TrustedHousesitters is worth it in Australia if you want sits overseas as well as here, and hard to justify if you only ever sit or host inside Australia: on 22 August 2026 its Australian memberships ran from A$109 to A$339 a year, against $35 one off to $89 a year on the Australian-run exchange platforms that charge anything at all. Sitterly publishes this page and competes with TrustedHousesitters directly, so weigh it accordingly and check the figures yourself before you pay anyone.
Here is the working. The three pet parent prices below were read from the rendered TrustedHousesitters pricing page, and the six sitter and combined prices from the plans data the site serves behind it, both geolocated to Australia on 22 August 2026, in AUD, undiscounted, then re-checked by a second researcher. Where a number is not published, this article says so instead of estimating it.
The Australian ladder is nine prices, and the page shows three of them
TrustedHousesitters sells membership three ways: a pet parent plan lists your home, a sitter plan applies for sits, and a combined plan does both, each in Basic, Standard and Premium. Nobody pays anybody for the sit itself, which is the exchange model Australians mean when they ask whether you pay a house sitter. The membership is the whole of the money, plus one fee covered below.
| Plan | Basic | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pet parent, for homeowners | A$119 | A$199 | A$239 |
| Sitter | A$109 | A$149 | A$229 |
| Combined | A$169 | A$279 | A$339 |
| Per-sit booking fee | Charged, amount not published | Charged, amount not published | None |
| Home and contents cover | No | Yes, conditions apply | Yes, conditions apply |
| Sit cancellation cover | No | No | Yes |
| Money Back Promise | No | Yes | Yes |
A legacy plan the company calls classic also survives in the same pricing data at A$109 a year. Only the three pet parent cards were rendered in the page's own HTML when we read it. The six sitter and combined prices are not in a crawlable pricing table at all, so neither a shopper nor a search engine reads them straight off the page.
Against the Australian field, that is three to five times the going rate
| Platform | Homeowner pays | Sitter pays | Where it operates |
|---|---|---|---|
| TrustedHousesitters | A$119 to A$239 a year | A$109 to A$229 a year | Worldwide, UK entity |
| Aussie House Sitters | $49 one off, lifetime | $89 for 12 months, then $84, $79, $74 | Australia |
| Mindahome | Free, or $35 one off for Premium | $69 for 12 months | Australia |
| Sitterly | Free, always | Free now, flat-fee subscription planned | Australia |
Happy House Sitters is missing on purpose. Its robots.txt blocks our research agent by name and its server refused an honest request from us, so we observed nothing directly and will not print second-hand prices. Its pricing page is public, so open it yourself. The wider field, including the paid marketplaces where you do pay the sitter, is in our comparison of the best house and pet sitting websites in Australia.
What the extra buys is scale, and that part is real. TrustedHousesitters has run since 2010, publishes roughly 46,140 URLs of which about 2,345 are Australian, and carries around 2,147 blog articles with named bylines, including genuinely strong dog-friendly city guides. No Australian platform is close on volume, and none can offer you a sit in Lisbon.
The one number you cannot see is the booking fee
Basic and Standard carry a per-sit booking fee, charged to both the homeowner and the sitter, and waived on Premium. On 22 August 2026 the Australian pricing page rendered that amount from an unresolved template variable, printing the literal text {{symbol}}{{amount}} per sit. No dollar figure appeared anywhere on the page.
Amounts for that fee do circulate on Australian review sites. None of them can be verified from the company's own page, so we are not repeating them. The practical consequence stands on its own: on Basic or Standard you cannot calculate what a year of sits will cost you until you confirm one, and the same charge lands on the person coming to mind your dog.
Australian Consumer Law sets out guarantees for services bought in Australia, and the ACCC explains what those guarantees are, including that extra promises made in marketing have to be honoured. How far they reach a membership sold here by an overseas company is not something this article can settle for you. That is general information, not legal advice.
The cover on the upper tiers is genuine, and every condition on it matters
This is the one place TrustedHousesitters offers something no Australian exchange platform does, so read it carefully.
- The Home and Contents Plan is stated by the company as up to $1 million, quoted in USD to Australian readers. It is included on the Standard and Premium pet parent plans, not on Basic.
- One of the company's own pages conditions that plan on you already holding a home insurance policy. It sits on top of your cover, it does not replace it.
- Sit cancellation cover is on the A$239 Premium tier only.
- The Money Back Promise refunds your membership if you receive no sitter applications within 14 days of posting your first listing, and it only qualifies if that listing went up at least 14 days before the sit was due to start. Receiving applications and not liking any of them is not the trigger.
A cover limit quoted in US dollars is not a cover limit in Australian dollars
The figure is stated as up to 1 million US dollars, it is on the Standard and Premium pet parent plans and not on Basic, and one of the company's own pages conditions it on you already holding a home insurance policy. What that leaves you covered for, and whether a non-paying occupant living in your home while you are away affects your own cover, are questions only your insurer can answer against your product disclosure statement. Ask before the sit, not after. General information, not insurance advice.
Moneysmart, run by ASIC, explains exclusions and why the product disclosure statement is the document that matters in its guide to choosing home insurance. Read yours before relying on any platform's cover, ours included.
Do not price an Australian sit from its local pages
TrustedHousesitters builds about 892 Australian locality pages across the eight states and territories, and no suburb tier under them. That is a flat two-level tree, so whatever locality page your area falls into is as close as the site gets to where you live.
