I've joined several house sitting websites over the years. Membership fees vary, but if you consider how much you save on lodging costs, you'll make your money back in no time.
- TrustedHousesitters: $119/year as a sitter, or $148 to sign up as a homeowner and sitter. This is my favorite site to use. It has the most sits on offer, which also means it can be more competitive.
- housecarers.com: $50/year. One of my most memorable house and cat sits was found through housecarers.com. Since mentioning TrustedHousesitters to this couple, they're now TrustedHousesitters converts.
- MindMyHouse: $20/year. MindMyHouse has the cheapest membership of all the sites I've used, but I've only secured one of the several sits that I've applied for through them.
- House Sitters America: $30/year. House Sitters America, as the name suggests, only has listings for properties in the United States. They do, however, have sister sites for Australia, Canada, and the UK. Each site charges a separate fee.
House sitting is also a way to enjoy and care for a beautiful home. The house in Boulder that I cared for over Christmas in 2018 for about 10 days was very large and in a great location (a similar house on Airbnb would have cost close to $8,000 to stay in for a similar length of time, which I never would have been able to afford, even if I split the cost with friends). In this way, my housecarers.com annual membership paid for itself a hundred times over.
Most of these websites also have referral programs where you get an extra few months free for each person you refer, or a certain amount of money to go towards the cost of renewing your membership the following year.
You may be able to find house and pet sits advertised on Facebook groups, but there's an added sense of security in using a legitimate house sitting website. When I first signed up to TrustedHousesitters, I had to submit a scanned copy of my passport before I could be considered "verified," and I then used character references to support my first house sitting application.