Top Free Best Rental Listing Sites

Rental listing sites online can help increase exposure to renters so that landlords can get their properties in front of thousands of more potential tenants.

Tenants today are mostly using online tools to find a home for rent. This is one of the main reasons why landlords today need to be using the best rental listing sites to gain maximum exposure and get vacancies filled fast with qualified renters.

There are many benefits to using an online rental listing site especially because online tools are the number one way renters look for homes. And one of the biggest benefits to using an online rental listing site is the massive increase in marketing exposure. A lot of rental listing sites use some sort of syndication software to post your listing not on just the one rental listing site but on many other major real estate rental listing sites.

You can save a lot of time and money by reaching way more potential tenants faster and by getting your vacant property rented quicker. The best rental listing site makes it easier to maximize leads from qualified tenants.

There’s no shortage of listing sites for landlords to post their rentals when it comes to marketing and filling vacancies. But with popular rental listing sites like Zillow having moved to a paid model recently, more and more landlords and property managers are looking for the best rental listing sites that are also free including social media to list their next property. In this blog, we’ll make a list of the top free and best rental listing websites.

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Top 9 best free rental listing sites

1. Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace is completely free and it is a great platform that allows you to have your rental listings seen by a huge and, most importantly a relevant audience. Facebook Marketplace is an amazing free rental listing site especially considering that almost everybody has a Facebook account, it is one of the most convenient platforms to advertise your rentals.  

Facebook does not just advertise your rental listing to a user’s Facebook News Feed, Facebook marketplace instead influences buyers and there is much less resistance to your sales messaging.  As a free rental listing site, it utilizes Interest-based targeting, showing your rental listings to tenants who have been searching for apartments.  

The process of advertising your rental listings on Marketplace can be made even easier with automation tools that integrate with Facebook. Such tools automatically list all your rental properties on Facebook Marketplace. Allowing you to automate the entire process and saving time. Posting Facebook marketplace rental listings for a large and relevant target audience has never been easier.

Features

• Upload a detailed description with multiple images
• Interest-based targeting
• Messenger application to respond to tenant's inquiries

Pricing

• Free to upload rental listings

Pros

• Rental listings seen by a huge and relevant audience
• Huge daily traffic
• Influences buyers to make a purchase directly  
• Responding to tenant's is simple with Messenger

Cons

• Not highly regulated

2. Realtor.com

Realtor.com is mostly considered as a free rental listing site for buying and selling homes rather than renting. However, it is also one of the best free rental listing sites to advertise and manage rental listings for free.

Landlords who post rental listings on Realtor.com are guaranteed to receive a dozen inquiries within two weeks making this free rental listing site an amazing resource to reduce vacancies fast. Realtor.com only allows property managers and owners to post rental listings. The free rental listing site’s interface is a little more complicated and much less attractive than other listing sites but it provides a great and simple search feature for price and location.

Features

• Advertise rental listings
• Manage rental listings
• Create custom listings
• Screen tenants
• Schedule showings

Pricing

• Realtor.com is a free rental listing site

Pros

• Reduce vacancies fast
• This free rental listing site also partners with Avail

• Great lead quality

Cons

• Only property managers and owners can post rental listings.
• Interface is complicated
  

3. Apartments.com

Apartments.com is a great free rental listing site that attracts about 35 million prospective tenants each month — and the platform itself advertises close to 1.1 million listings at any given time. Meaning that your chance of attracting a tenant to your rental listing is quite high making it the top rental listing site.  

As the name suggests this free rental listing site is most popular for and mostly caters to apartment complexes, Apartments.com does have sections dedicated to renting homes, condos, and townhomes. But the greatest traffic comes from tenants that are looking for apartments.

Apartments.com parent company also owns several other free rental listing sites, such as ForRent.com, Apartment Finder, Home Living and Apartamentos.com which allows for any rental listing on Apartments.com to be syndicated with these other websites. We recommend this listing site because of how it amplifies the reach of each of your rental listing.

