August and Tenarize
August does compliance checklists too, and it is a fraction of the price. What am I paying for?
Of everything Tenarize is compared with, August overlaps most. It is UK-built, it runs step-by-step compliance checklists covering gas safety, EPC, EICR, deposit protection, prescribed information, Right to Rent and alarms, it has a real tenant portal with maintenance reporting, and it reminds you by push, email and SMS before a document expires.
It is also considerably cheaper — free for two tenancies, and £14.99 a month for twenty where Tenarize is £75. There is no way to write this page that makes that go away, so it is stated first and the rest of the page has to earn its keep against it.
Everything below was read off August's own website on 15 September 2026. Prices change — check theirs before deciding. England only — Scotland and Wales are different regimes.
What August does that Tenarize does not
None of this is a setup for a counter-argument. If these are the things that matter most to you, the rest of this page will not change your mind, and it should not.
It is dramatically cheaper, and the gap widens with the portfolio
Free for two tenancies with no time limit. £8.99 a month for five against Tenarize's £15. £14.99 for twenty against Tenarize's £75 — five times the price for the same number of properties. £29.99 for unlimited. If cost is the deciding factor at any size above a couple of tenancies, this is not a close call.
A free tier that does not expire
Two tenancies, one bank account, income and expenses. Tenarize has no free tier at all — a month free and a refund window, which is not the same thing and should not be presented as one.
It reads your bank account
Open Banking through Plaid matches incoming rent to the right tenancy automatically, including partial and late payments. Tenarize does not connect to a bank account at all, so it cannot tell you a payment arrived by any route other than the one it collected.
Native apps, SMS reminders, and MTD on paid plans
iOS and Android rather than a responsive website, expiry reminders by SMS as well as push and email, and MTD reporting included on Growth and above. Tenarize is web-only, emails rather than texts, and does not file with HMRC.
Tenarize and August, as published
What each company says on its own website. Not a verdict, and not a feature count — a record of two price lists and two sets of claims on one date.
| Tenarize | August | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | None — one month free, full refund inside 3 months | Yes — 2 tenancies, no time limit |
| Price, 5 tenancies or properties | £15/month, no VAT added | £8.99/month |
| Price, 20 tenancies or properties | £75/month | £14.99/month |
| Above 20 | £75 plus £1/month per extra property | £29.99/month, unlimited |
| Compliance checklist | Gas, EICR, EPC, alarms, deposit, prescribed information, RRA sheet, Right to Rent | Gas, EPC, EICR, deposit protection, prescribed information, Right to Rent, alarms |
| Expiry reminders | Email and in-app, renewal bookable from the reminder | Push, email and SMS |
| Rent | Collects by Bacs Direct Debit, no commission, to your own Stripe account | Detects — matches incoming payments via Open Banking (Plaid) |
| Tenant portal | Yes | Yes — iOS, Android and web, free for tenants |
| Maintenance request tracking | Yes | Yes — tenants report in the app |
| Inventory and inspection reports | Room by room, photos, signed by both sides at both ends | 8 blank templates to fill in yourself |
| E-signed tenancy agreements | Generated and e-signed by both sides | Not advertised |
| Supplier list | Real local tradespeople, filtered and mapped | Not advertised |
| Audit trail | Export per tenancy, for a dispute or tribunal | Document activity tracking — who viewed what |
| Section 8 notice periods | 16 grounds, earliest valid expiry, warning when a date falls short | Not advertised |
| MTD for Income Tax | Via FreeAgent, which files. Tenarize does not file | MTD reporting on paid plans |
| Bank reconciliation | No | Open Banking via Plaid |
| Apps | Responsive web | iOS and Android |
On Tenarize not having a free tier
There is no free tier, and that is deliberate. All three plans are the same product — the same compliance tracking, the same tenant portal, the same inventories, the same e-signed agreements, the same audit trail, the same support. The only thing the price changes is how many properties it covers.
A free tier is a smaller version of a product, and a landlord with one property would be on the smaller version permanently. Tenarize is built for one to twenty properties, so one property is the size it was designed around rather than the size it tolerates. What replaces a free tier here is a month free and a full refund inside three months if no tenancy is active.
What Tenarize adds
Read off augustapp.com on 15 September 2026. This is a narrower list than on the other comparison pages, because August covers more of the same ground than anything else here.
Detecting rent and collecting rent are different problems
August watches your bank account and tells you what arrived. That is genuinely useful and Tenarize does not do it. But it only works on money that turned up: if a tenant simply does not pay, Open Banking reports the absence rather than doing anything about it, and you are back to asking.