Their cost figures should not be used for anything. On 22 August 2026 the City of Sydney page, the Boroondara page and the Balonne Shire page, covering St George and the country around it in south-west Queensland, all published the same sentence inside their FAQ structured data, with only the place name swapped: "The average cost of pet sitting in Boroondara is $1.79 per hour, $71.67 per week for 40 hours or $232.92 per month for 130 hours." Identical to the cent across inner Sydney, suburban Melbourne and rural Queensland, and wrong on its own terms, because $1.79 an hour for 40 hours is $71.60, not $71.67.
To be fair, the supply numbers on those pages are properly localised. The City of Sydney page rendered "3268 pet and dog sitters looking for sits near City of Sydney" when we read it. Near is doing some work there, because the equivalent radius on the Balonne Shire page reaches 150km and returns one sitter. Treat the sitter counts as real and the cost block as broken template text.
For an Australian sitter, the real cost is the timezone
Australian sitters report one problem no platform addresses, and it bites hardest on the biggest international pool. They say listings go live while they are asleep, so sitters in other timezones apply first, and one concluded that if that is always true there is little point joining. That is reported experience rather than anything we have measured, and why Australian sitters miss the best listings works through the arithmetic behind it.
A sitter membership is also bought before you have any proof it will work for you, which is true of Aussie House Sitters and Mindahome too, and is the strongest argument for starting somewhere free.
Where Sitterly is the weaker choice
Sitterly is newer and much smaller than TrustedHousesitters, which has run since 2010, so if the number of live listings in your suburb decides this, check both sites before paying either of us. Sitterly carries no insurance, no guarantee and no cover of any kind, so if a stated home and contents figure with conditions attached is what you want, TrustedHousesitters Standard or Premium publishes one and we do not. Sitterly does not vet every user, does not supervise sits and does not replace a sitter who cancels, and its reviews appear only once a booking is completed, which means a newer platform has fewer of them.
What Sitterly does offer, so you can compare like with like: automatic email verification and an optional police check, member-started and admin-reviewed, with homeowners able to filter sitter profiles by police check. Suburb-level location privacy, direct messaging, a reply rating from 1 to 5, and a report function. Sitterly supports the connection, and homeowners and sitters remain responsible for their own arrangements.
Two questions sit outside what this article covers: whether a live-in sitter acquires any occupancy right in your home, which is one for your state or territory fair trading or consumer affairs body, and what a visa allows an overseas sitter to do here, which is one for the Department of Home Affairs.
So when is the higher price the right call
| If this is you | The better buy | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want sits in Europe or the Americas as well as here | TrustedHousesitters | The only platform in this comparison that is not Australia only |
| You are a homeowner who wants a stated cover figure attached to the sit | TrustedHousesitters Standard or Premium | No Australian exchange platform publishes one. Read the conditions first |
| You want some cover if a sitter cancels on you | TrustedHousesitters Premium, A$239 | A Sit Cancellation Plan is included on the top tier only. We did not read its terms, so read them before you buy on this alone |
| You only ever host or sit inside Australia | An Australian platform | Between free and $89 a year buys the same exchange, priced in AUD, with no unpublished per-sit fee on top of it |
| You want to test the exchange model before spending anything | Sitterly | Free on both sides today |
| You need income rather than accommodation | A paid marketplace | An exchange sit pays nothing, by design |
The overseas case is not niche. The Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded 1,078,770 short-term resident departures in January 2026 alone. If you are one of those travellers, the membership arithmetic changes completely.
Common questions about TrustedHousesitters in Australia
- How much does TrustedHousesitters cost in Australia?
- Read from its own pricing page and the plans data behind it, geolocated to Australia on 22 August 2026, all annual and undiscounted: pet parent A$119, A$199 or A$239, sitter A$109, A$149 or A$229, and combined A$169, A$279 or A$339. A legacy classic plan also survives at A$109. Basic and Standard add a per-sit booking fee whose amount the page does not publish.
- Is there a cheaper TrustedHousesitters alternative in Australia?
- Yes, if you only sit or host inside Australia. On 22 August 2026 Aussie House Sitters charged homeowners $49 once and sitters $89 for 12 months, Mindahome charged sitters $69 a year with a free homeowner tier, and Sitterly was free on both sides. None of the three offers sits overseas, which is what the higher price buys.
- Does TrustedHousesitters insurance cover my home in Australia?
- Its Home and Contents Plan is stated as up to $1 million in US dollars, is included on the Standard and Premium pet parent plans rather than Basic, and one of its own pages conditions it on you already holding a home insurance policy. Ask your insurer how a non-paying occupant living in your home affects your own cover, and read your product disclosure statement before you rely on any platform's figure.
- Is TrustedHousesitters worth it for an Australian sitter?
- It turns on whether you want sits overseas. For Australian sits only, a sitter pays A$109 to A$229 a year there against $69 to $89 on the Australian platforms, and Australian sitters report that listings often go live overnight here, so applicants in other timezones get in first.
Put our row next to theirs
Nine prices and a booking fee nobody can read, against one screen with nothing hidden under it. Sitterly's pricing is free for homeowners permanently, free for sitters during the growth phase, a flat-fee subscription planned and said out loud in advance, and no per-sit fee at any tier. If that reads better, create a free profile and test us against them.
