HomeExchange - House Swapping
Home swap when you travel
How much does HomeExchange - House Swapping cost?
Prices are current as of 8 Sept 2026.
HomeExchange - House Swapping has no in-app products on record in the United States.
10+ alternatives to HomeExchange - House Swapping
| HomeExchange - House Swapping |   Vrbo Owner |   Geovelo : bike GPS |   Mapstr – Save & Follow Places |   levélo - La Métropole Mobilité |   VeryChic: Book Hotel & Flight |   Yescapa |   Kindred Home Swapping |   my esf | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating / 5 | 4.9 | 4.5 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.5 | 4.4 | 4.9 | 2.6 |
| Reviews | 29K | 274K | 65K | 43K | 17K | 16K | 8.1K | 3.2K | 79 |
| Released | 2016 | 2016 | 2017 | 2014 | 2022 | 2013 | 2016 | 2022 | 2020 |
| Monthly price | — | — | — | $5.99 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Annual price | — | — | — | $59.90 | — | — | — | — | — |
The going rate for each plan in United States, in its own currency, shaded from the cheapest price on the row to the dearest.
HomeExchange - House Swapping reviews
4.9 out of 5, based on 29,142 reviews.
What people like
- Saves huge money on vacation lodging
- Great community of generous people
- Lets you stay in real homes
What they complain about
- App is glitchy and crashes often
- Customer support is hard to reach
- Search filters do not work properly
- Hosts cancel last minute with no help
Inexplicable nice experience
It’s a satisfying experience to have brief but deep connections with complete strangers from around the world without ever actually meeting them, just by hosting through the home exchange program. It’s the golden rule in action and it works!
More Like a Rental Platform Than a Home Exchange
I was interested in this app because it is advertised as a way for people to exchange homes and experience a more affordable way to travel. However, my experience has been that many users seem more interested in using it like a rental platform or earning points rather than making genuine home exchanges. It feels like the original idea of swapping homes directly is getting lost behind a points-based system and extra costs. The concept is great, but the platform could do more to encourage true exchanges between members.
Opens the World Up
When I travel I always start off with checking out accommodations available on the HomeExchamge app. The places that I have stayed at are great. I appreciate the apps ability to be the third party when looking for a place. Gives it a bit more of that security feature. There are a lot of places to find around the world. I appreciate that there are ones that are verified as it gives a better sense of safety. The overall functions of the app are good. The difficulty would be getting a response from people in terms of their interest. I know I’ve missed some potential people requesting my place, because I haven’t checked on the app frequently. I’d suggest another notification feature or a potential “pause or hiatus” of a person hasn’t responded in a while. This makes it easier for people looking as well as for the person who hasn’t checked in awhile. I haven’t fully explored the app in the last 12 months but I’ll say it is a good app for people who like to travel and swap homes or points. I’d like to see other opportunities to earn points. Yea you can trade your place, but if you aren’t able to you may not be able to stay at a particular place as you don’t have enough points. Overall, I appreciate the opportunities the app provides and like its features.
App won’t open 1 out of 2
App needs work
Needs improvement
Guest exchanges are limited as availability on the platform is difficult to find. Searching by date isn’t enough to actually provide results for those dates. Example: If it is September 1st and you search any week in January in NYC you see results for past dates like July and future dates like March, but you have to open every single one to see if one is actually available in January and after spending an hour doing that…it turns out that none are. App needs investment into technology
Great
Been using for 2 years , having great success
Karina
The app is done very badly being honest. Lots of bugs
Love it but some improvement would be good
I love homeexchange but it would be nice to improve the research engine to find availability of houses that have been saved in your favorites.
Dommage
Dommage et déçue que la mise a jour ne fonctionne pas sur mon IPad de 2017. Ce faisant, Vous encouragez l’obsolescence programmée…
Great system but shame about the App.
We have used this extensively however the App and Website are rubbish. To work out how to do simple things is impossible...extend or shorten a stay etc. also if you contact Home Exchange all the options are to complain! This system works as all the people we have had in our homes and whose homes we have stayed in are excellent as ultimately we all treat the homes as if our own and leave them tidy etc. but the central office link and App and website is rubbish. All should be easy on phone when travelling . It is not. A great shame as a good system otherwise - just poorly managed.
Year 4 Experienced
We’ve been experimenting with Home Exchange in preparation for retirement when we will have more time to travel. Thus far the experience has been fantastic. We’ve stayed in some lovely homes and prefer this style of stay to hotels or short term rentals. Our guests have taken exceptional care of our property AND we’ve met some wonderful people.
Broken app, non-existent support
I can’t think of a bigger waste of money than my joining HomeExchange. They’re using a faulty database of zip codes; my correct zip code results in listing my home in an incorrect town hundreds of miles away. (It’s not just me; it’s my fellow townspeople). Even though my in-town location should be considered premium, outlying communities appear closer. I’ve tried “chatting” with support but that’s futile - requests go nowhere. They make it impossible to find a phone number, submit a bug report, or email for human customer support. Now I’ve received notification that my listing is fraudulent and auto-declined (although it seems to be live, albeit with a dramatically incorrect location). I wouldn’t join without seeing how homes near you are faring.
