Badi – Rooms & Flats for rent

Review by eFreeware

Badi is a rental app from the developer badi, built for finding rooms and flats in Spain and elsewhere in Europe. It has been on Google Play since the summer of 2015 and now sits past a million installs with a 4.6 average across more than 29,000 ratings, which is a strong signal for a category where trust matters. The pitch is straightforward: one place where seekers browse listings and listers manage the people who want to rent from them.

What makes it worth a closer look is that it serves both sides of the rental market rather than only one. If you have a room or an apartment to rent out, you can publish it and review candidates; if you are looking, you can filter listings, send a chat request and talk directly once the lister accepts. The app is free to download, carries no ads, and includes optional purchases tied to a lister service called Badi Plus.

Searching for a room or flat

The seeker side starts with the basics of any rental search: where you want to live, when you plan to move in and how long you intend to stay. Next, filter the results by room or apartment and by what you can pay each month. The filters go further, letting you sort by price, by featured listings and by amenities, which is the part I would lean on most once the initial results come back.

When something looks right, you send a chat request rather than a message. The lister has to accept it, and only then does the conversation open. That two-step approach is the detail that defines how the app feels: it slows things down compared with messaging anyone directly, but it means the chat you do get into is with someone who has already looked at your request. It also gives you room to ask questions and settle details before committing.

The developer frames matching as the moment a lister accepts your request, and the chat that follows as the place to clarify doubts and move ahead. I would treat that stage as the real work of the search. A profile with a bio, a clear photo and the languages you speak is the kind of thing that helps here, and the app's own guidance points in that direction.

Listing a property and handling candidates

For listers, publishing a listing costs nothing. You put the property up, and the app surfaces recommended tenants whose profiles you can look through. From there you talk to the people who are interested and decide who to take on. If you have rented out a spare room before, the appeal is having the inquiries, the profiles and the conversations in one place rather than scattered across messages and calls.

Badi Plus is the paid layer on top of that, aimed at getting your listing in front of enough of the right people within a fixed window.

Activation happens through a Get Badi plus option in the start area of the app or the website. The next screen sets out the benefits, the price and the duration, and once payment goes through the service is live. A countdown then shows how much of the 30 days is left, which is a small but useful touch if you are weighing whether the boost was worth it.

The pricing itself is the part I would check before committing. One thing worth keeping in mind is the scope: Badi Plus covers one listing for one month, so a lister with several properties would be looking at the cost per listing rather than a single account-wide fee.

Fast-track and getting more replies

The most recent addition is Fast-track, which the developer describes as a way for seekers to skip the queue and improve their chances of hearing back from a flat they are keen on. In a market where a popular listing can draw a lot of requests, that is a direct answer to a real frustration: sending a request and waiting with no idea where you stand.

I would read Fast-track as a tool for a focused search rather than a general upgrade. If you are chasing one or two places and want to be seen sooner, it addresses exactly that. If you are still browsing widely and comparing neighborhoods or budgets, the standard request-and-wait route still does the job, and the filters will probably shape your results more than a queue position will.

Between Fast-track for seekers and Badi Plus for listers, the app has a paid option on each side of the transaction. Both are optional in the sense that the core mechanics, publishing a listing and sending a chat request, work without them. Neither is a substitute for a complete profile or a well-photographed listing, which the developer's own advice stresses.

Setting up and what you need to hand

Getting started on the seeker side is a matter of entering your search criteria, which lets you see relevant listings before deciding whether to engage with any of them.

The developer's guidance for making it work is about presentation: bright, good-quality photos, a filled-out profile with a bio and a description, and listing the languages you speak. There are blog articles in a How to use Badi section for anyone who wants more detail on that.

The app also points to a support address for questions, and it has a web presence alongside the mobile app, with a website where Badi Plus can be activated too. If you are the sort of person who prefers to set things up on a larger screen before switching to a phone, that option exists.

Who it fits best

Badi is built for people renting rooms and flats in Europe, and the two sides it serves have different reasons to install it. A seeker who knows roughly where they want to live and what they can pay gets the most from the filters and the request system. A lister with a room or an apartment to fill gets a free listing and a stream of candidate profiles to work through.

It reads as especially suited to shared housing and mid-length stays, given that the search asks for a move-in date and a length of stay and lets you filter down to a single room. Anyone relocating for a job, a course or a few months abroad fits that shape well. Someone hunting for a long-term family home may find the room-or-apartment split less tailored to what they need.

The scale is worth noting: the app reports more than 3 million users and says it has connected over 6 million people with flats and rooms, and the install and rating figures on Google Play back up that it is widely used. For a rental marketplace, that matters, because the value of the app depends on how many listings and listers are active where you are looking.

A practical choice for renting in Europe

Badi covers the whole rental loop in one app, from filtering listings and sending a request to chatting once a lister accepts, and it does the same for the person on the other side of the deal. The free listing, the profile-based matching and the optional paid tiers on both sides make it a coherent package rather than a one-sided search tool. A 4.6 average from over 29,000 ratings suggests it has held up for a lot of people over the years.

The trade-offs are mostly about cost and scope. Badi Plus applies to one listing for 30 days, so listers with several properties pay per listing, and Fast-track is aimed at seekers who want to move to the front of the line for a specific place. Neither is required to use the app, but both are the kind of thing I would price out before deciding how much they are worth to me.

If you are looking for a room or a flat in Europe and want to search by location, budget and amenities before talking to anyone, this is a sensible place to start. If you have a room or apartment to rent and want to publish it without paying up front, the free listing and candidate profiles are the draw. I would install it, set up a complete profile and let the filters do the first round of work before considering anything paid.

What's new in version 5.132.53

Introducing Fast-track, a feature that will allow seekers to skip the queue and increase their chances of getting a response from their preferred flat.