STRHours alternatives: when to pay for something else

By Max Medvedev · 6 Aug 2026

The short answer

If hours capture is your only gap, STRHours already solves it, and the free tier costs nothing. Move to REPSLog for a portfolio or the 750-hour route, DeductFlow if expenses and mileage matter as much as hours, RentReel if you need real books. Otherwise a pricier tool buys you very little.

What STRHours already does well

The free tier is $0 forever: 5 hours of tracking, one property, iOS and Android, no card. Paid is $14.99/month or $149/year. Prices checked on strhours.com on 6 August 2026 — confirm before buying.

Three of its features do real work.

Voice logging. The failure mode in participation records is not bad arithmetic, it is not writing anything down at the time. Speaking an entry after a turnover removes the friction that produces April reconstructions.

Booking-platform sync. It connects to Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com and iCal and captures guest communications into the log automatically. That is evidence arriving without a decision to record it — and guest messages are exactly the independent material that makes an entry credible rather than assertive. What the Tax Court actually looks at is corroboration, not volume.

Spouse and third-party hours. The 100-hour test asks whether you did more than any other single individual, usually the cleaner. Recording only your own hours answers half the question. The comparison is the test.

Around those: per-property tracking, 100-hour and 500-hour threshold options, calendar sync, and CPA-ready PDF exports with timestamped entries and voice transcripts. Its stated scope is hours tracking only, not bookkeeping.

The question that decides this page

Is hours capture your gap, or is something else the gap? Almost every wasted subscription comes from answering that wrong.

Confirm each on the vendor's own site; prices move.

REPSLog, for a portfolio or the 750-hour route

REPSLog runs on web, iOS, Android and tablet with multi-device sync, AI-assisted logging with auto-completion, speech-to-text, a live timer, calendar sync, document attachments, import and export, custom goals and a ChatGPT plugin. It tracks multiple properties, long-term and short-term, and it tracks participants. Starter is $149.99/year or $10/month, Premium $199.99/year, with a 14-day free trial.

The reason to move is the design assumption, not the feature count. REPSLog is aimed at the 750-hour real estate professional test as much as the short-term rental route. If you hold several properties and mix long-term with short-term, one log covering the whole portfolio against a 750-hour goal is a different job from tracking one rental to 100 hours. The two routes are not interchangeable.

Document attachments matter here too: on a portfolio, the receipts and invoices that corroborate hours multiply fast.

DeductFlow, if expenses and mileage matter too

Free covers one property, 50 expenses a year and 20 mileage entries. Pro is $24/month or $199/year. You get a 100-hour material participation tracker, expense categorisation across the IRS categories, mileage logging with a business-use percentage, home office under the actual method, cost-segregation documentation and depreciation tracking, and a CPA-ready PDF export. Web, plus a mobile companion app.

Its own site states the boundary: it is "a record-keeping tool only", "not a bookkeeping or Schedule E preparation tool", and it "does not give tax advice". That is worth knowing before you buy, not after. If you are driving to the property regularly and your accountant wants documentation rather than finished books, the mileage and expense side is the reason to move.

RentReel, if the books are the real problem

RentReel generates a Schedule E, and pulls figures out of a mortgage 1098 or a PDF statement. It also carries a REPS 750-hour tracker, the section 469 material participation tests and an hours reconstruction wizard, so hours do not get worse. Around that: a W-9 vault with 1099-NEC preparation, read-only CPA share links, multi-LLC, occupancy-tax passthrough, a cost-segregation estimator, mileage auto-attribution, Worth knowing before you buy: almost everything arrives as a file you upload rather than a live connection. Their integrations page lists one automatic sync — Uplisting, by OAuth — while Hospitable, Guesty, Hostaway, OwnerRez, Lodgify, every listing channel and every bank are CSV imports, with AI reading PDF statements. Direct PMS APIs are marked Q3 2026 and a Plaid bank connection late 2026. So monthly uploads are the workflow today. Web. Starter $9.99/month or $99/year up to three properties, Pro $39/month or $390/year unlimited, Pro+ Tax $89/month or $890/year, Business $99/month.

Move here when the money is the mess — a 1099-K that does not match the deposits, several properties, an accountant asking for a ledger.

If hours are the only gap, moving up buys little

This is the part a comparison page usually skips.

STRHours at $149/year already logs in real time, captures guest communications, records the person you have to out-work, and exports timestamped entries. Spending more does not by itself make those entries more credible. What decides whether a log holds is when it was written and what it can be tied to — Windham held because the entries were made as the work happened; Sezonov failed on a log assembled afterwards. Neither turned on software.

So spend the money when your problem has actually changed shape: a second and third property, a long-term rental in the mix, a cost-segregation study, or a set of books nobody can reconcile. Not because the tracker you have is cheap.

What you can use here today, free

Our hours log is not open yet, so if real-time capture is what you need this season, one of the products above is the answer.

Free and live now: the estimator, which models a full year on the real rules and opens every figure into the rule and citation behind it; the material participation checker for the seven tests; the average-stay calculator; and the participation log template, with the columns the case law asks for and no email wall.

The full landscape sits on the software comparison hub.