Housesitting
A guide for house sitters and home owners.
Housesitting is how we travelled for six years on a budget meant for two. Forty seven sits, 125 weeks, 381 animals and 240 vines. Here is how it works and which platforms are actually worth paying for.
A happy accident
Housesitting has become quite the phenomenon, with thousands of listings live at any moment. But what is it, and why is it so popular?
We stumbled on it by accident a few weeks before we left New Zealand. We thought we could stretch the travel fund to eighteen months, maybe two years. Housesitting changed all that. For animal lovers like us it was a light bulb moment.
How else could we have:
- Lived in a traditional Balinese villa three minutes from a near deserted beach, looking after eight rescue dogs
- Learned to prune vines on a hobby vineyard below the Sibillini mountains
- Spent a winter on an organic farm in Oregon, where elk stop by the bedroom window and coyotes sing you to sleep
The platforms, honestly
We have paid for all of these ourselves. The sit counts below are our own, not marketing claims. Prices change often, so check before you sign up.
TrustedHousesitters
83% of all our sits have come from here, which is no surprise given the scale. Thousands of sits and sitters across 140 countries at any one time, all beautifully presented. Excellent two way review process, and external references can be added with a built in tool so the bad reviews come along with the good. Real time email alerts mean you hear about new sits in your target countries immediately.
- What we like
- Easy to use on mobile and desktop. The sheer volume of opportunities. The email alerts.
- What could improve
- External references are buried and do not count toward the star rating. Real time alerts can be overwhelming for popular countries.
- Cost
- Sitters from US$129 a year, home owners from US$149, or US$209 for a combined membership that lets you do both. Premium tiers run to US$259, US$299 and US$399. Basic and Standard also carry a US$12 booking fee per sit, Premium does not. Checked August 2026.
HouseCarers
A smaller pool, but we have had genuine success here. Worth having as a second string, particularly if you are flexible about where you go.
- What we like
- Despite the small number of listings, we have had some success.
- What could improve
- The website needs a refresh for usability, and the email alerts do not include photos. Sitters upload their own references, so it is possible only the flattering ones appear.
- Cost
- Free for home owners. US$50 a year for sitters, with a limited free option.
MindMyHouse
We like MindMyHouse despite not landing a sit through it yet. Nicely laid out and easy to navigate. Around 4,400 active sitters and 5,700 active owners, though only about 4% have a live listing at any moment. Strongest in the USA, UK and Canada, which together account for roughly 60% of both sides.
- What we like
- Lovely site. Very affordable.
- What could improve
- More active listings.
- Cost
- US$20 a year for sitters. Free for home owners.
Nomador
A great website with genuinely advanced search. We love being able to filter by the kind of place you want, countryside, beach, mountains. They claim a 69,000 strong community with around 520 live sits, though 63% of those are in France.
- What we like
- Stylish, well built interface.
- What could improve
- Expansion beyond French speaking countries.
- Cost
- Free tier available, paid membership for full features.
The bit nobody tells you
Referrals and repeat sits matter more than any platform. Once you have done a few and built up genuine reviews, owners come back to you and recommend you to friends. That is where the good long sits come from, and none of them are ever advertised.
So the first two or three sits are the hard ones. Take whatever you can get, do a properly good job, and it compounds from there.
If you want to see what the sits actually looked like, they are scattered right through the postcards.