Travelers looking for unconventional means of travel, whether to save money or to have a unique experience, have come to the right place! TrustedHousesitters offers a very special way to see the world and one that we gladly recommend you to try for yourself. You get to meet locals in your destination (your hosts), perhaps see a different part of the country that tourists never visit, and you get to love on some animals and maybe even share some travel adventures with them!

But it’s not all rainbows and unicorns, of course. We began our TrustedHousesitters experience blind and learned a lot along the way, inspiring us to write this honest review.

Before we begin, we’d like to tell you a little about our experience so you can put some trust in our review of TrustedHousesitters.

By the end of 2019, we will have house sat for a total of 13 weeks this year. 10 of those weeks were in the UK, stretching from Scotland down to Wales and our final three weeks will be spent in the Netherlands. There are plenty more to come, most likely in the US and Canada but we’ll see!

We’ve had our fair share of figuring out how to get from place to place, short sits (1 week) and long sits (up to 3 weeks), working with pets of all kinds like dogs, cats, chickens, etc… We did it all via public transport and we even managed it while teaching English online several days a week.

If you’re not working while house sitting your life will be much easier! Also, if you have a car while house sitting your life will be much easier.

You might be asking yourself if TrustedHousesitters is worth it and hopefully we’ve helped you come to a decision by the end of this review. (Hint: we think it is!)

So, let’s dig in to the pros and cons of this service. We’ll sprinkle it with some tips as we go!

Pros of TrustedHousesitters

“Free” Housing

Let’s start with the most obvious of all the pros: free housing!

Yes, TrustedHousitters, is a way to travel and receive free housing. But when considering the yearly membership (more on that below), it’s not technically free.

However, by the time you’ve stayed a few nights in your house sit, especially if it’s in an expensive part of the world like the UK, you’ve made up the cost of that membership fee and more!

So, the biggest bonus of using TrustedHousesitters? You save tons of money on housing!

For example, staying a week in beautiful Scotland where we watched a house of three dogs, Airbnbs and B&B’s in the area were over $50/night minimum. So, after some quick math, that would’ve cost us at least $350 just for accommodation!

Great Way to Travel

Another simple but vital point to make in our TrustedHousesitters review is that it’s a great way to travel.

As we mentioned earlier, having a house sit means meeting your hosts. Those hosts are locals so they know the area and can offer you tips.

For example, our hosts in Cardiff, Wales even provided a map of the area and recommended where to go. They also mentioned places to take their dogs so it was a win-win. The dogs loved exploring outdoors and we loved seeing Wales!

TrustedHousesitters is Growing in Popularity

We first thought about writing this point as a con but after further thought, we’ve decided it’s a pro.

Originally, we were thinking about how sits are mainly in North America (US and Canada), the UK, and Australia/New Zealand. There are a few other countries in Europe where it’s pretty popular, like France and Spain, but otherwise, sits are not widespread all over the world.

However, TrustedHousesitters continues to grow so if your destination isn’t on the list of sits just yet, keep an eye out because we wager it won’t be very long before more sits are available in more places!

Easy to Use Website

Even back in our “we have no idea what we’re doing” days, the TrustedHousesitters website was (and still is) very easy to use and navigate.

You can search by country, continent, or even get more specific and it will return any available results.

Have an idea of where you’d like to go? Search away! And don’t get discouraged if you don’t find anything right away. Plenty of hosts list their house very late in the game!

Flexible Membership

You’ll also find us talking about the membership in the cons below, but there is something awesome about TrustedHousesitters’ membership. If you’re a couple or even a family, you just need one account!

That’s very nice because the membership isn’t that cheap. Again, more on that below.

Welcome Guides

Hosts who provide these are the best!

Some sits don’t provide welcome guides but the ones that do are always very informative and a great resource while staying in someone’s house and watching their pets.

These guides can cover everything from when to feed and walk a pet, how to work some of the appliances in the house, or the contact info of a vet or neighbor that can be of help.

And as a bonus, especially for explorers, they give some insight on what to do in the area like trails or sights to see!

Vet Advice Line

Problems can happen with pets. They’re unlikely, thankfully, but in the case of a bad situation and you’re unsure what to do, TrustedHousesitters has a vet advice line.

If it’s the middle of the night and you think something is wrong it’s nice to know there’s help available.

Even so, your host should leave you the number for the local vet/animal hospital or the number of someone who can help. This was especially true for us as we did not have a car to transport animals in emergency situations.

