Comparison · Verified 2026-10-14

Santara AI vs Smoobu

Smoobu is cheaper than we are from the second door and simpler to start with. We are the one that runs the day after the booking: cleaning, maintenance, owner statements and the morning brief that Smoobu leaves to partner apps or to you.

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Choose Santara AI if…

You have people on the ground — cleaners, a villa manager, a handyman — and today they are organised in a WhatsApp group rather than in your software.
You want cleaning jobs assigned and ticked off, maintenance tickets with photos and a monthly owner statement in the same system as the calendar, without paying a second tool for each.
You would buy dynamic pricing anyway. Ours is in the plan; Smoobu's is €12.99 per property per month on top.
You operate in Vietnam or Indonesia and want dong or rupiah, a Vietnamese or Indonesian interface for your staff, and a morning brief before you open anything.

Choose Smoobu if…

Price is the decision and you run between two and twenty listings. Smoobu's monthly plan is lower than ours at every size from the second door, and its yearly and two-year discounts widen the gap.
You need a public API and webhooks to connect your own tools. Smoobu includes full API access on its standard plan; we have no public API.
You sell on Vrbo or on European portals we do not carry. Smoobu says over 100 channels on every plan; we connect 54.
You are in Europe and want guest invoicing, e-invoicing (on Teams Pro+) and guest registration with the authorities through a partner, all in a product built for that market.
You do your own cleaning or you already pay Turno or Properly and are happy there, so the operations half of this page does not apply to you.

The money questions

The money questions — Santara AI / Smoobu
Capability	Santara AI	Smoobu
No commission on channel bookingsAirbnb, Booking.com and every channel you sell on Why? On Professional Pre-Paid and Teams Pro+ Smoobu takes nothing on any booking, including direct ones. Only Flex, a cheaper plan you activate through their team, takes 0.9%. We take 0% on channel bookings and upsells and 3% on direct bookings through our own booking site, so on direct bookings Smoobu's standard plan is the better deal.	Yes	Yes
No per-reservation or booking feeA flat fee taken out of every stay Why? Pre-Paid and Teams Pro+ have no booking fee. Flex takes 0.9% of the gross value of bookings from connected channels and the booking engine in exchange for a lower monthly price, hence the partial mark.	Partial	Partial
No commission on guest upsellsLate checkout, transfers, breakfast	Yes	Yes
No onboarding or setup feeNothing to pay, for anyone	Yes	Yes
No annual contract or lock-inLeave any month and take your data Why? There is a monthly plan, and that is what we priced. Cancelling needs 30 days' notice and takes effect at the next renewal, so on a yearly or two-year plan the money is committed for that term.	Yes	Yes
Published price at every tierNo “contact sales” to find out what you pay Why? Smoobu publishes a calculator and a clear formula — €35 for the first property, €12 for each one after it, monthly — up to 20 properties. Above 20 they ask you to contact them for a personalised quote, which is why the cost table shows Quote only at 40. Every one of our tiers has a number on the pricing page.	Yes	Partial
Dynamic pricing without a per-property surchargeSeasonal and day-of-week rate plans included; ours stands down if you run PriceLabs Why? Smoobu Dynamic Pricing is an add-on at €12.99 per property per month (Teams Pro+ includes two months free). Our pricing rules are in every plan at no extra charge, and if you use PriceLabs we stand down for it. The two are not identical — theirs is driven by market data, ours by rules you set — but only one of them is on the invoice.	Yes	No