Avaliação das casas
Avaliação dos pontos das casas inconstantes, falta de transparência. Casas com mais de 300GP sem justificação. Eu estou a retirar as minhas casas porque para mim a disparidade não faz sentido
Getting Better but Also Worse
Lately the app is stuttering and glitchy on an iPhone 16 Pro when it used to work perfectly smoothly. It’s frustrating
home exchange is a good resource but the app could be better
after many updates the continues to suffer from basic functionality and ui design problems.
La mejor manera de vivir viajando!
Hace 20 años que intercambio casas y se ha convertido en un modo de vida. Me encanta y se lo recomiendo a todo el mundo que le guste viajar y conocer lugares nuevos
Dumb
App no longer works on iPads, great stuff
Recent Update
The most recent update made the app very laggy / choppy. Even login freezes
Hopeless for major cities
I’ve been a member for a while. I have a sought after home in a major city. Mine always books out. When I try to use the many points I’ve accumulated it’s hopeless - People rarely respond at all. After 4 days you get an auto decline. Decent places are *rarely* available. Hosts are (understandably) particular about “no guest points” or only want swaps from specific cities. What this all means is it’s near impossible to use points once you accumulate them. Oh and the website and app are very buggy. I had high hopes. Disappointingly I’m going to try another platform.
App needs work
I love the concept and am excited to get started but for an international platform it’s pretty unforgivable that the translations don’t work in the listings for the descriptions of the properties, area, or host. It seems to work fine for the reviews but why not the other areas. Very frustrating.
Our go to means of travel!
Home Exchange has taken us to amazing places where we have made wonderful new friends. It’s a bit of work to prepare the house but worth it for sure. And the one time our exchange didn’t work out, Home Exchange quickly helped us find an alternate solution which gave me even more confidence in the platform
Waste of time
Really wouldn’t recommend this. We have made tons of requests for house swaps and no success except someone using ours. So in effect paid $1000 for the pleasure of letting someone stay in our £3.5m house with nothing in return except wasting huge amount of time. Very very frustrating. Only real requests we get are for properties of a much lower standard. Guest points a total waste as no one accepts them.
App is great
This app is helpful to let me know on-the-go when I get notifications. Makes it easy as possible to view all details. Still haven’t figured out how to join groups in the app tho.
Useful, yet slow and lacks integration
For seasoned STR user the app is great for low season and overflow, yet it is painfully slow and clunky and lacks any calendar integration (or, at least I couldn’t find any). Also very difficult to find a place to book anywhere, which makes earned points rather useless.
Poor language option.
Hard to see notifications when people amend their dates. Exchanging messages is tedious. No option to change the language other than English when exchanging with people. Unacceptable in 2026.
Makes traveling even better!
To be welcomed into someone’s home to stay for free (minus a small cleaning fee sometimes) is very special. In a world of subscriptions and commercialism, the home exchange community are so welcome and generous. The app is easy to use and very thoughtfully designed. We have had great experience so far and look forward to being able to go to many places we may not otherwise have had the chance to go to!
Nonexistent customer support
I had several troubleshooting issues with uploading photos and also getting my property verified. Because my situation is unique in that my property is located in a remote region of Costa Rica where there are no street numbers and addresses and all utility bills go to our property manager because our home is a vacation rental, I need to speak to an actual human being and have spent three days trying to solve this problem without any help from this company. I honestly wish they had an option to pay for customer service so that I could have someone help me solve this problem. I feel like it would take 10 minutes to solve, but instead I’ve wasted and waited days.
Love home exchange, but do your homework
Home exchange is great. We have been doing it for 2 years. Some words of caution : if you are choosing someone’s secondary home, ask a lot of questions about amenities. We have discovered that people who list a second home often have this on a paid platform, like VRBO, therefore have the amenities you would expect at a VRBO , but not what you would expect at someone’s home. They often do not have the amenities you would have when choosing a “primary” home. When they say washer available, we have found that on 2 occasions, they were not working. BBQ area, does not mean they have a BBQ,, etc. We learned this by trial and error.
No confirmation email
been looking for 30 mins , refreshed , waiting , resent email .
Has become glitchy
Love Home Exchange but the app seems less impressive. Recently the map search feature is very difficult to use. Moving around on the map is very glitchy
Amazing alternative to Airbnb!
People keep asking me, what’s the catch? There is no catch. It’s real people offering up their homes for free to other travelers. I like having a phone conversation with the host or traveler before approving or finalizing the exchange. I am so grateful for HomeExchange as it is allowed me to be able to afford traveling in a way that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.
Latest update has an error blocking login on iPhone
Previous versions were ok
Great concept, app needs work
Love home exchange and the guests we have hosted in our home. I find the app glitchy and a bit dated-takes days to get support on basic issue like modifying a stay, which seems wild considering the annual fee!
