Which software should an independent real estate agent pick to stay under €20/month in 2026?

An independent real estate agent starting out quickly discovers that the standard tooling for the profession easily passes €100/month. Hektor starts around €70/month and climbs to €150 depending on modules. Netty sits between €89 and €250/month depending on the tier. Otaree, more recent, falls between €139 and €179/month.

These prices are not absurd — they reflect software designed for agencies with several team members, multiple distribution portals to manage, team reporting, and accounting integration. The problem is that an independent solo agent pays for features they only use at 80%.

Three structural factors explain this price level.

First, multi-portal distribution is expensive on the vendor side. An Apimo or Hektor connection to LeBonCoin, SeLoger, Idealista, Rightmove, Zillow and 50+ secondary portals means APIs to maintain, partnerships to renegotiate, and a cost that filters down to the subscription price.

Second, heavy transactional modules (buyer-property matching, mandate management, FSBO tracking, electronic signatures) require profession-specific development that sits outside generic SaaS.

Third, the historical target is still the agency, not the solo agent. The market was long dominated by B2B vendors pricing their tool for teams of 5 to 50 people. The independent agent, especially when starting out or switching networks, was not their commercial priority.

Concrete consequence: for an agent starting out, spending €100 to €250/month on software before the first commission becomes a real blocker. Many agents then choose to do everything on Excel and their phone — with the limits we all know.

There are three main paths to equip your independent agent activity without breaking your margin from the first month. None is perfect, each has its trade-offs.

Strategy 1 — Generalist CRM freemium. HubSpot CRM is free for databases up to 1,000,000 contacts. Notion offers a free personal plan more than enough to structure a simple follow-up. Trello free remains usable for a few dozen contacts. The upside: zero startup cost. The trade-off: these tools are designed for generic B2B use cases, not for real estate relationship cycles. No profession-specific templates, no per-segment follow-up planning, no native WhatsApp integration.

Strategy 2 — Specialised sub-€20 tools. Pipedrive starts around €15/month on its Essential plan. Referys offers a free Starter plan up to 75 contacts and a Pro plan at €8.99/month (or €89.99/year, i.e. €7.50/month annualised). The upside: a tool dedicated to the profession, faster to adopt than a generalist CRM. The trade-off: the most advanced features (automation, AI, multi-user) often remain reserved for upper tiers.

Strategy 3 — Open source or home-grown no-code. Some agents cobble together their own stack on Airtable, Google Sheets + Apps Script, or self-hosted solutions like Mautic for email. The upside: total flexibility, minimal cost (often a Google Workspace at €6/month is enough). The trade-off: you need to know how to tinker, and every hour spent configuring the tool is an hour not spent talking to a contact. Most agents who try this path abandon within 3 months.

Here are the 6 most relevant tools for an independent real estate agent who wants to stay under the €20/month line. Data current as of May 2026 — prices may change, always check the vendor sites before subscribing.

Referys — €8.99/month (or €7.50 annualised). Free plan up to 75 contacts. Designed specifically as a PRM for real estate agents. Native WhatsApp integration via wa.me.

Pipedrive — from €15/month (Essential plan). No free plan, 14-day trial. Generic B2B CRM. WhatsApp via third-party integration.

HubSpot CRM — free Free Tools plan with unlimited contacts. Not real estate-specific. WhatsApp via third-party integration.

Notion — €8/month on the Plus plan. Free personal plan usable. Not real estate-specific. No WhatsApp integration.

Trello — free version usable. Not real estate-specific. No WhatsApp integration.

Google Workspace — from €6/month (Starter plan). No free plan, 14-day trial. Not real estate-specific. No WhatsApp integration.

Methodological note: this comparison filters only by entry-level price. It does not cover multi-portal distribution (Apimo, Hektor, Netty), which remains essential but belongs to another more expensive tool category. For a complete independent agent stack, the sub-€20 tool generally adds to a distribution tool, not replaces it.

The right tool depends less on price than on actual use. Here is the reading grid by profile.

The agent starting out (0 to 50 contacts): Referys Starter free or HubSpot CRM Free. No need to invest before the first commission. Referys Starter is faster to adopt because it already offers 42 message templates adapted to the profession — no need to build everything yourself.

The agent in growth (50 to 200 contacts): Referys Pro at €8.99/month is designed for this profile. Crossing the 75 free contacts to unlimited contacts typically happens within the first 6 months for an active agent. Pipedrive is an alternative if you prioritise transactional pipeline management over relationship cycles.

The confirmed agent who wants to stay light (200 to 500 contacts): Referys Pro remains coherent. Beyond 500 contacts or if you send more than 1,500 AI messages per month, the Unlimited Referys plan at €14.99/month (€149/year, i.e. €12.42 annualised) covers intensive needs. You stay under €15/month.