So be sure to ask if they haven’t told you about who to contact in case of an emergency!

Furry (and not so furry) Friends!

To put it simply: we love animals. We’ve watched cats, dogs, chickens, and fish. Each animal has its own personality and it’s been incredible to experience them all!

Dogs are our favorite animal and they make up most of the sits on TrustedHousesitters. You’ll find plenty of variety though!

Some pets, of course, are easier than others, but we remember every single one and reminisce about many of them often!

Cons of TrustedHousesitters

Membership Fee

Compared to an Airbnb or a hotel room, $119 (for sitters) a year isn’t a lot but it is a fair sum for an annual membership. Luckily, if it’s your first year you can usually find a discount code bringing the total to under $100. It’s still a big chunk of money no matter how you look at it.

That said, we made that money up in our first sit near Manchester, England.

So yes, it’s a lot up front and all at once but after a sit or two you’ve made it all back!

Hard to Get Going

It took us over a month of applying for sits before we got accepted.

It makes sense, right? We had no reviews, no experience, but we did have some very essential documents which we recommend you to have on your profile: References, an honest and friendly bio and identity verifications, which are easy to complete.

If we’re competing against another housesitter who has had several sits and stellar reviews, it would be hard to win. And TrustedHousesitters is the largest housesitting website on the internet so you’re going to go up against some stiff competition.

But on the flip side, with it being one of the largest housesitting websites out there, there are a ton of hosts looking for sitters!

When searching for potential sits, if you see a host has 0-3 applicants then you need to apply ASAP!

We’ve even managed to get a sit with a host who had 4-7 applicants but this was after we had some reviews.

So, you want to apply early and often and as we mentioned, have that professional but friendly profile ready to send out to potential hosts!

Be sure to check out our application tips for TrustedHousesitters. You’ll find a quick and easy guide to getting started.

Restricted (Sometimes Difficult) Travel

One thing we noticed about all of our sits is that no two sits are alike.

Being a traveler who doesn’t know the area well, it’s hard to tell what a sit will be like until after you arrive. For some of our sits in the United Kingdom we realized, after the fact, that we wouldn’t be able to do much exploring outside of the town we were staying in. Whether public transportation was scarce or the pet couldn’t be left for more than a few hours, it really put a hinder on our travel hopes.

There were places where the beauty of the area was more than enough to enjoy our house sit. But then there were sits where there was nothing to do in the local area and leaving was futile because we’d have to turn right around to make sure we weren’t gone too long from the pets.

So, the best advice we can give to fellow travelers is to do as much research as you can and ask as many questions as you can during your interview. If the host has chosen you for an interview you’re likely going to be the one housesitting, but you always have the choice of saying “no thanks” if it doesn’t seem like a good fit.

For those who want to travel and use TrustedHousesitters this is one of the most important points of our review!

Daily Emails

This is one of the less serious points we’d like to share in our TrustedHousesitters review.

If you’re on the hunt for a new sit then the daily emails are welcome and TrustedHousesitters does a great job at keeping you notified of potential sits.

But if you’re taking a break from house sitting or just in between sits, the daily emails become a bit of an annoyance.

It seems that you get them two, maybe even three times a day depending on how many new sits were recently posted.

It’s not a big hassle but just an annoyance to have the bombardment in your inbox. You may want to adjust your email settings depending on your situation.

Availability (currently can’t opt out)

Hosts on TrustedHousesitters can search you out. This will definitely happen after you’ve got a few sits and good reviews under your belt.

Unfortunately, TrustedHousesitters doesn’t have an option for you to say you’re “unavailable” so potential hosts will contact you again and again. It’s not necessarily a bad problem to have, right? But when you’re not interested in housesitting, like we were during the summer, then it can be bothersome.

We could not figure out how to not show up on the searches and eventually contacted TrustedHousesitters support. Their solution was to set our availability to a single day in 2026. We no longer receive messages, which is nice!

Summary of TrustedHousesitters Review: Our Tips and Experience

We truly hope this review has helped you decide on if using TrustedHousesitters is worth it to you or not. Even with all the mistakes we’ve made during our housesitting adventure, we loved every minute of it and have some great memories of the people we met and of course, the pets!

If you have any questions about TrustedHousesitters, specific or general, don’t hesitate to contact us or comment.

Happy travels!

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