7 Best Home Swap Platforms in 2026

Home exchange opens doors that a hotel room cannot, and there are more good ways to do it than most people realise. We run one of the platforms below, and we think the others are worth knowing about too: the seven here are all legitimate communities, run by people who care about it, and several of them will suit you better than we will depending on how you travel.

Disclosure: People Like Us operates this website and is included in this comparison. We may benefit if you join us.

The seven platforms below are not ranked, and the order they appear in is not a verdict. Each entry is headed by what that platform is genuinely best for, and our own entry lists our weaknesses alongside our strengths. Our comparison criteria and where every number comes from are set out in "How we chose" below. Read with that in mind, and use the comparison table if you only have two minutes.

At a glance

HomeExchange: Best for the biggest network

Verdict: If your priority is finding a home in a specific place on specific dates, this is the one with the most doors to knock on.

Key facts

• USD $235 per year on its main home exchange page. Unlimited exchanges, no per-stay fees.
• Free to register and list. The fee falls due once you finalise your first exchange, not at sign-up. New members receive a welcome bonus of 500 GuestPoints.
• Three formats: classic reciprocal swaps; GuestPoints for non-reciprocal stays, with values set algorithmically rather than by the host; and Private Room Exchange, where a host shares a room in their own home while staying in it.
• Size figures differ across its own published material. Its live pages give 450,000+ houses in over 187 countries, 360,000+ homes in over 155 countries, 300,000+ members in 155 countries, and 250,000+ members in 155 countries. A comparison article on its own blog, published in July 2026, gives 360,000+ homes in a table and 550,000 homes in the body text of the same page. See How we chose for every source, archived on 3 September 2026.
• Its press page also claims 10 million overnight stays by 2025, 80% market share, and one exchange every minute.
• Guarantees: cancellation protection of up to USD $840 per week where no replacement accommodation can be found, a non-compliance guarantee if a home does not match its description, property damage cover up to USD $1,000,000 for host and guest, a USD $500 guest deposit against minor damage, cover against theft, and reimbursement of lodging or non-refundable travel costs up to USD $120 per night when a host cancels.
• Member support is available 24/7 by phone, live chat and email, including help finding a replacement exchange. It is the only platform here offering telephone support.
• A second year free if you search but arrange no exchange in your first, subject to conditions: a fully complete home and personal profile online within three months, email, phone, identity and address all verified within three months, at least 40 messages proposing an exchange sent within the first three months, a good response rate, and an application lodged at least seven days before your first year expires.
• Certified B Corp. Its own timeline dates the GuestToGuest and HomeExchange merger to 2018; the deal was announced in 2017. It later absorbed Love Home Swap, which had earlier bought HomeForExchange.
• A separate luxury tier, HomeExchange Collection, costs $1,500 a year and includes access to the standard network.
• Trustpilot 4.7 from 35,019 reviews.

Pros

• By a wide margin the largest inventory in home exchange, whichever of its published figures is correct.
• No per-stay fees at all, so a member doing four exchanges a year pays under $60 a trip.
• You do not pay until an exchange is finalised, so the fee follows the result rather than preceding it.
• GuestPoints solve the hardest problem in reciprocal swapping: the other household wanting your dates as much as you want theirs.
• The published guarantees are the most comprehensive of any platform here, backed by support available at any hour, including by telephone.

Cons

• Published size figures disagree with each other, and not just across pages. One article on its own blog gives two different home counts, 360,000 and 550,000, in the same document. Member counts range from 250,000 to 300,000 across its live pages. There is no way for a prospective member to know which figure is current.
• Country counts differ too: 187 on one page against 155 on three others.
• GuestPoint values are set by algorithm rather than by you, so what your home earns is not something you control.
• The second-year guarantee is conditional rather than automatic, and 40 sent proposals in three months is a real hurdle.
• The Collection tier costs more than six times standard membership.

People Like Us: Best for community engagement and trust

Verdict: The highest customer ratings in the category, the widest set of ways to arrange a swap, and the cheapest full-featured paid membership, though only a fraction of HomeExchange's inventory. This is our platform, so weigh it accordingly.

