, rates and operating model with a few 'High street' agencies" before deciding. His advice to other landlords: "Every agent's model has pros and cons so do ask questions and decide yourself what works best for you."
Other recent reviews describe the parts of the process that matter most to a landlord letting for the first time. Georgina James praised the team member who "processed two lots of tenants for two separate flats", and Gordon Yeoman found it "refreshing to deal with them compared to some of the bigger companies out there". Tenants review us too, and their experience counts, since a smooth process for applicants is part of what gets a property let quickly.
Two landlord commentators have written about Hello Neighbour, and in both cases you should know their connection to us before weighing what they say.
Suzanne Smith runs The Independent Landlord website and YouTube channel, and has been an independent non-executive director of Hello Neighbour since May 2025, which she discloses in her review of our Get Rented platform (31 August 2026). She paid full price, let her property within seven days, and concluded she would use Get Rented again in preference to OpenRent's Rent Now, which cost £128 with Rightmove against our £59. She also listed what she would like improved, including having to set viewing availability in advance and an online rent valuation she found inaccurate for her area. Referencing through Hello Neighbour now costs £30 per applicant or guarantor.
The Property Investment Project, written under the byline "The Landlord", describes Hello Neighbour as "a decent option" for landlords wanting something newer and cheaper than OpenRent and says "there is currently no better deal on the market" for this kind of service, in its article on our listing packages. The author is a Hello Neighbour affiliate partner (he is also an OpenRent affiliate), offers his readers a discount code, and says he has not yet used our service himself.
Both relationships are disclosed on their own sites, and we think you should apply the same test to any recommendation you read, including ours: who is saying it, and what do they get from it?
Choosing a letting service is a small decision with a long tail, because the terms you sign shape every tenancy that follows. Compare the price of the job you actually need, read the terms before you commit, and give more weight to detailed reviews from landlords who have done what you are about to do than to any headline score. Then, as Mark Low put it, ask questions and decide what works best for you.
If you would like to ask us those questions, our team is available by phone and email, and you can build your advert free before deciding. See Get Listed and Get Rented.
The best way to find a tenant: quality first. The best way to find a tenant quickly: make the first week count. How to find a tenant yourself and let your property without an agent. OpenRent vs Hello Neighbour: how the self-letting market is evolving. Hello Neighbour's lettings packages. Self-letting a property.