Features

• National search feature
• Rental listings syndicate with other websites
• Sections dedicated to renting homes, condos, and townhomes.

Pricing

• It is absolutely free to list a unit on this rental listing

• Premium listing feature boosts listing in a huge ad

Pros

• Free rental listing site
• Attracts about 35 million prospective tenants each month
• National search feature  

Cons

• Cumbersome back end to make corrections or changes to a listing
• Properties can only have a complimentary basic listing for a short time

4. Craigslist

When listing your rental property, a free rental listing site like Craigslist may not be your first choice. However, Craigslist has been around for years much before any other rental listing sites came up and is one of the best-known options among tenants for finding a rental.

Craigslist much like Facebook Marketplace is an open marketplace that is set up by city. You can upload rental listings for free on Craigslist, and from first hand experience you will get a ton of leads.  

However, this free rental listing site is also one of the least regulated platforms. While the rental listings on Craigslist are free and very easy to create, unfortunately, these listings can also subject to a high number of low-quality tenants and scammers.

The solution to getting a huge number of leads from Craigslist would be to use a property management software that thoroughly screens the tenants before a showing.  And to make your rental listing show at the top on Craigslist, make sure to post consistently and utilize their filter options as much as possible.

Features

• Open marketplace that is set up by city
• Organize ads based on location  
• Upload a detailed description and images in each rental listing

Pricing

• Craigslist as a rental listing site is completely free to use

Pros

• One of the most popular rental listing sites  
• Get a ton of leads
• Rental listings on Craigslist are free and easy to create

Cons

• High number of low-quality tenants and scammers

5. Cozy

Cozy is a popular free rental listing site for rentals, but it is more popular among landlords because of the property management tools that it offers. Posting rental listings on Cozy is completely free, but there are some advanced features that you have to pay for.

With this free rental listing site landlords can list, market, lease, and manage their property all in one place. Cozy’s free rental listings can be syndicated and marketed through Doorsteps.com and Realtor.com. It provides you with a custom link that you can share on your social media and email.  

From a user's perspective while Cozy is an overall great free rental listing site, its downfall is the fact that it's not known for tenants looking to just rent a room. This leaves out a large demographic of tenants.  

Features

• Make rental listings
• Market rental listings
• Lease your rental property
• Property management

• Syndication with other rental listing sites
• Custom link to share on social media

Pricing

• Posting rental listings on Cozy is free
• Advanced features are not included in the free version

Pros

• Entire lead-to-lease process in one place
• Syndicated and marketed through Doorsteps.com and Realtor.com
• Easy to share on social media  
• Easy to use

Cons

• Have to pay for advanced features
• Background checks are not detailed

6. RentDigs

RentDigs is one of the best free rental listing sites which shows you a marketplace of different rental properties that are available. It is great because it was created by landlords for landlords and has great features especially the fact that you can see the number of renters who view your rental listing on the site. This allows you to have a very clear idea of how well your rental listing is actually doing.

Posting rental listings is absolutely free for both homes and apartments and each rental listing gets syndicated to Oodle, Trovit, and RentJungle. While it is a good option for a free listing site in my opinion it is not the best overall because of its lack of landlord tools including tenant screening.

Features

• Shows a marketplace of different rental properties that are available
• See the number of renters who view your rental listing

• Syndicated with other platforms

Pricing

• Posting rental listings on Cozy is free

Pros

• See number of renters who view your property

• Gets syndicated to Oodle, Trovit, and RentJungle.

Cons

• No other landlord tools  

7. RentBerry

With millions of monthly users on this free rental listing site RentBerry is a great option for landlords looking to post rental listings for a wider audience. As a free rental listing site, it integrates all the rental listings on its site to partner websites such as Doorsteps, Oodle.com, Realtor.com, and Zumper.

Landlords can create and post a basic rental listing for free on RentBerry which includes basic and essential property information, monthly price, and security deposit details. There is also an option to upgrade to RentBerry’s premium listing which can help to increase your rental property’s visibility.