Many bugs need to be fixed
The app developer seems to have dropped many balls here. So many bugs like how you can’t select all the amenities your home actually has, because the app doesn’t let you scroll down to select more, so then your home gets undervalued and underpriced. Then I selected that I’m in the heart of all the tourist attractions and the app somehow saved my info as “over 30 minutes away” which is the other button I did not click, and is not true, I’m in Yaletown! But the app won’t let me change the value of my home to its correct value. (Also, the app is slow, freezes a lot, and much of the written copy seems ESL or AI written.)
Average at best could be much better
- Automatic response options don’t always appear. - No translation option for homes described in a different language. - You can’t even copy the home description or the personal information text to paste into a translation app. - The home of potential exchange partner does not always appear in the ’homes’ tab. - you can’t view your own listing as others would see it - you can’t manage your group membership It appears that the website now has a ‘better on the app’ banner that I cannot dismiss on my iPhone. Come on guys! Stop telling us that you’re polishing every nook an cranny on each update and make *some* attempt to improve this app
Better than $$
We enjoy connecting with hosts and appreciate being able to exchange homes without paying for hotels. Guest points exchanges are convenient!
Incredibly buggy app and no support
I have used Homeexchange for a year and had a fe great experiences but that’s only thanks to the people on the platform. The app itself is horrific to use. They now charged me 160 euros - it’s impossible to get hold of them. I don’t know what they charge money for given the state of the website and app. If you can, find an alternative. That’s now what I’m doing
Good but some flaws
This is a good option to travel much more economically by staying in someone’s home either for guest points or a reciprocal exchange. The annoying thing is that unless you specify some availability (which you might not currently have) you cannot switch on the option “only connect me for dates which are available”. So this means if you have not got any available dates you get loads of requests, and inevitably you end up not replying to them. As a user, it means that you are constantly messaging people who do not have availability and do not reply. It would be so easy to amend the app to deal with this, I cannot understand why they do not.
Poorly built app
Great idea poorly designed app
Good functionality, thin customer services
Great concept and good app functionality but customer support sometimes appears barely existent - no phone lines available - which is important as cancellations are common
Unique opportunity
We love connecting with amazing people on this app
App no longer works
I love HomeExchange but the app no longer works. You can use the Web version at HomeExchange.com. But the app just shows a spinner when you try to log in and never lets you access the site. This problem just happened within the last week. Prior to that, it worked fine. Not a big deal since you can use the Web version and don’t need the app.
Platform is good but app is glitchy
Homexchange is a great platform and community. However the app is glitchy and functionality needs some work.
Very difficult to search
I like the range of homes available and the financial guarantee. However it’s difficult to find homes without being specific about exactly where you want to go, and you can only see a handful of the people who have “liked” your house, which is a pain as they would likely be top candidates for a swap. For a website that charges a high annual fee, I would expect better.
Great principle especially as you can use guest points to stay
App needs work, not user friendly sometimes. Over all it’s a great way for cheap holidays.
Life changing.
This will change your life. We've been able to double our vacation days per year because we no longer pay for lodgings when we travel- which means we save enough money every year to add vacation days. We are now able to invite our kids and grand kids along because we can find large homes to accomodate us all when in the past it would have been out of our price limit to even think of it. More Leisure time. More family time. Our quality of life has vastly improved.
A waste of time and money
Don’t waste your time like I did sending countless messages to hosts who never respond. The system simply doesn’t work as promised, and it ends up being a complete waste of time. After weeks of searching and reaching out, I finally had one host accept—only for them to cancel a week later, leaving me with travel plans and purchased tickets but nowhere to stay. Don’t risk your trip. Hosts can cancel at any moment with no consequences and with little to no support from the app’s team.
Super! Mais…
Super système, surtout si tu as une maison dans un lieu très touristique. Nous sommes un peu excentrés et avons donc pas beaucoup de demandes…
More work needed on this app
Glitchy app, poor search functionality - the filters don’t work. If someone offers their home to exchange you can’t send a simple ‘no thanks‘ reply and there’s no way you’ll type individual replies to everyone on a phone so, forget it - use the desktop website instead.
Review
This is a great app & executed concept but I did have a problem with a crazy guest and I could not call home exchange. They do not provide a customer hotline even for paying home owners. I would say that is a real flaw in the business plan. Upgraded users have to go though a really really long email process to sort out issues for me it took 3 months to sort out a very black and white issue.
HomeExchange - House Swapping FAQ
- Is HomeExchange - House Swapping free?
- Yes. The app is free, in all 175 countries it sells in, and it sells nothing inside it.
- Does HomeExchange - House Swapping have a free trial?
- No. None of its offers (US) come with a free trial.
- What are the best alternatives to HomeExchange - House Swapping?
- Vrbo Owner (4.5 from 274,166 reviews), Geovelo : bike GPS (4.7 from 65,247 reviews) and Mapstr – Save & Follow Places (4.7 from 43,268 reviews, premium from $5.99).
HomeExchange - House Swapping download
Last updated 0 months ago.
HomeExchange - House Swapping sells in 175 countries. It was released 10 years and 4 months ago, on 27 May 2016. It holds a 4.9 rating from 29,142 reviews.
Supports 6 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish.
How much does HomeExchange - House Swapping make?
Third-party estimates for the last 30 days, worldwide — not the store's own figures, which Apple publishes for nobody.