The 7 Best Alternatives to Airbnb

Caroline Morse Teel is the Managing Editor for SmarterTravel Media. Follow her adventures around the world on Instagram @TravelWithCaroline.

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Airbnb has become the default term for a vacation rental, but if you’re only searching for houses on Airbnb, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Plenty of other vacation rental platforms have sprung up to offer all kinds of accommodations. So whether you’re looking for a luxury villa or family-friendly pad to rent, there’s a site out there that can help you find it. Here are the best Airbnb alternatives for vacation rentals.

Tripping.com

Don’t want to waste your time searching multiple vacation rental sites to find the perfect property? Tripping.com lets you look at options from HomeAway, VRBO, Wimdu, Booking.com and more to give you the most choice with the least amount of work. Tripping will display hotel rooms as well as rental houses, or you can filter by accommodation type (or get super specific by looking for castles or boats to stay in.)

Booking.com

You can search for all kinds of properties on Booking.com, from high-end hotels to luxury tents. There are a surprising amount of vacation rentals available on Booking.com, and you may find more options on here for international bookings than you might on other vacation rental sites.

VRBO

VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owner) is very similar to Airbnb, but retains one key feature that Airbnb eliminated—the ability to sort by price. VRBO’s search is very easy to use, and if you want to be ultra-confident about a property before you book, you can even tour some vacation rentals virtually.

Plum Guide

Been burned by bad vacation rentals before? You can book with confidence on the Plum Guide, knowing that every property listed has been evaluated for quality. The Plum Guide experts review every house to make sure they meet the site’s standards, assess each host’s reliability, and monitor guest feedback. For the best quality homes, look for Plum Guide award-winners, which have passed a 150-criteria Plum Test. The Plum Guide sends a “Home Critic” to every award candidate to measure things like WiFi speed and noise levels in the bedroom, as well to evaluate criteria like design and comfort.

Sonder

Want the space and amenities of a vacation rental (like a fully-stocked kitchen) but the guaranteed quality and professionalism of a hotel? Sonder, a startup that leases and manages its own apartment rentals, is run like a hotel but offers luxury apartment living. Since Sonder’s properties are licensed as hotels, they’re a great Airbnb alternative in destinations where short-term rentals are illegal.

Kid & Coe

Computer screen displaying kidandcoe.com — guteksk7 | Adobe Stock and Kid&Coe

If you’re traveling with kids, you know how hard it can be to find a family-friendly rental—whether that means childproofed outlets or a game room to keep the teenagers entertained. Founder Zoie Kingsbery Coe created Kid & Coe to solve that dilemma after she struggled with finding kid-friendly properties when she traveled.

The carefully-curated properties on Kid & Coe are fully-stocked with toys and other family amenities, and you can filter your search by things that are important to you, like changing tables or baby monitors.

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