Key facts

• USD $159 per year for Premium. A free tier lets you list, browse and save homes without paying.
• No booking fees, no per-stay fees, no transaction fees. 60-day refund guarantee at full price, set out in our terms.
• The widest set of exchange mechanics in the category: reciprocal swaps (simultaneous or not); Globes, where one token buys one stay of any length you negotiate, earned by hosting and with no expiry while you are a member; Plutos, a short-stay token worth one to three nights that you can combine; and hospitality stays, where one member hosts the other while still at home.
• 150+ search filters.
• Community features beyond search: a Feed with automated matching, special interest sub-Communities, and a mentor programme pairing new members with experienced ones.
• Support every day of the year, by message rather than by phone. Median response time is 22 minutes across the current financial year and 27 minutes across all 10,325 support conversations since July 2022, improving every year from 2 hours 17 minutes in 2022-23.
• 11,000+ listings across more than 120 countries, published as a live count rather than a marketing figure. The spread is broad: 44.2% of homes in Europe, 38.7% in North America, 11.8% in Oceania, 2.6% in Asia, 1.4% in South America and 1.3% in Africa. The company was founded in Australia.
• No platform insurance. People Like Us relies on members' own home and contents policies, and explains the reasoning here.
• Founded in Sydney in 2018 by Drew Seitam and Kathy Leach.
• Trustpilot 4.9 from 1,365 reviews, 207 of them in the last twelve months: 96% five-star, and every negative review answered. Ranked #1 in the Trustpilot Homestay category among businesses with more than 500 reviews.

Pros

• The highest Trustpilot rating in the category, and every negative review gets a public answer.
• 1,365 reviews from a network of roughly 11,000 homes is a far higher proportion of members reviewing than 35,019 reviews from a network HomeExchange describes as anywhere between 250,000 members and 550,000 homes. Even at HomeExchange's smallest published figure, the gap is wide.
• We publish our median support response time and how it has changed year on year. No other platform in this guide publishes a response time at all.
• The Feed, the sub-Communities and the mentor programme are built for the part of home exchange that is not a transaction. No other platform in this guide publishes anything equivalent.
• Globes remove the length-of-stay problem in points systems: a token is a stay, not a nightly rate, so a fortnight costs the same token as a long weekend.
• $159 a year with no per-stay charges is the lowest cost of any paid platform with a full feature set.

Cons

• Inventory is far smaller than HomeExchange's, at around 11,000 listings against hundreds of thousands, and members do report it is harder to find a match in some destinations.
• The review base is much smaller in absolute terms than HomeExchange's 35,019 reviews.
• Coverage is uneven. Nearly 95% of our homes are in Europe, North America and Oceania, so Asia, South America and Africa are thin.
• No platform-level insurance or damage guarantee. HomeExchange, Kindred and ThirdHome all publish cover; we do not, and members carry their own.
• No telephone support, and no free-second-year guarantee of the kind HomeExchange and Behomm publish. Our free tier and 60-day refund address the same risk in a different way, but they are not the same promise.

Kindred: Best for city dwellers without an annual fee

Verdict: No membership fee, strong city coverage and unusually thorough cover, but a different product from the memberships above it. You pay per trip, and a single stay can cost more than a full year on most other platforms here.

Key facts

• Free to join. You pay per trip: a service fee plus a cleaning fee. Kindred publishes no fixed fee schedule for either. Its policy says service fees vary and the exact amount is shown before you complete your booking, and that cleaning fees vary by destination, trip length, bedroom count, home size and in some places season.
• Kindred's own pricing estimator on its How It Works page returns a sample trip at a $200 service fee plus a $300 cleaning fee, so $500 in cash alongside 5 credits.
• Founding members are treated differently: North American founding members pay a flat $50 service fee per trip, and EU and UK founding members pay no service fee, both until further notice.
• The cleaning fee covers two cleanings, one before the stay and one after. The service fee is generally non-refundable; the cleaning fee is refundable outside three days of arrival.
• Optional Kindred Passport membership, $600 a year or $165 a quarter, removes service fees for unlimited trips.
• Credits: one night hosted earns one credit regardless of home value, a successful referral earns two, and new members get five at sign-up. Credits cannot be bought or sold and carry no monetary value. Direct swaps cost no credits.
• Application-based. Every home and every member is reviewed before acceptance, and identities are verified. Primary residences only, and whole-home swaps only.
• Two layers of cover: a Damage Protection Program reimbursing up to $100,000 per stay for damage caused by a guest or a Kindred-coordinated cleaner, plus separate liability cover underwritten by The Hartford up to $1,000,000 per incident with no deductible.
• Size figures differ across its own material: its hosting page says 100,000+ member homes and 120,000+ nights swapped, while its Trustpilot profile description says 300,000+ "members and homes", 190+ cities and 350,000+ nights booked.
• Founded in 2021, launching as an invitation-only beta for design-minded hosts before expanding from North America into Europe. Raised $125M in February 2026 (Series B and C; NEA, Index, Dylan Field).
• Trustpilot 4.8 from 459 reviews.