Tenarize collects. The tenant sets up a Bacs Direct Debit mandate and the rent is taken on the due date into the landlord's own Stripe account, with no commission and no cut of what your tenants pay you. Both sides see the same position — due, overdue and by how many days, paid, or still clearing.
The checklist item and the deadline underneath it
August's checklist names prescribed information, which most products do not, and that is a point in their favour rather than against. What their pages do not describe is the arithmetic: that the duty runs 30 days beginning with the day the deposit was received, which makes the last lawful day receipt plus 29 rather than 30, or that discharging it late is still a breach the tenant can claim on.
Tenarize tracks both deposit limbs against that deadline, counted the way section 213 counts it, names whichever is outstanding, reports one done late as the breach it is, and warns you when an outstanding duty would block a possession order on every ground but 7A and 14.
A blank template is not an inventory
August provides inventory sheets, check-in forms and inspection checklists as documents to fill in. That is a real head start on a blank page. It is not what an adjudicator is looking at, which is the condition of a specific room at two points in time, evidenced and agreed by both parties.
Room-by-room capture with photographs, signed by both sides at move-in and again at move-out, held against the tenancy with an audit trail you can export for the hearing.
Ending a tenancy is its own body of law
Nothing on August's pages addresses what happens when a tenancy has to end against the tenant's wishes — which since 1 May 2026 means section 8, on one or more statutory grounds, with a notice period set by whichever ground is longest.
Sixteen section 8 grounds with their statutory minimum notice periods, the earliest valid expiry worked from the ones you cite, and a warning naming the ground and the date if you set an expiry shorter than one allows. You can run it yourself on the free calculator without an account.
The reminder does not become a booking
Push, email and SMS will all tell you the gas certificate lapses in six weeks. None of them finds you a Gas Safe engineer, which is the part that makes people late.
From sixty days out Tenarize offers to book the renewal from the reminder: it picks the right trade from your own supplier list of real local tradespeople, gives you the number, drafts the email, and tracks the visit as a job you can put the invoice on.
When August is the better choice
There is a version of this page that leaves this section out. It would be a worse page, and you would find all of it out later anyway.
Price is the deciding factor, at almost any size
Free for two tenancies, £8.99 for five, £14.99 for twenty. Against £15, £15 and £75 that is not a marginal difference and no feature list makes it one. If the budget decides, August wins and this page is not going to argue you out of it.
You want your bank account read
Open Banking reconciliation is a real capability Tenarize does not have. If most of your rent arrives by standing order from tenants you trust, matching it automatically may be worth more to you than collecting it.
You want MTD reporting in the same product
Included on their paid plans. Tenarize does not file, and the FreeAgent route means a second subscription unless you already have one.
You work from your phone
Native iOS and Android against a responsive website, and SMS reminders where Tenarize emails. If you do this job in a hallway rather than at a desk, that is a daily difference rather than a spec-sheet one.
Answers, in plain terms
Is August cheaper than Tenarize?
Yes, at every size, and by a wide margin above a couple of tenancies. August is free for two, £8.99 a month for five and £14.99 for twenty; Tenarize is £15 for one to five properties, £35 for six to ten and £75 for eleven to twenty, with no VAT added. At twenty that is roughly five times. VAT treatment is not stated on August's pricing page, so the real gap may be slightly narrower.
Does August collect the rent?
It detects it. Their features page describes connecting to your bank account through Open Banking with Plaid and matching incoming payments to the correct tenancy, including partial and late ones. Tenarize collects by Bacs Direct Debit on a mandate the tenant sets up, paid into the landlord's own Stripe account with no commission. Both are useful; they solve different halves of the problem.
They both do compliance checklists. What is actually different?
Less than on any other comparison here, and August's checklist covers prescribed information, which many do not. The differences are in what sits underneath: the deposit deadline counted as section 213 counts it, reporting a duty discharged late as a breach rather than as done, the section 215 bar on a possession order while one is outstanding, and section 8 notice periods by ground.
Does August do inventories?
It provides templates — inventory sheets, check-in forms and inspection checklists as documents you complete yourself. Tenarize captures the inventory room by room with photographs and gets it signed by both sides at move-in and move-out, which is the form the evidence needs to be in if a deduction is ever disputed.
Can I use both?
You could, but they overlap far more than Tenarize and a bookkeeping product do, so you would be paying twice for checklists, reminders and a tenant portal. This is more genuinely a choice than most comparisons on this site.
A month free, and your existing tenancies come with you
"Import existing tenancy" skips the vetting you already did years ago and keeps the certificates, which are the part worth carrying across. £15 a month for one to five properties, no commission on rent, and a full refund inside three months if no tenancy is active.