How Houstel.pk works for hostel owners

4 min read  ·  Updated October 2026

Most hostel owners in Pakistan run two jobs at once. One is finding people to fill the beds. The other is everything that happens after they move in: who is in which room, who has paid, who owes, what the bills came to this month. Houstel.pk exists to take both off a register and a phone full of WhatsApp messages, and put them in one place you can open from any phone or computer.

The two halves of your account

When you sign up you get both halves. You do not choose between them, and you do not pay for the first one at all.

Your public listing

Your hostel gets its own page on Houstel.pk with your photos, your rooms, your rents and your facilities. When somebody searches for a hostel in your area, your page is one of the ones they find. If they are interested, their enquiry comes straight to you. There is no middleman and no commission on the rent they eventually pay you.

Your dashboard

Behind a login is the software that runs the hostel: rooms and beds, residents, rent, receipts, dues, expenses, staff, the mess menu, messages to residents, and reports that tell you whether this month was better than last. Your residents get a small account of their own where they can see their room and their payment history, which cuts out a lot of the questions you would otherwise answer yourself.

What it costs

Listing is free, always. The software is free while up to 20 residents are living in your hostel, not 20 in total ever but 20 at a time. Plenty of small hostels never pay anything.

Above 20 living residents you move onto a plan, starting at Rs 4,500 a month, and every plan begins with a 30-day free trial so you can try it with your real hostel before you decide. The pricing chapter has the full rates and explains exactly what counts towards the 20.

The order to do things in

You do not have to do all of this today. But this is the order that works, and each step takes minutes rather than hours.

1. Create your account Your name, email, phone and the name of your hostel. How to sign up →
2. Fill in your hostel profile Address, map pin, boys or girls, facilities, timings. What to fill in →
3. Add your floors, rooms and beds This is the part everything else is built on. Setting up rooms →
4. Add photos Without at least one photo your listing will not appear publicly. Taking good photos →
5. Wait for approval Usually within a working day. You can keep working in the meantime. How approval works →
6. Add the residents you already have Then start recording rent as it comes in. Adding residents →

Who this is built for

Houstel.pk is built for hostels in Pakistan: boys' and girls' hostels for students and working people, from a six-room house to a building with two hundred beds and several branches. It handles the things Pakistani hostels actually do: rent by the calendar month or from the joining date, security deposits, mess included or billed separately, electricity split between residents, part payments, cash and bank side by side, and staff who need access to some things but not to your money.

What it does not do

It is worth being straight about this, so nothing surprises you later.

• It does not collect rent for you. Residents pay you the way they always have, by cash or bank transfer or whatever you use. You record what you received; the money never passes through us.
• It does not set your prices. Rents, deposits, mess charges and discounts are yours to decide, and you can change them whenever you like.
• It does not show your business to other hostels. Your residents, your rents, your income and your expenses are visible to you and to the staff you give access to. Nobody else on the platform can see them.

Common questions