Pros

• Nothing to pay before you know whether the platform works for you.
• Built around cities, and its published city count of 190-plus is the highest here.
• The two-layer cover, $100,000 for damage plus $1,000,000 of liability with no deductible, is the strongest protection on this list for a platform that charges no membership fee.
• Every home and member is reviewed before acceptance, which no open network here does.
• Credits are flat: one night hosted is one night earned, whatever your home is worth. No algorithm decides what your home is worth.
• Cleaning is arranged rather than left to you, at both ends of the stay.

Cons

• Not a like-for-like alternative to an annual membership. On Kindred's own pricing estimator, one trip costs $500 in fees, which is more than a full year on every other platform in this guide except ThirdHome.
• Neither fee is published in advance as a schedule, so you cannot model the cost of a trip before you are deep into booking it.
• The service fee is generally non-refundable if you cancel.
• Whole-home swaps only: no room-only listings, and a household with roommates must all be away during a hosting.
• Its own published size figures differ by a factor of three, so the network's real scale is unclear.

HomeLink: Best for the longest-running network

Verdict: The oldest home exchange network still trading, founded in 1953 and run through national offices. Small, old-fashioned, and cheap.

Key facts

• Country-priced, and the pricing page detects where you are. From Australia it shows AUD $210 for 12 months or AUD $350 for 24. From the United States the same page shows USD $125 and $200. Check your own country's figure rather than the one quoted in any guide, including this one.
• A free trial is offered before you pay.
• Unlimited exchanges, no points system, no per-stay fees, and you can list as many of your homes as you like at no extra cost.
• Members are supported by a network of experienced local representatives rather than a central office.
• Founded 1953. Along with Intervac, one of the two networks that started organised home exchange, and the oldest still operating under its original model.
• Trustpilot 3.6 from 2 reviews, listed as Homelink International.

Pros

• Among the cheapest annual fees in the category, with no per-stay charges.
• Seventy years of continuous operation, which no other platform on this list can claim.
• Multiple homes on one membership at no extra cost, which no other platform here matches.
• A free trial, so you can see the inventory before paying anything.

Cons

• HomeLink publishes no network-wide listing count, so there is no way to judge its size before joining.
• Prices and terms are set by each national office, so what applies to you depends on where you live, and the same URL shows different figures in different countries.
• Its Trustpilot profile carries two reviews, so there is effectively no independent evidence of what members think, either way.
• No points or credits, so you cannot bank stays by hosting the way GuestPoints or Globes allow.

Intervac: Best for a straight swap with no points and no money

Verdict: Seventy years old, cheap, and deliberately simple. No currency to earn, spend or lose track of, and no money moving between members at all.

Key facts

• Country-priced. USD $130 for one year or $230 for two on its US site; AUD $160 and $290 on its Australian site. Some national sites also run promotional pricing for new members, so the standard figure may not be the one you are offered.
• Free 21-day trial with no credit card required.
• Reciprocal and hospitality exchanges. Intervac describes its own position as a "no money and no points" policy.
• Members are supported by a local Intervac representative.
• Founded in 1953 in Switzerland by a group of teachers who wanted to travel on a limited budget. The first organised home exchange network.
• Intervac reports its members are host and guest to more than 5,000 exchanges a year.

Pros

• Among the lowest annual fees of any established paid network.
• No points system to learn, value or lose track of, and no possibility of a currency being revalued underneath you.
• Seventy years of operation and a membership with deep exchange experience.
• A free trial long enough to see whether the homes you want are actually there.