How it actually runs

How it actually runs — Santara AI / Smoobu
Capability	Santara AI	Smoobu
Proactive daily operations briefEvery arrival, departure, clean, upsell and problem — emailed to you before you ask Why? Smoobu's home screen shows bookings and revenue at a glance when you open it. Nothing arrives before you ask: no 6am list of arrivals, departures, unassigned cleans and open problems.	Yes	No
One-tap WhatsApp and Zalo staff plansEach cleaner's day, pre-written and shared to the app they already use in one tap, no new login Why? Smoobu's own help centre says it has no built-in cleaning task workflow: you cannot assign a clean to a cleaner or have them tick it off. The options it gives are a free read-only login, an iCal feed, or a partner app such as Turno, billed separately. Ours writes each cleaner's day and shares it to WhatsApp or Zalo in one tap.	Yes	No
Built for on-site teams, not solo desk hostsDesigned around housekeepers, drivers and villa managers Why? Read-only team logins are free and unlimited, scoped per property, with booking notifications per person — useful for a cleaner who needs to see turnovers. Anyone who needs to change something is a paid write-access seat. What is missing is the work itself: assignment, completion and a schedule of tasks.	Yes	Partial
Maintenance tickets with photo evidenceRaised, assigned, chased and closed per property Why? No native maintenance tickets. Smoobu points you to partners such as Properly and TIDY for maintenance and inspections, each with its own account and its own bill.	Yes	No
AI guest messaging with human approvalDrafted in your voice; nothing sends until you say so Why? Smoobu has AI suggested replies — you click a wand, review the draft and send it yourself — but its help centre says they are still rolling out and not on every account yet, and drafts are written in your account's language rather than the guest's (AI translation is a separate step). Ours drafts from the thread, the booking and the listing in the guest's language, on Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia, and you press Send.	Yes	Partial
Owner-ready statementsReports your villa owners can actually read Why? No owner statements. Smoobu gives owners a read-only login or an availability link, and its own property-manager guide notes that Analytics shows gross booking values, not payouts, and does not record channel commission. Ours produces the monthly statement — gross minus fees minus expenses — with a CSV export.	Yes	No
White-label for management companiesYour brand in front of your owners	No	No
Multi-currency and SE Asia operating realityLocal staff workflows, and prices and statements in IDR and VND Why? Smoobu connects Agoda and Trip.com, and you can set a currency per channel from around 30 options. It does not convert between them, we could not confirm dong or rupiah in its list, the interface has no Vietnamese or Indonesian, and the subscription is billed in euros. We bill and report in VND and IDR, and the people doing the work read the app in their own language.	Yes	Partial
Direct booking siteSeven templates built from listings you already imported, selling from the same synced calendar. Direct bookings carry a 3% commission. Why? Both of us include a direct booking website with your own domain. Smoobu's takes no commission on its standard plan; ours takes 3% on direct-site bookings.	Yes	Yes

What it costs at your size

What it costs at your size
Portfolio	Santara AI	Smoobu
1 door	$29 /mo	$39 /mo
6 doors	$154 /mo	$101 /mo
15 doors	$344 /mo	$212 /mo
40 doors	$794 /mo	Quote only
Commission on channel bookingsOn $20,000 of bookings a month	None	None

Software subscription only. Channel commission, payment processing and any optional add-ons are excluded on both sides. Our 3% commission applies only to direct bookings through our booking site and is not worked out here.
Competitor figures are the vendor's published rates at that portfolio size. Where a vendor does not publish one, the cell says Quote only rather than an estimate.
Our figures come from the published ladder on the pricing page. Prices shown in USD; readers in a local price book see their own currency there.

Smoobu is cheaper. Here is by how much

On monthly billing Smoobu's Professional Pre-Paid costs €35 for the first property and €12 for each one after it — in their own dollar display, about $39 for one door, $101 for six and $212 for fifteen. We are cheaper at one door only. From the second door Smoobu is lower, and at fifteen doors its monthly plan costs well over a hundred dollars a month less than ours. Pay yearly and they take another 10% off; two years, 20%.

Two things move that comparison, and both are worth checking against how you work. Smoobu's Dynamic Pricing is €12.99 per property on top: add it and Smoobu costs more than us at one, six and fifteen doors. And cleaning assignment, maintenance and owner reporting are not in Smoobu at all, so if you need them you are pricing Smoobu plus a partner app, not Smoobu alone.

"Smoobu does not assign cleaning jobs"

That is the heading of a section in Smoobu's own help centre, and it is fair of them to say it so plainly. A cleaner can get a free read-only login, a booking notification and a view of arrivals and departures. Nobody can be assigned a clean, nobody can mark it done, and the calendar shows bookings, not tasks. For assignment and checklists they send you to Turno, Doinn, Properly or TIDY, each signed up for and paid separately.

