Preview Version
The PM API Report Card
Grading the property management platforms we all use, on whether they'll actually let you access your own data. Same rubric for every platform: five weighted categories totalling 100 points. No cherry-picking, no platform-specific tuning, and the grading file is yours to download and check.
NOTE: Results are about API access only, not the software overall.
The results.
Scores are point-in-time, based on first-party documentation and, where available, live testing. Open any graded platform for its own page: all 27 checks, the evidence behind each mark, and the full report to download.
Every grade on this page is produced by an AI analysis run against the same published grading file, which you can download and check here. The scope is deliberately narrow: API and data access. A grade is not Peter Lohmann's opinion of a company, and it does not reflect any financial interest in, or professional relationship with, it. It also says nothing about a platform's features, reliability, interface, support, or standing in the industry.
Note: Peter may have consulting agreements with, or financial interests in, companies mentioned on this page. However, there are NO affiliate links on this page or the individual results pages. Click here for more information.
Scroll the table sideways to see every category →
PM Software10 listed
Listings, Applications & Tenant Screening10 listed
Workflow & CRM3 listed
Maintenance4 listed
Banks1 listed
Corporate Accounting2 listed
Phone7 listed
Scores are point-in-time and tied to the evidence access date. Methodology v1.1.
Categories still to come: Market Rent & Property Data, Inspections, Pets, Security Deposits, Insurance, E-sign, and Other. Platforms in those categories are not graded yet and are not counted anywhere on this page.
The problem.
Every platform will tell you their API is great. I wanted to find out if that's actually true.
Property managers should have access to their own data. These platforms are fantastic, but they vary wildly, both in how sophisticated the API is and in their commercial posture: how willing they are to let us reach our own data. Some of that is a technology problem. A lot of it is a business decision.
Grading that objectively wasn't possible at scale until recently. With AI, it is. The idea came from SaaStr's API Report Card for B2B SaaS. I wanted one for our industry.
The method.
One fixed grading prompt, run against every platform below. Same criteria, same process, every time.
Download it and check it yourself; every result traces back to it. If you think there's a better way to grade this, I want to hear it.
NOTE: Every grade is produced by an AI analysis run against this file. The scope is API and data access only, not a platform's features, reliability, interface, support, or standing in the industry.
The grading file
The exact rubric behind every score on this page.
Download the .md fileMethodology v1.1
What gets graded
Five categories, each worth a fixed share of the 100 points. A category earns the fraction of its checks it passes, times its maximum.
1 Functional Coverage and Usefulness 15 pts
Can you get the data and take the actions your business runs on, and change them, not just read them? Coverage is scored against a predetermined critical, important, and optional weighting.
2 API Design, Reliability, and Operability 10 pts
Is the API built so your code, no-code tools, and AI agents behave predictably instead of breaking, across typing, errors, idempotency, rate limits, pagination, bulk export, webhook security, concurrency, versioning, traceability, and uptime transparency?
3 Access Control and Safe Automation 5 pts
Can you safely hand a limited slice of access to an app or an AI agent, and shut it off?
4 Documentation and AI-Agent Readiness 5 pts
Can a developer, or an AI coding tool, understand the API and build against it correctly?
5 Accessibility and Cost 15 pts
Can you get access without a sales call or a forced upgrade?
Every submission is graded three times
The first run collects the evidence and scores it. The next two re-grade the evidence already collected, then any disagreement between the runs is resolved against that evidence instead of being averaged. That is what catches a bad assumption in a single run, and it is why we ask for it. Where a disagreement cannot be settled from the evidence, we publish it rather than hide it, along with what the score would have been under the other reading.
How the grade is calculated
The five category scores add up to a raw total out of 50, which is doubled to a score out of 100 and mapped to a letter grade: A+ at 97 and above, down to F below 60. Scores are absolute, never curved against other platforms. A number is only published when the run clears the methodology's verification bar; otherwise the score is withheld.
Fair and transparent, on purpose.
Property managers deserve this much transparency from the software they run their business on.
So nothing here is hidden. Every platform is graded against the same public file, every grade is published with the evidence behind it, and every full report is yours to download and check line by line.
The grading file contains no instruction to grade anyone favorably. Read it and confirm. Same goes for every platform here.
Why I'm giving this away.
This is free because I want to push the industry forward: real pressure on vendors to build better APIs, and to stop treating basic data access as a paid upgrade.
Preview scores, and what happens next.
Every graded platform's preliminary score is published along with the full report that generated it, so any vendor can see precisely how the score was reached rather than arguing with a number.
This is a pre-release. Scores are not yet final. The intention of this 60-day pre-release period is:
1. For the community to provide feedback on the scoring methodology, both the overall weighting and the specifics of each category.
2. For vendors to address any low-hanging fruit or simple technical fixes that can improve their score.
A full rerun of every platform is planned in 60 days. At that time the scores will be final, and this page will not be updated again until a planned re-score in roughly 6 months.
Found a factual error in your grade?
Tell us and we will fix it. Every mark on this page traces to a specific piece of first-party evidence or a live API call, and the full report is published so you can see exactly what was checked and what it was checked against.
Confirmed factual errors are corrected immediately.
Everything else waits. We do not rescore piecemeal on request, because a board where some vendors have been re-run and others have not is not a fair comparison. Shipped improvements, changed documentation and disagreements about judgement all go into the next full rerun.
Contact us with a factual errorMethodology inspired by SaaStr's AI Agent API Report Card.