Static pricing is the most expensive default setting in hosting. A calendar priced at one flat nightly rate is overpriced on the Tuesdays nobody wants and underpriced on the Saturdays everybody does, and both mistakes cost you — the first in empty nights, the second in money left on the table. Dynamic pricing tools exist to fix exactly that, and in the US market three names dominate the conversation: PriceLabs, Wheelhouse, and Beyond.
I run pricing tools for client properties as part of my job, so this comparison is written from the operations chair: what each tool publishes as its price, where each one is strongest, and — the part most reviews skip — the handful of settings that determine whether any of them makes you money. One note before the table stakes: all published prices below are the vendors' US rates as of mid-2026. Pricing pages change; confirm before you subscribe.
What a Dynamic Pricing Tool Actually Does
All three tools work the same way at the core. They read market data — active listings around you, booking pace, seasonality, day-of-week patterns, local events — and reprice your calendar daily (or more often), pushing the new rates to Airbnb, Vrbo, and your other channels either directly or through your property management software. You set the guardrails: a base price, a minimum you'll never go below, a maximum, and rules for things like last-minute discounts and far-future premiums.
That last sentence is the important one. The tool proposes; your settings decide. Two hosts running the same tool on identical properties can end the year thousands of dollars apart based purely on how they configured base price and minimums. If you haven't read our complete guide to dynamic pricing strategy, that's the companion piece to this one — it covers the strategy; this covers the tools.
PriceLabs: The Power Tool
PriceLabs publishes a rate of $19.99 per listing per month for US hosts, with sliding discounts that kick in from the second listing onward — the per-unit cost drops substantially as portfolios grow. The company also offers an alternative billing model at 1% of booking revenue for hosts who prefer a usage-based bill, and a 30-day free trial on the dynamic pricing plan. Its Market Dashboards product — market-level supply, demand, and rate data — is a separate add-on at $9.99 per month.
Where it's strongest: control. PriceLabs exposes more knobs than either competitor — date-specific overrides, occupancy-based adjustments, last-minute and orphan-gap rules, and minimum-stay automation that changes your stay requirements by season and lead time. That last feature matters more than most hosts realize; minimum-stay settings are a revenue lever in their own right, and PriceLabs treats them as a first-class citizen. (Our guide to minimum-stay strategy explains why that lever deserves attention.)
Where it's weakest: the same place. The interface is dense, the learning curve is real, and a host who sets forty customizations without understanding them can underperform a host who set five good ones. PriceLabs rewards people who enjoy dashboards. If that sentence made you tired, keep reading.
Wheelhouse: The Strategy Dial
Wheelhouse publishes two plans: Pro Flat at $19.99 per listing per month, and Pro Flex at 1% of booking revenue with a $2.99 monthly minimum, billed when the reservation lands. Discounts apply at 50+ listings. The Flex option is genuinely useful for seasonal properties — a cabin that books eight months a year pays close to nothing in the dead months, where a flat-fee tool bills you every month regardless.
Where it's strongest: usability and strategy framing. Wheelhouse's signature control is a risk dial — conservative to aggressive — that shifts the whole pricing posture in one move. Conservative fills the calendar earlier at lower rates; aggressive holds out for higher rates and accepts more empty nights. That one dial maps to a real revenue-management decision most hosts never consciously make, and making it consciously is half the value of the tool. The interface is the cleanest of the three, and the recommendations come with visible reasoning.
Where it's weakest: depth at the edges. Power users coming from PriceLabs will miss some of the granular automation. For a host with one to five listings who wants good pricing without a part-time hobby, that trade is usually worth making.
Beyond: The Set-and-Forget Veteran
Beyond — founded in 2013 as Beyond Pricing, the oldest of the three — prices as a percentage of bookings rather than a flat fee: its Growth plan is published at 1% of bookings, and the fee applies to everything the guest pays, including cleaning and extra-guest fees. A Pro tier at 1.25% adds owner dashboards and deeper market intelligence, and hosts can choose to be billed at booking or at check-in (the pay-on-stay option carries a higher rate). There's a 30-day free trial.
Where it's strongest: simplicity and alignment. You pay only when you get booked, which is easy to justify to yourself (or to owners, if you manage for others). Setup is fast, the recommendations are sensible out of the box, and the company has been pricing short-term rentals longer than anyone else on this list. Beyond has also expanded into adjacent products — a direct-booking site tool and channel syncing — for hosts who want one vendor for more of the stack.