Features

• Integrates rental listings to other sites

• Create and post basic rental listing
• screen tenants
• Sign rental contracts
• Receive online payment
• Tenant tracking

• Vacancy management

Pricing

• Basical rental listing posts are free on this rental listing site
• You can also upgrade to RentBerry premium to increase your rental listing’s reach.

Pros

• Integrates to Doorsteps, Oodle.com, Realtor.com, and Zumper
• Most processes are available online

Cons

• Tenants not verified in each location
• More advanced features to increase visibility are paid

8. Oodle

What makes Oodle a great choice for one of the best free rental listing sites is that similar to Craigslist it is a classified ad marketplace. Here you can create rental property listings for many potential tenants to find.  

Though the site not rental-focused but it is organized by location which helps people in that location find your rental listing. Meaning that someone looking through information about a particular area will discover your rental listing.

Oodle is great because of how simple and quick it is to use. Like many other rental listing sites, you do not need to go through dozens of pages just filling out information about your property. But Oodle is not able to match up to its competitors because of several reasons, most importantly because of its outdated website that does not integrate with other free listing sites.

Features

• Classified ad marketplace
• Create rental property listings
• Organized by location

Pricing

• Free to post rental listings

Pros

• Quick and easy to use
• Filling out property information is simple
• Location focused.  
• The entire process is streamlined

Cons

• No syndication with other rental listing sites
• Outdated design
• Photo quality is low

9. PadMapper

What makes this a great free rental listing site is how easy it is to use! It takes away the hassle of apartment hunting and it is just as easy and convenient for landlords to get apartments rented and keep track of tenants.  

In my opinion Padmapper is a great resource and with all that it offers it can definitely match up to larger rental listing sites such as Apartments.com. But this free rental listing site lacks regulation and hinders a great user experience.

Features

• This free rental listing site allows tenants to search a map by zooming in to look for rentals in specific areas.
• Filters that allow tenants to hide any rentals that don’t match their criteria

Price

• It is completely free to add listings to PadMapper  

Pros

• Search for specific apartments with filters

Cons

• Much less regulated
• Low-quality tenants

10. Walk Score

The main aspect of this free rental listing site is to rank homes and apartment buildings based on walking proximity to attractions and other basic necessities such as grocery stores. This rental listing site targets people who don’t have a car and still need to get around for basic needs.

Properties receive a Walk Score according to what their proximity to highly-desirable places is. The closer the better. Yet one issue that users insist with Walk Score is that it is not entirely accurate or a reliable measure of walkability in many neighborhoods.

Features

• Rank neighborhoods and properties based on their walkability

Price

• Free to use Walk Score

Pros

• Find properties that have short commutes and are close to amenities  

Cons

• Cannot list properties on this free rental listing site directly unless you own 15 or more buildings.

11. Move.com

This free rental listing site was previously known only as Realtor.com. This site is thoroughly integrated into all the various Realtor products, and the information that landlords and tenants get from the free rental site is incredible.

Features

• The site is divided into different categories and these categories
• Categories can be further subdivided to help tenants find exactly what they are looking for.
• There are many useful articles that help tenants make the right applications and decisions which helps landlords find the right tenants.

Price

• Free for landlords to list rentals

Pros

• Many property types available
• Reliable free rental listing site
• Helpful articles and information
• Easy and simple to use mobile app

Cons

• Details on rental listing are not thorough  

12. Doorsteps.com

Doorsteps used to be the only free rental listing site that helped renters and landlords find each other in a rental marketplace. However now this free rental listing site works and syndicates with other large listing sites and marketplaces to help increase the exposure for each rental property.

Features

• You cannot list directly on Doorsteps.com  
• To list on this free rental listing site, you would list through Cozy.  

Price

• This rental listing site is free to use for landlords

Pros

• Gets you exposure many other listing sites as well
• Tenants can sort listings by type and specific area

Cons

• No advanced features other that what is available on Cozy  

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