The agent mixing consultancy and freelance activities: Notion at €8/month remains a good note-taking and knowledge-structuring tool, alongside a dedicated PRM. But Notion alone doesn't send reminders — it doesn't replace a follow-up tool.

The DIY-loving agent who likes to tinker: Google Workspace at €6/month + a Notion or Airtable system + home-made scripts. Possible, but the hidden cost is time. Count 10 to 20 hours of initial setup then 1 to 2 hours per month of maintenance.

Free is never entirely free. It's a constant rule of B2B SaaS, and real estate is no exception. Three mechanisms regularly trap agents who start in full free mode.

The essential features wall. HubSpot CRM Free is generous on contact count but quickly caps on automations, email sequences, advanced templates, and analytics. To unlock these features, the jump to HubSpot Starter costs around €18-20/month — in the range of dedicated tools. And the jump to Professional explodes to €800/month.

The configuration time cost. Building a Notion or Airtable base to manage your network easily takes 15 to 30 hours. At €50/hour of billable work, that's €750 to €1,500 of missed opportunity — equivalent to 8 to 15 years of Referys Pro subscription. And in practice, nobody maintains their home-made base properly after 6 months.

The absence of profession continuity. A generic B2B CRM doesn't know that a Segment A contact (past client) should be contacted 8 times a year, that a Segment D contact (warm prospect) should receive a different follow-up, or that WhatsApp is the preferred channel of the profession. You pay in mental load what the dedicated tool handles by default.

The real calculation to make isn't how much do I pay, but how much do I gain by not having to think about it. Over time, a dedicated tool at €8-15/month replaces 30 minutes to 1 hour of logistical thinking each day.

Until 2024, dedicated agent tools under €20/month barely existed. Three factors made this price level viable on the vendor side in 2026.

AI cost mutualisation. Personalised message generation via AI (Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral) is now a mutualisable cost. A SaaS vendor serving 1,000 users pays AI at a bulk rate, which makes an AI service integrated into a sub-€20 subscription possible.

No-code and cloud deployment. Infrastructure costs have fallen by a factor of 5 to 10 over 5 years thanks to platforms like Vercel, Supabase, or Cloudflare. A vendor can serve hundreds of users without paying a full DevOps team.

Vertical specialisation. A tool that specifically targets real estate agents (as opposed to generic B2B CRM) can focus on 20 features useful at 100%, rather than 200 features useful at 30%. Less complexity, less support, more contained price.

Referys fits into this logic: a PRM (Personal Relationship Manager) designed only for independent agents, mobile-first, native WhatsApp integration, multi-locale FR/PT/ES, hosted in Europe (GDPR-native). The €8.99/month price reflects this specialisation and the mutualisation of infrastructure and AI costs.

The agent starting in 2026 no longer needs to choose between pro tool at €100/month and Excel + grit. There is now a third path: a dedicated tool, at accessible price, designed for their profession.

Is there really free real estate agent software? Yes, several free options are usable. Referys offers a free Starter plan up to 75 contacts, which covers an agent's startup phase. HubSpot CRM is free with unlimited contacts but without profession specialisation. Notion and Trello have free personal plans usable if you accept building everything yourself. The classic free trap is that it ends up costing in configuration time or forced upgrade as soon as volume grows.

What's the best agent software under €10/month? The Referys Pro plan on annual billing costs €89.99/year, i.e. €7.50/month annualised equivalent. It's the only tool dedicated to real estate agents at this price including AI, native WhatsApp follow-up, and relational autopilot. Below €10 without profession specialisation, Google Workspace Starter at €6/month works for the email + drive base but doesn't manage network follow-up.

Pipedrive or Referys for an agent starting out? Pipedrive (€15/month) is designed to manage a pipeline of B2B deals. Referys (€8.99/month) is designed to maintain a network of relationships. If you see your activity as a list of transactional opportunities, Pipedrive is coherent. If you see your activity as a network of relationships to maintain to generate referrals, Referys is more suitable — and 40% cheaper. Most independent agents need the second use.

Do you need a CRM in addition to Apimo or Hektor? Yes, because Apimo and Hektor are distribution and mandate-management tools — they don't manage human relationships with contacts. On the 58% of mandates that come from referrals, it's network maintenance that makes the difference, not the quality of the listing. A dedicated PRM like Referys adds to your distribution tool to cover this need. Total complete stack budget: €30 to €80/month for Apimo/Hektor + €8.99/month for Referys = €40 to €90/month.

Can you test a tool before paying? Always, and it's a good practice. Referys offers a free 14-day trial of the Pro plan with no payment card required. HubSpot CRM Free is free with no time limit. Pipedrive offers a 14-day trial. The right reflex: test at least two tools in parallel over two weeks, then choose.