Your money stays with us until you have seen the place.
Most mid-term rentals in Bali and Da Nang are still arranged over WhatsApp and settled by bank transfer. You send two months up front to someone you have never met, and if the apartment is not the one in the photos, that is your problem. This is the part we are actually trying to fix.
From enquiry to check-out
You ask, the host says yes
You send dates and a short note about who you are. The host approves or declines. Nothing is charged while you are talking.
You pay the first month, and we hold it
First month plus our fee, charged to your card. The money sits with us. The host sees that it is there, which is what makes them hold the dates.
Your deposit is held, never handed over
We place a hold on your card for the deposit amount. It is not transferred to the host and it is not sitting in anyone's bank account. Nobody can spend it — including us.
You arrive and look around
You have 48 hours. If the place materially differs from the walkthrough you watched, you tell us and we refund you in full and rebook you — because we still have the money.
The host gets paid
48 hours after check-in, month one is released. Every following month is charged on the same date and paid straight through.
You leave, the hold is settled
The deposit hold stays in place after you check out until the deposit is settled. A host who wants to claim against it has to show us what was damaged, and you get to respond before anything is charged.
What we charge
Two numbers, and one of them is capped.
You, the guest
5%
Capped at the $400 equivalent
On a six-month stay that cap is the difference between a few hundred dollars and a few thousand — a long stay is closer to a lease than a hotel booking, and the fee should reflect that.
The host
0%
For a listing's first twelve months, then 3%
We would rather have supply than margin right now, and saying so is more honest than pretending it is permanent.
Why a cap at all?
A percentage fee makes sense on a weekend. On a six-month stay it stops being a service charge and starts being a tax on staying still. Our costs do not scale with your rent — a 180-day booking takes about as much work as a 30-day one — so the fee should stop growing at some point. It stops at $400.
What the monthly figure already includes
One number, and the parts it is made of.
A price is only transparent if you can see underneath it. Every listing here quotes one monthly figure, and the database derives that figure from its parts rather than accepting it from the host — so nobody can file an all-in price that disagrees with its own components. On a listing, each part is a line you can read.
Rent
The host's monthly rate, and the only part of the figure most sites show you.
Utilities
Included, or a ceiling the host guarantees, or their own estimate on a metered supply — the listing says which of the three, every time. Where it is a ceiling we quote the ceiling, so the bill can come in under it and cannot go over.
Mid-stay cleaning
Spread across the months rather than sprung as a line item at checkout.
Around that figure
The deposit is permission to charge rather than a transfer, which is why it is beside the monthly figure and not inside it — there is no account for it to sit in and nothing to send back. Our fee is the guest's, not the host's: it is added to what you pay rather than deducted from what they receive, so the two sides of the same booking see two different totals, and this is the difference.
Next to the alternatives
Our numbers come out of the code. Theirs come off their own help pages, or they are not published at all.
Every figure below that is not ours was read off that company's own help or pricing page, and the cell it sits in says which page and what day it was read. Nothing here came from a comparison site, a blog or a forum. Where a company publishes no figure there is no figure, and the cell says so — a hole you can see beats a number we cannot show you the source of.
The basis, because a comparison that hides its basis is worth nothing. We sell 30–180 day stays; these are each company's general published fee structures, because Airbnb's fee page names no separate rate for a long stay and the others publish no rate at all. Fee structures also differ by host type and by country — Airbnb runs two of them at once — so the cells describe the structure rather than flattening it into one number that would be wrong for somebody.
| Platform | What a guest pays the platform | What a host pays the platform |
|---|---|---|
| RemoteStayBoth figures come out of the same code that would do the charging, not out of a marketing page. Change one and this row changes with it. | 5% of the stay, and it stops at $400. That is the only thing added to the all-in monthly price. | 0% for a listing's first twelve months, 3% after that. Our guest fee is charged to the guest on top of your rent, never taken out of it. |
| AirbnbTwo fee structures, and which one applies is not the guest's choice. Its fee page names no separate rate for a long stay, so these are its general figures. | 14.1% to 16.5% of the booking subtotal under the split-fee structure, which Airbnb says varies and may be higher or lower on a given booking. Under its single-fee structure the whole fee comes out of the host's payout instead.As published by Airbnb, retrieved 2026-08-23 | Under the split-fee structure most hosts pay 3% and Airbnb says some pay more, with 4% for listings in Brazil and Mexico. Under the single-fee structure most hosts pay 15.5% and the rest typically 14% to 16%, and that structure is mandatory for some hosts rather than chosen.As published by Airbnb, retrieved 2026-08-23 |
| Booking.comIts partner help says the rate is in the agreement each property signs, so there is no published percentage to put here. | Not stated. Its own How we work page says the rates are set by the property and that you pay the cost of the stay plus any taxes and fees that apply; it names no guest service fee for accommodation anywhere on that page.As published by Booking.com, retrieved 2026-08-23 | A commission, paid after the guest checks out. Booking.com does not publish the rate: it says the exact percentage depends on your country, property type, and the agreement you signed.As published by Booking.com, retrieved 2026-08-23 |
| Furnished FinderTheir site refused us on 2026-08-23 — a 403 to two different clients, on every page we tried. Their pricing is quoted all over the web; none of those places is their site, so none of it is here. | We could not check. Their own site refused every request we made of it, and a figure from anywhere else is not one we will publish about somebody else. | We could not check, for the same reason. This stays empty until somebody can open their pricing page and read it. |
| WhatsApp and a bank transferHow most of Bali and Da Nang still does this. No platform, so no platform fee — and nothing between you and the person holding your money. | Nothing, because there is nobody to pay. Cheaper than us, and that is the whole of what you get for it. | Nothing, minus whatever the wire costs and whatever the exchange rate takes. |
Sources
- Airbnb — https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1857 · retrieved 2026-08-23
- Booking.com — https://www.booking.com/content/how_we_work.html · retrieved 2026-08-23
- Booking.com — https://partner.booking.com/en-us/help/commission-invoices-tax/invoices/understanding-your-commission · retrieved 2026-08-23
- Airbnb — https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/245 · retrieved 2026-08-23
Where this goes against us
On a stay of 28 nights or more, Airbnb charges the guest for month one up front and holds it back from the host until 24 hours after check-in. We hold it for 48 hours instead. That is a day longer a host waits for their first payment, and the extra day is what pays for a guest being able to say the place is not the one in the walkthrough. It is a trade, not a win, and calling it a win would be marketing.
