How much does a digital guidebook cost in 2026?

Ask “how much does a digital guidebook cost?” and half the market answers with a calculator, a “book a demo” button, or a price that quietly assumes annual billing. So here are the actual numbers, checked in June 2026, with the asterisks spelled out.

The short answer

For one property, a web-based digital guidebook costs between £6 and £12 a month in 2026. Hardware-based options cost £300+ a year. Hotel-grade guest platforms start around $120 a month. The spread comes less from features, most tools cover the same guest questions, and more from business model.

The price of each tool, one property

• StayBinder: £9.99 a month for your first property, then £4.99 for each extra, everything included. 14-day trial, no card. Pause a property and the charge pauses. (Yes, this is our product; the rest of the list is reported as honestly as we can manage.)
• Touch Stay: roughly $99 a year (about $8.25 a month) on annual billing, around $15 on monthly. The exact figure sits behind a pricing calculator. Widely regarded as the priciest pure guidebook, it bundles an AI writer and chatbot.
• Hostfully Guidebooks: the first guidebook is free with limits, then from $9.99 a month, with tiers at $24.99 and $49.99+ as listings grow.
• RueBaRue: about $9.99 a month per property, or $99.90 a year, with volume discounts for large portfolios. The product is really SMS-first guest messaging with guides attached.
• Guidey: about $7.42 a month for one property, billed annually for that headline rate. UK-based.
• GoGuidebook: $8.99 a month for the first guide, cheaper for additional ones.
• YourWelcome: $449.99 a year (about £300) per property, which includes an in-property tablet on a one-year contract.
• Duve / Operto / Enso Connect: quote-only platforms aimed at portfolios and hotels; Duve’s published minimum is $120 a month. If you run three cottages, these are not for you.

Prices move; always check the provider’s page. We keep a fuller, linked version of this table on our comparison hub.

The five pricing tricks to watch for

1. The annual asterisk. “From $7.42/month” usually means “if you pay for a year upfront”. Check the monthly figure before comparing.
2. The calculator curtain. If a price needs a calculator or a sales call, budget for it being higher than the tools that just tell you.
3. The free tier with a fence. A free first guidebook is genuinely useful, but check the limits, and what the upgrade costs once you depend on it.
4. Per-guest and add-on fees. Some platforms charge by reservation or take a cut of upsells. Fine for hotels, painful for a two-cottage host.
5. The off-season. Most tools charge for twelve months even if you let for seven. If your season ends in October, a pause-able subscription changes the real annual cost substantially.

What “everything included” should mean

Whatever you pay, a guidebook worth the money in 2026 should include: unlimited guest views, offline access, your own branding, auto-translation, a printable QR sign, analytics, and the ability to update instantly without reprinting anything. If any of those is an “add-on”, price the add-ons in before comparing.

The real cost comparison: your time

The cheapest guidebook is a PDF, and it costs the most. Every change means re-exporting and re-sending; every guest question it fails to answer lands on your phone at 9pm. Whatever tool you choose, the saving that matters is the hour of repeated questions it removes from every changeover.

Where StayBinder lands, and when it shouldn’t be your pick

We built StayBinder to be the boring answer on price: £9.99 a month for your first property, then £4.99 for each extra, no card for the trial, pause when your season does. If you need an in-guide AI chatbot (Touch Stay), deep PMS integration (Hostfully), or US SMS workflows (RueBaRue), those are real reasons to pay differently, and our comparison pages say so plainly.

Otherwise, try the live demo and see what £9.99 a month buys.