The trade is clear and it is the reason this platform works. A pet owner wants their animals looked after at home rather than in a kennel. A traveller wants somewhere to stay. Neither pays the other. The platform takes an annual fee from both sides and gets out of the way.
What it costs, properly
The headline numbers are the membership tiers. As of 2026:
Sitters: Basic $129, Standard $169, Premium $259 a year.
Pet parents: $149, $229 and $299 a year.
Combined memberships (for people who do both) run from about $209 to $399.
The number the pricing page is quieter about is the $12 per-sit booking fee that applies on Basic and Standard sitter plans. Both the sitter and the owner pay it separately unless one or both is on Premium. Do four sits a year on Basic and you have paid $129 plus $48 — closer to the Standard price, without Standard's benefits.
Discounts of around 25% circulate widely through affiliates, bringing sitter plans to roughly $97, $127 and $194. Do not pay the list price without looking for one; they are not hard to find and they are not time-limited in any meaningful sense.
The arithmetic
One week in a house in a city where a hotel would cost $150 a night is $1,050 of accommodation, against a $129 membership. Two sits a year and the maths is not close.
That is the correct way to think about it, and it is also the way that overstates the case. The membership does not buy you a sit; it buys you the right to apply for one. Whether you get one is a different question.
Competition is the real constraint
Desirable listings — a flat in Lisbon in May, a house in Sydney over Christmas, anywhere with one easy cat and good wifi — attract large numbers of applications within hours of posting. Owners choose from that pool, and they choose on reviews, on the quality of the application, and on how well the dates fit.
A new member with no reviews is at a structural disadvantage. The standard advice, which is correct, is to start with the sits nobody else wants: awkward dates, rural locations, three dogs, somewhere unglamorous. Two good reviews change your position completely.
Set up alerts, apply within the first hour, and write applications that reference the specific animals rather than pasting a template. Owners can tell.
It is a job, not a holiday
This should be obvious and regularly is not. You are responsible for living animals. Dogs need walking twice a day regardless of what you wanted to do. Some sits involve medication, elderly animals, or a pet that is anxious with strangers. You cannot go away for a night. If the animal becomes ill, you are the one at the vet.
Sits also frequently include the house: plants, post, bins, sometimes a pool. The listing should say. Ask if it does not.
For someone who likes animals and works remotely, this is a genuinely good arrangement. For someone who wants to be out until 2am every night, it is not.
What Premium actually adds
Premium removes the per-sit booking fee for both parties, which makes you marginally more attractive to owners on cheaper plans, and adds enhanced support cover. Whether it is worth roughly $90 over Standard depends on volume: at four or more sits a year the fee saving alone gets you most of the way.
What a strong application looks like
Because competition decides whether the membership pays, the application is the product you are actually buying access to. The ones that win share four things.
They name the animals. "I'd love to look after Biscuit and Pepper" beats any amount of general enthusiasm, and it proves you read the listing.
They address the specific ask. If the listing mentions twice-daily medication for an elderly cat, say that you have done it before and are comfortable with it. If you have not, say that too and say you are willing to learn — owners value honesty more than confidence.
They explain the dates. Owners worry that a sitter will need to leave early. "I'm remote-working and have nothing booked that month" resolves that in one sentence.
They are short. Owners read dozens. Six sentences that answer the listing beats three paragraphs about your love of travel.
The owner side
Half this platform's members are pet owners, and the economics look different from that direction: $149 to $299 a year to avoid kennel fees that in many markets run to $30–60 a day for a dog.
For an owner taking two weeks of holiday a year, the membership pays for itself on the first trip. The trade is that a stranger lives in your house, which the platform mitigates with references, verification tiers and reviews, and cannot eliminate. The advice on that side mirrors the sitter side: prefer sitters with a review history, video-call before confirming, and write the handover notes you would want if you were arriving.
Verdict
7.2. TrustedHousesitters is the largest and best-run network in a category where network size is nearly everything, and the economics are genuinely compelling for the right traveller. It is marked down for a pricing structure that puts a real per-sit cost outside the headline figure, and for a competitive dynamic that means a new member may pay for a year and complete one sit.
Buy it if you are flexible on dates and destinations, comfortable with animals, and prepared to build a review history from unglamorous placements. Do not buy it expecting to choose a city and find a sit there.