Cons

• Dated interface and search.
• Reports an annual exchange count rather than a listing count, so the size of the network is hard to compare with the others here.
• No Trustpilot presence we could find, so there is no independent read on member satisfaction at all.
• Prices and offers vary by national site, so the headline figure may not be the one you pay.

ThirdHome: Best for luxury second homes

Verdict: A different product from everything else here. You deposit weeks in a second home you own, earn Keys, and spend them on someone else's villa. The fees are the highest on this list.

Key facts

• Free to join once you make two in-season weeks available at your property. Annual dues of USD $295 begin the January after you enrol, and only in years you travel.
• Plus an exchange fee of $495–$1,995 per stay, not per night. A one-Key stay costs $495 and each additional Key adds $100, up to a maximum of $1,995 for stays of 16 Keys or more. ThirdHome puts the average at around $900.
• Second homes only. Primary residences are not eligible. Properties must be valued from $500,000 up to $50M and over.
• Keys are earned by depositing weeks and expire 24 months after they are earned. You must book within that window, though you do not have to travel within it.
• Non-simultaneous by design. ThirdHome describes itself as neither a direct nor a simultaneous exchange.
• Size figures conflict on its own pages: 30,000+ luxury properties in one place, "thousands of vacation homes" in another. 100+ countries.
• Resorts, yachts, castles and estates on the roster. $5M host protection for every stay.
• Trustpilot 4.7 from 1,152 reviews, and its profile records replies to 100% of negative reviews.

Pros

• The only platform here operating at genuine luxury scale, with property types no other network carries.
• Non-simultaneous by design, which suits second homes that sit empty anyway.
• $5M host protection for every stay is the largest single cover figure in the category.
• Exchange fees are published as a formula rather than a range you discover at checkout, so the cost of a given stay is predictable.
• Along with People Like Us, one of only two platforms here that answers every negative review.

Cons

• The highest total cost on this list: the exchange fee dwarfs the $295 dues and applies to every stay.
• Anyone without a qualifying second home is excluded outright, and primary residences are never eligible.
• The 24-month expiry on Keys puts a clock on value you have already given up.
• Keys are assigned a value by ThirdHome based on your property, so what your week earns is not something you set.

Behomm: Best for designers and creatives

Verdict: A curated club for visually-minded people with beautiful homes. The most expensive standard membership here, attached to the smallest network.

Key facts

• €480 per year for unlimited exchanges, a second home listed free, and up to 20 exchange offers a day. Prices include VAT at 21% for EU residents.
• The "First Annual Payment Guarantee": twelve extra months free if you arrange no exchange in your first paid year, subject to conditions. You must not have taken the free trial, must maintain at least five photos meeting Behomm's specifications, must have proactively contacted at least five other members and made a genuine effort, and must contact Behomm before your first payment period ends. If your second payment has already gone through, the guarantee no longer applies and that payment is non-refundable.
• Invitation-only. You apply for an invitation rather than registering, and listings are not visible to the general public.
• Homes are curated on aesthetics rather than luxury. Behomm's own framing is that taste has nothing to do with luxury, and that homes of every size fit, from very small flats to villas.
• Pure reciprocal exchanges, one to one, no third parties and no points system. Behomm's terms prohibit renting, payments, deposits, tourist taxes and cleaning fees between members entirely.
• Owners and renters are both eligible, provided the property can be legally exchanged.
• Membership renews automatically each year unless you cancel, and there are no refunds or credits for unused months.
• Founded in Barcelona in 2013 by graphic designers Eva Calduch and Agustí Juste, and operated by Behomm Community SL. Members in more than 50 countries; 51% are families with children.
• Behomm publishes no current member or listing count.

Pros

• Every listing has been through a curation process, which is not true of any open network here.
• Renters can join, unlike ThirdHome.
• Strictly money-free: no deposits, cleaning fees or tourist taxes may pass between members, which no other platform here enforces so firmly.
• Members share a design sensibility, so expectations about how a home is kept tend to align.

