SonarHome: Using AI and Cloud Simplicity to Transform Real Estate

Pull quote: “We wanted to understand whether we can replicate the legacy data models that we’ve built in-house with DigitalOcean AI Platform…the next day our developer came back with the analysis that it’s gonna be really, really inexpensive at scale. Then we said, okay, let’s verify whether it’s better than the legacy solution—and then we realized that actually in most cases, it’s much better.”

A Platform Built to Modernize Home Valuations

SonarHome was founded by Mateusz Romanowski, CEO, and Piotr Chmolowski, CTO, in 2019. Mateusz, already a successful entrepreneur, had a firsthand realization of the need for innovation in the real estate space while purchasing his first home in Warsaw, Poland. Together with Piotr, he launched a tool to provide accurate home estimates to buyers across Eastern Europe. Today, SonarHome is a key player in the home valuation market in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, helping connect homeowners with top local agents when they’re ready to sell.

As Mateusz explains: “We started as a pure online tool to generate the online estimates of home valuations, and now what we do is connect home sellers with local agents. We don’t need to revolutionize the whole process, but want to make granular improvements to the home buying process.”

Managing Large Datasets with Predictable Pricing

Operating across multiple countries, SonarHome handles a significant volume of real estate data and needs a scalable and cost-effective cloud infrastructure. They use a multi-cloud setup, with DigitalOcean as their primary cloud and AI provider due to its simplicity, pricing transparency, and ease of use for their growing engineering team.

“There are three things that helped us to decide to go with DigitalOcean. First, it’s relatively inexpensive, especially for a cloud solution. Secondly, it’s quite straightforward and easy to get started with, so our technical team can easily learn it. Finally, DigitalOcean’s costs scale as our company grows—we’ve tripled the business and we’ve only doubled the cost for the infrastructure or even less,” shares Mateusz.

Unlike hyperscalers that may entice startups with large credits before raising prices long-term, DigitalOcean’s straightforward pricing model stood out. As Mateusz said “Big Tech’s cloud solutions provide lots of credits to get started, but then they get expensive. So when you are locked in, then it’s difficult to migrate.”

SonarHome primarily uses DigitalOcean’s Droplets, scalable virtual machines, to host their website and run machine learning processes, while also tapping into the AI Platform for more advanced analysis. Their engineering team values how easy it is to onboard new members to the infrastructure, which accelerates internal training and agility.

AI Agents Meet Real Estate Agents

In recent years, SonarHome has embraced AI to strengthen its product and stay ahead of the curve. Their vision is not to replace human real estate agents, but to empower them. By using AI to analyze unstructured property descriptions and generate price benchmarks, they’re building hybrid workflows where AI does the data-heavy lifting—and human agents focus on customer interaction.

DigitalOcean’s AI Platform made it fast and cost-effective to test this concept, with Matheusz saying “We wanted to understand whether we can replicate the legacy data models that we’ve built in-house with DigitalOcean AI Platform…the next day, literally the day after the proposition, our developer came back with the analysis that it’s gonna be really, really inexpensive at scale. Then we said, okay, let’s verify whether it’s better than the legacy solution—and then we realized that actually in most cases, it’s much better.”

Their agents can now structure data from listings, generate property descriptions, and gain insights about the housing market by using the DigitalOcean AI Platform. SonarHome’s team of 15 operates entirely remotely, with one-third focused on engineering. The company has been able to streamline operations by automating repetitive workflows and doubling down on high-leverage technologies.

“We’re trying to automate the processes. So it’s why we’re interested in any AI solutions that could boost our efficiency.”

DigitalOcean has been instrumental in supporting that mission—offering the infrastructure and tools to keep operations agile without sacrificing performance.

Looking Ahead: Technology That Guides Smart Decisions

SonarHome’s long-term goal is to help homeowners and sellers make the smartest possible financial decisions when buying, selling, or maintaining a property. To achieve that, they’re focused on blending real-world human experience with data-driven digital tools.

“While real estate agents will continue to be the face of home selling, we see AI and automation playing a growing role in the background—powering insights, optimizing decisions, and improving the experience for both sellers and agents.”—Mateusz Romanowski, CEO, SonarHome Romanowski, CEO, SonarHome

With DigitalOcean as their infrastructure and AI Inference partner, SonarHome is set to lead this transformation across Eastern Europe and beyond.