As published by Airbnb, retrieved 2026-08-23And the cheapest option is not us
A WhatsApp introduction and a bank transfer costs you no fee at all, and a classifieds board that only sells the introduction can charge you nothing because it stops at the introduction. What our 5% buys is the money being held, the walkthrough having been watched, and somebody to complain to when the apartment is not the apartment. If you do not want those, the bottom row of the table is the better deal, and we would rather say so than leave it out.
None of this has been charged to anyone yet
There is no card processor connected to this site. No payment has been taken, no deposit has been held and no host has been paid, so every figure above is what we will charge, published in advance, rather than what we have charged. The fees are checkable today; the track record is not, because there is not one.
What every listing carries
Proof, not adjectives.
One unbroken take
The host films front door to bathroom in a single continuous recording, in our app, timestamped. We reject anything stitched together. Cuts are where the lies live.
A speed test with a link behind it
Down, up and latency, from a speedtest.net run the host does themselves and publishes. Somebody here opens the link and checks it against the figures on the listing — which catches a number that does not match its own result page, and not a run done somewhere else. Every result is dated, and it stops counting after 90 days.
One all-in monthly number
Rent, utilities and mid-stay cleaning resolved into a single figure, with the arithmetic shown. Where utilities are capped we quote the ceiling, so the bill can only come in lower.
What a listing actually is
The video is the listing.
Not a gallery a host curated. One continuous recording, front door to bathroom, with the host's dated speedtest.net result beside it — checked here before the listing went up. Every still you browse is pulled out of that same footage, so there is nothing in the gallery that was not in the room.
It is also the slow part. A home cannot be published until somebody has filmed it and somebody else has watched all of it, which is why the catalogue starts small and grows at the speed of the filming rather than the speed of the sign-ups.
Walkthrough · single take
4:46 · no cutsThese frames are generated — the player is the format drawn, not a home. On a real listing every still in the gallery is pulled from the walkthrough at the checkpoint it shows, so nothing you browse was not in the room.
The alternatives
Right now you choose between a tourist product and a classifieds board.
Airbnb will take your money safely but was built for three nights. Furnished Finder understands month-long stays and then leaves you to wire a deposit to a stranger. Most of Bali and Da Nang still runs on WhatsApp.
| RemoteStay | Airbnb | Furnished Finder | WhatsApp + bank transfer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unedited walkthrough video | Required on every listing | Photos only | Photos only | Whatever gets sent |
| Built for 30–180 day stays | The only thing we do | A discount slider on a hotel product | Yes | Yes |
| Money held until you arrive | Released 48h after check-in | Held | No — platform exits at introduction | You wire it and hope |
| Deposit held by a third party | Held on your card, never transferred | Host claims against you | None | Sent to a stranger's account |
Where we operate
Two cities, properly covered.
Liquidity is local. Two hundred verified homes in one city beats five thousand scattered across forty.
BaliIndonesia
1 homeVillas and apartments across the Canggu–Pererenan corridor and Ubud. Construction noise and power cuts are the two things listings never mention — so we film both.
Canggu · Pererenan · Ubud
Da NangVietnam
None published yetBeachfront and hillside apartments from An Thuong to Son Tra. Cheaper than Bali, faster fibre, and a police registration step most hosts get wrong.
An Thuong · My Khe · Son Tra
The awkward questions
Answered the way we would answer them in person.
Is this a lease?
- No. What you sign here is a Stay Confirmation — a plain-language record of the dates, the all-in price, what gets charged and when, and what happens if either side cancels. It is not a tenancy agreement and we do not pretend it is one. If you want a local lease as well, you and the host can attach your own; we give you a slot for it.
So what are you, legally?
- A verification service and a payments facilitator. The arrangement to stay is between you and the host. We check the property, hold the money, and stand behind the walkthrough being accurate. We are not your landlord and we are not your letting agent.
Who holds my deposit?
- Nobody, in the sense that matters. It is a hold on your card through Stripe — no cash moves, so there is no account for it to disappear from. Compared with wiring two months' rent to a stranger's Indonesian bank account, which is what most of this market runs on today, that is the entire point.
What if I need to leave early?
- The cancellation terms are on the Stay Confirmation before you pay, in the same words we use here. There is no separate policy document and no tier system. What you read is what applies.
What stops a host lying in the walkthrough?
- Not much, on its own — which is why it is one continuous take with a device timestamp, why a person watches all of it, why the speed test has to come with a published speedtest.net link somebody here opens, and why the badge expires after twelve months. Any single one of those is gameable, and we would rather name that than imply otherwise: the speed test is the host's own run, and what we check is that the link says what they told us it says. Together they are a lot of effort for a listing that then gets a refund claim on day two.