House sitting only pencils out as a travel-cost strategy if the membership fee you pay to get on a platform is small next to what you save on accommodation. TrustedHousesitters and Nomador are the two platforms that come up most often for travelers weighing this trade-off, and they price and position themselves differently enough that “just pick the bigger one” isn’t automatically the right answer.
What Both Platforms Actually Do
Both are membership-based marketplaces connecting homeowners who need someone to look after their house and pets while they travel with sitters who want free accommodation in exchange. Neither charges a nightly rate — you pay one membership fee, then apply to as many sits as you want for the length of that membership. The saving isn’t a discount on a booking; it’s skipping the accommodation cost entirely in exchange for pet and home care duties.
Membership Pricing Compared (2026)
TrustedHousesitters runs three sitter tiers: Basic at around $129/year, Standard at around $169/year, and Premium at around $259/year. The tiers mostly differ in support level and — as of late 2025 — in a new $12 per-sit booking fee that Basic and Standard members now pay on top of their membership, while Premium members are exempt from it. That fee changes the math: a Basic member doing more than about 9 sits a year, or a Standard member doing more than about 6, actually ends up paying more in total than if they’d bought Premium up front.
Nomador uses a flatter three-tier structure — Discovery at around $99/year (or $44 for a 3-month trial), Standard at around $165/year, and Premium at around $209/year — and critically charges homeowners and sitters the same price at each tier, with no per-sit booking fee at any level. That absence of a booking fee is Nomador’s clearest structural difference from TrustedHousesitters, not just a pricing footnote.
Where Each Platform Actually Wins
Scale is not close: TrustedHousesitters regularly lists well over 10,000 active sits at any given time across the US, UK, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and a membership lets you apply to sits anywhere in the world for the full year. Nomador doesn’t compete with that on global breadth — it’s a smaller, more community-oriented platform that is genuinely strongest in continental Europe, and in France specifically it reportedly has over 1,000 French listings against TrustedHousesitters’ roughly 85 in the same market. If your travel plans are France- or Western-Europe-heavy, Nomador’s density there can outweigh TrustedHousesitters’ larger global number; if you want the widest possible pool of options worldwide, TrustedHousesitters is still the bigger net.
Booking Fees — the New Wrinkle
The 2025 introduction of TrustedHousesitters’ per-sit booking fee is the detail most older comparison guides miss, because it changes which tier is actually cheapest depending on how active a sitter you are. An occasional sitter doing 1-2 sits a year is still better off on TrustedHousesitters Basic even with the fee, simply because the base membership is cheaper than Nomador’s mid tier. A frequent sitter doing 6+ sits a year should run the math on TrustedHousesitters Premium (fee-exempt) rather than defaulting to Basic or Standard — and should also weigh Nomador’s flat no-fee pricing as a genuine alternative rather than assuming the bigger platform is automatically the better deal.
Comparison Table
| TrustedHousesitters | Nomador | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry-tier price | ~$129/yr (Basic) | ~$99/yr (Discovery) |
| Top-tier price | ~$259/yr (Premium) | ~$209/yr (Premium) |
| Per-sit booking fee | $12 on Basic/Standard; waived on Premium | None, any tier |
| Homeowner vs. sitter pricing | Priced separately | Same price both sides |
| Active listings (global) | 10,000+ | Smaller, Europe-concentrated |
| Strongest region | Worldwide, especially US/UK/Australia | Continental Europe, especially France |
FAQ
Which platform is cheaper overall?
It depends on how many sits you do per year. Nomador’s entry tier is cheaper up front and has no booking fee, but TrustedHousesitters’ larger listing pool can mean more usable sits per membership dollar for an active sitter who buys Premium.
Do both platforms screen sitters and homeowners?
Yes, both use profile verification, references, and reviews after each sit; TrustedHousesitters additionally offers ID verification and background-check options as part of its higher tiers.
Can I use both platforms at once?
Yes — there’s no exclusivity requirement, and given Nomador’s regional strength in Europe, sitters who travel to both France and further afield sometimes run memberships on both simultaneously.
Is house sitting actually free accommodation, or are there hidden costs?
The membership fee (and TrustedHousesitters’ new per-sit fee, where it applies) is the direct cost; beyond that you’re still covering your own travel to and from the property and any pet supplies the homeowner doesn’t leave.
Verdict
Pick TrustedHousesitters if you want the widest global pool of sits and plan to do enough of them per year to justify Premium — the fee-exempt top tier is the one that actually makes sense for frequent sitters. Pick Nomador if your travel is Europe-heavy, especially France, or if you’d rather pay one flat annual fee with zero per-sit surprises. Neither platform is a bad choice; the right one depends on where you’re actually planning to travel and how many sits a year you realistically expect to book.