Cons

• No published member count, so you cannot judge liquidity in your destinations before paying.
• You cannot join without an invitation, and admission is at Behomm's discretion with no appeal.
• The guarantee is conditional, and it lapses entirely once your second payment has been taken.
• Automatic annual renewal with no refunds or credits for unused months, under any circumstances.

Platforms that no longer exist (or never did)

During the pandemic, 19 home exchange networks shut down and only three launched, according to an industry count compiled in July 2023. The collapse in travel demand hit at exactly the moment these businesses depended on annual renewals, and the survivors acquired several of the networks that failed. A lot of advice still circulating online points at platforms that are gone. Three come up constantly:

Love Home Swap: acquired by HomeExchange in March 2023. Member accounts were migrated across, and its website now shows a HomeExchange migration notice. It is not a platform you can join in 2026.

Holiday Swap: the UK company was dissolved in March 2026, according to the Companies House register. If you find a review recommending it, check its date.

HomeForExchange: bought by Love Home Swap in 2015 and shut down in July 2020, when its members were migrated. Its domain now redirects to HomeExchange, two acquisitions downstream.

How we chose, and where these numbers come from

Every platform above was selected on one criterion: it is operating and accepting members in 2026. We excluded anything we could not confirm was still trading, which is why the section above exists.

The platforms are not ranked. They appear in no order of merit, and the position of any entry, including our own, carries no meaning. Each is headed by what it is genuinely best for, because the right platform depends entirely on how you travel. If you want a shortcut, the "Which platform should you choose?" section below matches situations to platforms directly.

Three things you should know about the numbers:

Most size figures are platform self-reported, and no independent audit of listing counts exists anywhere in this industry. HomeExchange publishes four different figures across four currently live pages: 450,000+ houses in over 187 countries, 360,000+ homes in over 155 countries, 300,000+ members in 155 countries and 250,000+ members in 155 countries. A comparison article on its own blog, published in July 2026, gives 360,000+ homes in its summary table and 550,000 homes in the body text of the same page. Kindred is similar: 100,000+ homes and 120,000+ nights on its own hosting page, against 300,000+ "members and homes" and 350,000+ nights in its Trustpilot profile description. ThirdHome's own pages give both 30,000+ properties and "thousands". HomeLink and Behomm publish no count at all. Every one of these pages was archived on 3 September 2026 and the snapshots are linked in Sources, so you can check them yourself. People Like Us figures are publicly verifiable in a different way: our listing count is published live at peoplelikeus.world/homes.

Prices were checked in September 2026 and are stated in the currency each platform bills in. Three platforms price by country, and their pricing pages detect where you are: HomeLink shows AUD $210 for 12 months in Australia and USD $125 on the same URL in the United States, and Intervac shows AUD $160 against USD $130. We have given both figures rather than converting one into the other. Landing pages can also fall out of date, and can differ by device: HomeExchange's house exchange page currently advertises $175 a year on desktop and $150 on mobile, while its home exchange page shows US$235. The $235 figure matches its membership page, so treat the other two as unmaintained copy rather than an available price.

Trustpilot figures are as displayed on 3 September 2026 and will drift as reviews come in. Where a platform has no Trustpilot presence we could find, we have said that instead of leaving a gap. Our own support response times are drawn from our helpdesk records covering all 10,325 member conversations since July 2022.

Every claim in this guide is linked to a source in the Sources section, and most sources are linked to an archived snapshot taken on 3 September 2026 as well. Where a source cannot be archived, we hold a dated screenshot instead. Where we could not find a source at all, we removed the claim rather than attributing it to unnamed members.

We did not accept payment, affiliate commission, or placement fees from any platform listed here. We are one of the platforms listed here, which is a stronger conflict than an affiliate link, and we have disclosed this at the top.

Which platform should you choose?

1. "I want the best chance of getting the destination and dates I want."

HomeExchange. Whichever of its published figures is correct, it is an order of magnitude larger than anything else here, and inventory beats everything else when you are date constrained.

2. "I want the lowest annual cost."

HomeLink or Intervac. Both price by country, both charge nothing per stay, both offer a free trial first, and neither runs a points system, so what you see is the whole cost.

3. "I want to know who I'm exchanging with. Trust and community matter most to me."