Where it's weakest: the math at scale. One percent of bookings sounds small, but run it against your numbers: a listing grossing $60,000 a year pays roughly $600, versus $240 a year at a flat $19.99 monthly rate. Percentage pricing favors lower-grossing and seasonal listings; flat pricing favors high-grossing ones. This single calculation — your gross times 1% versus $240 — settles the pricing question for most hosts before features even enter the conversation.
All three tools produce a calendar that looks like this — higher weekends, event spikes, seasonal curves. The differences are in control depth, billing model, and how much attention they expect from you.
The Short Version, Side by Side
- PriceLabs — $19.99/listing/month (US) or 1% of revenue, sliding portfolio discounts. Deepest customization, minimum-stay automation, strong market dashboards as an add-on. Best for data-comfortable hosts and growing portfolios.
- Wheelhouse — $19.99/listing/month flat, or 1% of revenue with a $2.99 minimum. Cleanest interface, one honest strategy dial, flexible billing for seasonal properties. Best for hosts with a handful of listings who want clarity over knobs.
- Beyond — 1% of bookings (1.25% on Pro), applied to the full guest payment. Fastest to set up, longest track record, pay-only-when-booked alignment. Best for hosts who want to configure it once and look at it monthly.
What you should not do is agonize over the choice for weeks. All three are competent, all three offer free trials or low-commitment starts, and all three will outperform the static calendar you have today. Pick the one whose billing model fits your gross revenue, run the trial, and spend your saved agonizing time on the settings below — that's where the money actually is.
The Four Settings That Matter More Than the Tool
1. Base price. Every tool prices relative to a base you set, and most hosts set it by feel. Don't. Pull your last twelve months of booked rates, look at what comparable listings near you actually charge (not what they ask — what they get, which you can gauge by watching which dates disappear), and set the base to the defensible middle. A base set 20% too high makes every downstream recommendation 20% too high.
2. Minimum price. This is your floor for the worst Tuesday in your worst month, and it should be a business decision: your variable cost per night (cleaning amortization, utilities, wear, platform fees) plus a margin you can live with. Tools discount toward the floor when demand is thin; a floor set carelessly low is how hosts end up hosting $61 nights that cost them $70 to service.
3. Last-minute rules. How aggressively should the price drop as an empty date approaches? In a spontaneous drive-to market, steep last-minute discounting fills real demand. In a fly-to market where guests book months out, it mostly signals desperation to the few people looking. Match the rule to your market's real booking window — your reservation history shows you the median lead time.
4. Seasonal minimum stays. Two-night minimums in peak season fragment your calendar into unsellable one-night orphan gaps; loose minimums in shoulder season leave money on the table when a three-night guest would have taken the whole weekend. Tools like PriceLabs automate this; in the others, review it quarterly by hand. A market like Park City — where a February Saturday and an October Tuesday might be priced five times apart — is the extreme case, but every seasonal US market has a version of this problem.
Judge your pricing tool on revenue per available night — total revenue divided by every night the calendar was open, booked or not — never on ADR or occupancy alone. ADR flatters a host who priced too high and sat empty; occupancy flatters one who priced too low and sold out in February. RevPAN is the number that catches both mistakes. Write it down monthly for three months before the tool, then after. That's your honest before-and-after.
One Warning: Don't Let the Tool Fight Your Listing
A pricing tool optimizes within the demand your listing generates; it cannot create demand for a listing that photographs poorly or ranks badly. If your views are low, dynamic pricing will respond the only way it can — by cutting price — and you'll conclude the tool "keeps discounting." The tool isn't wrong; it's pricing the listing you gave it. Fix the cover photo, the reviews, and the content first, then let the tool price the stronger listing. Pricing is the last multiplier in the chain, not the first. If your tool connects through your property management software rather than directly, our PMS roundup covers which platforms play nicely with which pricing tools.
The Bottom Line
In 2026 the honest ranking is: PriceLabs for control and portfolios, Wheelhouse for clarity and seasonal flexibility, Beyond for simplicity and pay-per-booking alignment — at published US prices of $19.99 per listing monthly for the flat plans and around 1% of bookings for the usage-based ones. Any of the three beats a static calendar by more than it costs for the large majority of listings. The tool is the easy 80%; the base price, floor, last-minute rules, and minimum stays you configure are the 20% that decides whether "dynamic pricing" means dynamic revenue or just dynamic numbers.
If you'd rather have the configuration done by someone who does it weekly — settings, floors, seasonal reviews, and the listing-quality work that makes pricing perform — that's part of Cavmir's listing optimization service. Either way: start the trial this week. The static calendar is costing you more than the subscription would.
