The Rentvine API: open by default, and bigger than its docs

01 / Getting access

Four steps from account to first request

1. 01Be on Rentvine. There's no plan question to answer. Rentvine has a single all-inclusive plan and the open API is part of it, at no additional cost.
2. 02Create a role for the key. In Settings, go to Users, Roles, and API. Create a role that grants exactly the access your integration needs. Keys are role-scoped, so least-privilege is built into the model.
3. 03Generate the key and capture the secret. On the API tab, create a new API key, name it, and assign the role. Rentvine shows the API secret once. Store it immediately; if you lose it, you regenerate rather than recover.
4. 04Call your account's subdomain. The base URL is account-specific: https://{your-account}.rentvine.com/api/manager/. Authenticate with HTTP Basic auth using the key as username and secret as password.

That's the entire cost conversation, too: Rentvine runs a single all-inclusive plan (advertised as low as $1.50/unit as of August 2026) and lists the open API as an included feature. No add-on, no tier upgrade, no per-call fees.

02 / The surface

What the API exposes

The reference at docs.rentvine.com covers roughly 177 operations across 40 resource groups. Grouped the way you'll actually use them, with the rows our own integration reads or writes in production marked in cyan:

Cyan rows: used in production by LaunchEngine's Rentvine integration. Full reference at docs.rentvine.com.

03 / Beyond the reference

The parts the docs don't show you

This is the section you can't get from reading docs.rentvine.com, because it's about what isn't there. Everything below is running in our production integration today:

• 01Webhooks exist, are signed, and are nowhere in the API reference. Rentvine delivers real-time events with names like lease::lease::created, property::property::updated, and unit::unit::updated, verified with a per-account signing key. Our production integration runs on them daily. If you only read docs.rentvine.com you would never know they exist; ask the Rentvine team to set them up for your integration.
• 02File reads and deletes work; only upload is documented. The reference documents POST /files for upload. In production, GET /files (list), GET /files/{id}, and DELETE /files/{id} all work as you'd expect. The surface follows REST conventions more completely than the reference shows.
• 03When in doubt, try the conventional path. The pattern generalizes: Rentvine's API is bigger than its reference, and missing pieces usually respond at the obvious RESTful path. If the conventional endpoint 404s, their team is responsive about what exists. This is the opposite failure mode of most PMS APIs, and a pleasant one.

04 / The use cases

What teams actually build on it

Concrete patterns, drawn from workflows we run in production or that the surface directly supports:

• 01Trust-accounting health checks on autopilot. The twelve diagnostics endpoints (escrow mismatch, negative bank accounts, reconciliation lapses, unused prepayments, vendor insurance lapses) are a built-in audit suite. Poll them on a schedule and pipe exceptions to Slack or your ops board, and you've turned month-end fire drills into a daily green checkmark.
• 02A live operational mirror of the portfolio. Properties, units, portfolios, leases, tenants, and owners sync into your ops tooling in real time via webhooks plus the export endpoints, so the team coordinates work against data that's always current.
• 03Owner statements, delivered your way. Statement batches are queryable and each statement has a PDF download endpoint, so you can automate owner reporting delivery through whatever channel your owners actually read.
• 04Maintenance intake from anywhere. Work orders, inspections, and vendor trades are all creatable through the API, so external intake (a resident portal, an AI phone agent, a monday form) can open real work in Rentvine with no re-keying.
• 05Screening pipelines without the portal shuffle. Applications are queryable and exportable with status endpoints, so leasing workflows outside Rentvine stay in lockstep with what applicants do inside it.
• 06Documents in, documents out. Run signing or document generation in external tools, then push executed files back through the files API so Rentvine remains the system of record.
• 07Custom fields as an integration surface. Custom field categories and values are exposed through the API, so external systems can read the fields your team already uses, and stamp integration data where operators will actually see it.
• 08Communications that live on the record. The email endpoint takes plain email addresses as recipients, so owners, tenants, vendors, and applicants are all reachable, with an arbitrary HTML body or a saved Rentvine email template, file attachments, and threading, and every conversation anchors to a lease, property, unit, or contact. Add SMS/MMS to any phone number and chat messages that attach to leases, work orders, vendors, and applicants (with visibility flags per party), and an external automation can run its comms through Rentvine so the history stays on the record.

05 / Working notes

Six things to know before you architect

• 01The API secret is shown exactly once. When you create a key, copy the secret before closing the window. There is no reveal-again; losing it means regenerating and updating every consumer.
• 02Keys are role-scoped, so scope them. The role you attach to a key controls what it can touch. Resist the everything-role. Give each integration its own key with its own minimal role, and rotating or revoking one consumer never breaks another.
• 03The base URL is per-account. Every account lives at its own subdomain: https://{account}.rentvine.com/api/manager/. If you serve multiple PM companies, your integration needs the account code alongside the credentials for every client.
• 04Parameters are camelCase. Query and body parameters follow camelCase convention (pageSize, not page_size). Our Ruby client converts automatically; if you're hand-rolling requests, match the casing.
• 05No published rate limits doesn't mean no limits. Nothing is documented as of August 2026 and the API is permissive in practice, but design like a polite client anyway: queue requests, paginate, back off on errors, and track your own volume per account.
• 06Responses nest entities. List and detail responses wrap records ({ lease: {...} }) and the richer export endpoints return related entities (balances, tenants, property, unit) alongside the main record. Model for the envelope, and use exports when you want one call instead of five.

06 / Build vs. buy

What a production integration actually requires

The short version

Rentvine's API is the easy-access story in property management: included in the one plan, self-service role-scoped keys, a solid reference at docs.rentvine.com, and a surface that quietly does more than the reference admits, including signed webhooks and a one-of-a-kind accounting diagnostics suite. Scope your keys, capture the secret the one time it's shown, design as a polite client, and ask about webhooks early, because building on polling alone would mean missing the best part.