People Like Us. The highest customer ratings in the category, every negative review answered publicly, a community Feed and special interest sub-Communities rather than a search box alone, and a mentor for your first exchange. We would say all that, so check the Trustpilot profile yourself rather than taking our word for it.

4. "I live in a city apartment and don't want to commit money up front."

Kindred. City coverage is its whole thesis, joining is free, and its two layers of cover are the strongest of any platform with no membership fee. Model the service fee plus cleaning against an Airbnb for your actual trip before booking, and note that on Kindred's own estimator a single trip costs $500 in fees.

5. "I own a second home and want luxury properties."

ThirdHome, and it is the only option. Budget for the per-stay exchange fee, which is the real cost, not the $295 dues.

6. "My home is my design project and I want to stay somewhere with the same care behind it."

Behomm. Curation on aesthetics rather than square metres, renters welcome, and strictly money-free between members. With no published member count, treat it as a second membership unless an invitation tells you otherwise.

Frequently asked questions

Is home swapping safe?

Broadly, yes: the structure is unusually self-policing, because the person in your home has left you theirs. Cover varies a lot by platform, though, and it is worth knowing exactly what you have. HomeExchange publishes cancellation protection of up to USD $840 per week where no replacement can be found, property damage cover up to USD $1,000,000 above a USD $500 guest deposit, cover against theft, up to USD $120 per night towards alternative lodging when a host cancels, and 24/7 support. Kindred reviews every home and member before acceptance, verifies identity, and carries $100,000 of damage protection plus $1,000,000 of liability cover with no deductible. ThirdHome carries $5M host protection for every stay. People Like Us offers no platform insurance and relies on members' own home and contents policies, which we explain here. HomeLink, Intervac and Behomm publish no equivalent cover, and Behomm's terms make clear that insuring your home and contents is the member's own responsibility. Check what your platform actually offers rather than assuming there is a standard.

What support can I expect if something goes wrong mid-trip?

This varies more than people expect. HomeExchange runs support 24/7 by phone, live chat and email, and is the only platform here you can telephone. People Like Us has support every day of the year by message, with a median response time of 22 minutes this financial year; we publish that figure and no other platform in this guide publishes one at all. Kindred coordinates cleaning and handles claims under its two protection programmes. HomeLink and Intervac route you to a local representative in your country rather than a central team. Behomm publishes no support commitment and its terms are explicit that members settle disputes between themselves, with mediation offered at Behomm's discretion only where all communication stayed inside its messaging system. If mid-trip support matters to you, check what each platform actually promises before you join.

What is the cheapest home swap platform?

Kindred has no membership fee, though per-trip fees apply and on its own estimator those come to $500 for a single trip. Among paid memberships, HomeLink and Intervac are the cheapest, both priced by country, followed by People Like Us at $159. The cheapest platform overall depends on how often you travel: a fee-per-stay model costs more than a $159 membership from the first trip.

Do home swaps have to be reciprocal?

No. HomeExchange GuestPoints, People Like Us Globes and Plutos, Kindred credits and ThirdHome Keys are all designed for non-reciprocal stays, where you visit someone without hosting them in return. Timing is a separate question: HomeLink, Intervac and Behomm have no points systems, but all three permit non-simultaneous swaps between the same two households, and HomeLink and Intervac offer hospitality formats as well.

Can I host someone in a spare room rather than lending my whole home?

Yes, on several platforms. HomeExchange has a Private Room Exchange, People Like Us has hospitality stays, and HomeLink and Intervac both support hospitality formats. Kindred is the exception: it is whole-home only, so everyone in the household must be away. Room-based hosting is popular with people who want the language exchange and the company as much as the accommodation.

Can renters swap homes?

On most platforms, yes. Behomm's terms accept owners and renters alike, Kindred accepts renters whose home is their primary residence, and most reciprocal networks do not check tenure. ThirdHome is the exception: it requires you to own a qualifying second home, and primary residences are not eligible at all. Check your own tenancy agreement too: many prohibit subletting, though a non-commercial exchange sits in a different category and it is worth asking your landlord directly.

How do I find the right exchange partner?