That is a sensible product decision for a host who cleans their own flat or has one trusted cleaner. It stops being one when you have eight villas, three housekeepers and a driver, and the day is decided in a WhatsApp group at 7am. That is the part of the job we built Santara AI around: the brief at 6am, each cleaner's day written and shared to WhatsApp or Zalo, the jobs ticked off, and the broken air-conditioner logged with a photo.

A European product, priced and built in euros

Smoobu is a Berlin company inside the HomeToGo group, and it shows in the right ways for a European host: invoices with your tax details, e-invoicing on Teams Pro+, tourist tax on direct bookings, guest registration with the authorities through a partner, and Vrbo and the European portals in its channel list.

For an operator in Đà Nẵng or Bali it shows differently. The subscription is billed in euros, prices are synced as plain numbers with no currency conversion, and the interface is not in Vietnamese or Indonesian. We are the opposite bet: dong and rupiah, a local-language app for your staff, WhatsApp and Zalo as the place work is handed out, and a support day that overlaps yours.

Where Smoobu is stronger

Every comparison page on this site carries this section. If one of these decides it for you, buy theirs.

Price. Smoobu's monthly plan is lower than ours at every size from two to twenty doors, and its yearly and two-year discounts lower it further. We have no annual prepay.
No commission on direct bookings. Smoobu's standard plan takes nothing on bookings through its website; ours takes 3% on direct-site bookings.
A public API with webhooks, included on the standard plan. We do not have a public API.
Channel reach. Smoobu says over 100 channels on every plan, including Vrbo, which we do not connect yet. We connect 54.
European compliance: guest invoices, e-invoicing on Teams Pro+, tourist tax and guest registration through partners, and a partner marketplace with years of integrations behind it.

Switching from Smoobu

Migration is free and we run it: properties, rooms, rates, availability, reservations and guest history.
Your Airbnb and Booking.com connections are re-established here; nothing is switched off on the Smoobu side until you have checked the calendars match.
Smoobu needs 30 days' notice and cancels at your next renewal, so time the move against your billing date. Our first three months are free, which covers running both side by side.
Month to month, no exit fee, full data export.

Questions people actually ask

Is Santara AI cheaper than Smoobu?

Usually not. At one door we are cheaper; from the second door Smoobu's monthly plan is lower, and at fifteen doors the gap is well over a hundred dollars a month. The picture changes if you would add Smoobu's Dynamic Pricing (€12.99 per property) or pay for a separate cleaning or maintenance app, because both are included here. The table above shows both prices at your size.

Does Smoobu have cleaning schedules and task management?

Not built in. Smoobu's help centre says it has no cleaning task workflow: cleaners can get a free read-only login and booking notifications, and assignment, checklists and completion come from partner apps such as Turno or Properly, paid separately. Santara AI assigns each clean, shares the day to WhatsApp or Zalo and records it done.

Does Smoobu have AI replies to guests?

It has AI suggested replies that you review and send yourself, but Smoobu says they are still rolling out and not on every account, and drafts are written in your account's language. Santara AI drafts every reply on Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia in the guest's language, from the thread, the booking and the listing, and nothing sends until you press Send.

Does Smoobu do owner statements?

No. Owners can be given a read-only login or an availability link, and Smoobu's Analytics shows gross booking values rather than payouts. If you manage for owners, Santara AI produces a monthly statement per owner — gross minus fees minus expenses — with a CSV export.

Is Smoobu good for hosts in Vietnam or Indonesia?

It works — it connects Agoda and Trip.com, and you can set a currency per channel. But it is billed in euros, does not convert currencies, has no Vietnamese or Indonesian interface, and leaves staff coordination to you. Santara AI is built for that market: dong and rupiah, local-language screens, and cleaning plans shared to WhatsApp or Zalo.

How long does moving from Smoobu take?

Most portfolios are live inside 24 hours, migrated by us at no cost. Check your Smoobu renewal date first: they need 30 days' notice and cancel at renewal.

Sources

Verified 2026-10-14

All product and company names are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification only. Competitor information is summarised in good faith from the sources listed above; confirm current terms with each provider before relying on it.