Most platforms leave this to search and messaging: you filter listings, send proposals and wait. People Like Us adds a community Feed with automated matching, which surfaces members whose homes, dates and plans align with yours, plus special interest sub-Communities where members connect around a shared interest rather than a destination, and a mentor programme pairing new members with experienced ones. Whichever platform you use, a complete profile, honest photographs and a personal first message do more than anything else.

What happens if I join and never find an exchange?

Platforms handle this in two different ways, and neither is unconditional.

Two publish a second-year guarantee. Behomm gives twelve extra months free, provided you did not take the free trial, you maintain five photos to their standard, you proactively contacted at least five other members, and you apply before your first payment period ends. HomeExchange gives a free second year, provided your profile is complete and fully verified within three months, you sent at least 40 exchange proposals in the first three months, you kept a good response rate, and you apply seven days before your year expires. Read the conditions before relying on either.

Three let you look before you pay. HomeLink offers a free trial, Intervac a free 21-day trial with no credit card, and People Like Us a free tier. That is the more direct answer to the question, because you can search your destinations first and only pay if the homes are there. People Like Us also offers a 60-day refund at full price, which returns your money rather than extending your time.

What happened to Love Home Swap?

HomeExchange acquired it in March 2023, migrated the member accounts, and retired the brand. The domain now shows a HomeExchange migration notice.

What happened to Holiday Swap?

The UK company was dissolved in March 2026, according to the Companies House register.

Which platform is best for families?

HomeExchange, on inventory alone: the more homes in a network, the better your chance of finding one with a cot, a high chair and a garden in the week you need it. People Like Us is the better-value option if you can find matches in your destinations, and its 150+ search filters make screening for family requirements straightforward. Behomm is worth knowing about too: it reports that 51% of its members are families with children.

Which platform is best for luxury?

For this, ThirdHome has no close competition, provided you own a qualifying second home. If you do not, HomeExchange Collection at $1,500 a year is the alternative route to high-end properties.

Which platform is best for remote workers?

People Like Us suits longer remote stays well because a Globe covers a stay of any negotiated length: a month costs the same token as a weekend. On nightly-currency platforms such as HomeExchange, the same month costs roughly four times a week-long stay.

Which platforms are best outside Europe and North America?

Every network in this guide is concentrated in Europe and North America, ours included: nearly 95% of People Like Us homes are in Europe, North America and Oceania. HomeExchange has by far the most homes in absolute terms, so it will usually have the deepest coverage anywhere, including Asia, South America and Africa. Intervac is the one to avoid if your travel is not European. Whichever you pick, search your actual destinations before paying, which is what free tiers and free trials are for.

Do you need a big or impressive home to swap?

No. This is the most common reason people never try, and it is wrong. Behomm's own position is that taste has nothing to do with luxury and that homes of every size fit, from very small flats to villas. Location, cleanliness and honest photographs matter more. A one-bedroom flat in a city centre is in higher demand than a large house an hour from anywhere.

How do the points systems compare?

They work on different units:

• HomeExchange GuestPoints: a nightly currency, valued algorithmically rather than by you. Long stays cost proportionally more.
• People Like Us Globes: one token equals one stay of any negotiated length, earned by hosting, with no expiry while you are a member. Plutos cover one to three nights and combine.
• Kindred credits: one night hosted equals one night earned, regardless of home value, with two more for a successful referral. Credits cannot be bought and have no monetary value, and per-trip fees apply on top.
• ThirdHome Keys: earned by depositing weeks in a second home you own, priced into an exchange fee that rises $100 per Key, and bookable for 24 months after earning.
• HomeLink, Intervac and Behomm run no currency at all. You arrange a swap directly with the other household.

Nightly currencies punish long stays. Stay-based tokens punish short ones. Match the unit to how you travel.

Can I use more than one platform?

Yes, and experienced exchangers usually do. Four of the seven here cost nothing to join and look around, so there is very little stopping you from listing on two and seeing which community suits you. A free People Like Us listing costs nothing to run alongside a paid HomeExchange membership, and the marginal effort is one more set of photographs.

Start with a free listing

If you want to test whether home exchange works for you before spending anything, put up a listing and see who is in the places you want to go. Creating a People Like Us listing is free: you can list your home, browse the network and save homes you like without paying, and only upgrade if the matches are there.

Create your free People Like Us listing →