Last updated: August 5, 2026
Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and Redfin all draw from the same pool of MLS data, so the homes on them overlap heavily. What separates them is who receives the inquiry, what visibility costs, and how much control the listing agent keeps. Zillow and Trulia are one company, and both send contacts to a Premier Agent who paid for the placement. Realtor.com routes to agents who buy leads or join a referral program, sometimes more than one at a time. Redfin, owned by Rocket Companies since July 1, 2025, keeps inquiries inside its own brokerage. Your own IDX website is the only one of the five where every inquiry goes to the site owner, with no competing advertiser. If you’re weighing Zillow vs Redfin vs Realtor, that routing difference is the decision.
- The five options, compared
- Do Zillow and Redfin have the same listings?
- Zillow’s Listing Access Standards
- Who owns Redfin now?
- Sign and Save rebate
- Redfin vs Realtor.com
- Trulia vs Zillow
- Realtor.com advertising costs
- Your own IDX website
How the Five Options Stack Up
All five show largely the same homes. They split on five things: data source, refresh path, who gets your inquiry, cost, and control.
Picture one buyer clicking contact on the same listing, five ways (illustrative, not a real client). On Zillow or Trulia, it lands with whichever Premier Agent bought that ZIP code.
On Realtor.com, with an agent who paid for that market, maybe several. On Redfin, with a Redfin agent. On the listing agent’s own site, with the listing agent.
| Decision axis | Zillow | Trulia | Realtor.com | Redfin | Your own IDX site |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data source | MLS IDX feed plus owner-submitted FSBO | Same Zillow Group feed | MLS-listed homes only, no owner self-listings | MLS feed, no direct owner upload | RESO Web API feed on your own MLS credentials |
| Update path | MLS feed; refresh depends on the MLS’s push schedule | Same as Zillow | MLS feed; no published refresh figure | MLS feed; no published refresh figure | Sync interval you set, hourly by default |
| Who gets the inquiry | A Premier Agent who paid for the ZIP | The same Premier Agent system | An agent who paid for the market, sometimes several | A Redfin agent or Partner Agent, never the listing agent | You, with no third-party advertisers |
| Cost | $20 to $60 per lead reported | Bundled into Premier Agent spend | Leads from about $200 a month; referral fee not published | No ad buy for outside agents | MLS Import at $49 a month, or $504 a year ($42 a month billed annually) |
| Agent control | None; the portal owns page and lead | None, same as Zillow | Limited; you buy visibility, not page design | None for outside listing agents | Full control of design and domain, one MLS connection per site |
Do Zillow and Redfin Have the Same Listings?
Mostly, yes. Zillow and Trulia are both Zillow Group brands sharing one data pool, and Redfin pulls from the same MLS feeds, so active listings overlap heavily. The gap is FSBO: Zillow accepts owner-submitted listings and Trulia shows them, while Redfin has no direct owner upload.
Zillow’s Listing Access Standards: The Rule That Changed, Then Changed Again
Most portal comparisons skip this rule. It has moved twice.
On April 10, 2025, Zillow announced that a listing publicly marketed to consumers without being entered in the MLS within one business day, and made widely available, would not be published on Zillow. Agent notifications began May 28, 2025. From June 30, 2025, an agent’s third and any subsequent non-compliant listing was blocked from both Zillow and Trulia for the life of that listing agreement, as Real Estate News reported. HousingWire noted that builder-marketed new construction, FSBO, and rentals were carved out.
Then it changed. On March 17, 2026, alongside the launch of Zillow Preview, Zillow revised the standards. The one-business-day clock is gone, and the updated version carries no timelines.
MLS entry is optional now: the test is whether a listing is “broadly accessible to the general public in a manner that provides open access,” which an agent can meet through the MLS or another public-facing route. Real Estate News summed it up: agents can skip the MLS altogether.
What survived matters as much. A listing consumers can only reach by contacting the listing brokerage still fails the test and isn’t displayed on Zillow, and Open Homes Photography reports the ban as permanent. Zillow says the change doesn’t replace MLSs or alter agents’ obligations to the MLS.
Who Owns Redfin Now?
Rocket Companies does, and that’s the fact most comparison pages still get wrong.
Rocket announced the deal on March 10, 2025 and completed it on July 1, 2025: an all-stock transaction at $12.50 per Redfin share, about $1.75 billion of equity value, per Rocket’s own investor relations releases. Rocket CEO Varun Krishna, at the announcement: “Rocket and Redfin have a unified vision of a better way to buy and sell homes.” Then-Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, the same day: “Rocket and Redfin’s approaches to lending and brokerage service have always been two halves of one vision.”
Rocket’s completion release also introduced Rocket Preferred Pricing: qualified clients with conventional, FHA, or VA loans who finance through Rocket Mortgage and buy a home listed by a Redfin agent, or buy with a Redfin agent’s help, get one percentage point off their first-year interest rate, or a lender credit at closing of up to $6,000.
One more change to catch up on. Kelman, who ran Redfin for 20 years, announced his departure on January 13, 2026, his final day January 16, advising through April 1, 2026, as HousingWire’s Brooklee Han reported and The Real Deal confirmed the same day. Krishna now runs Redfin directly until a successor is named.
Redfin’s Sign and Save Rebate, Explained
Redfin’s buyer rebate has a name, a trigger, and a number.
The program is Sign and Save. As HousingWire reported from Redfin’s own announcement, buyers who sign an exclusive Buyer Agency Agreement with a Redfin agent before their second home tour get a refund at closing worth 0.25% of the purchase price, rising to 0.5% for luxury buyers purchasing through Redfin Premier. You have to close within 180 days of signing. That works out to $1,250 on a $500,000 purchase.
The exclusions are worth reading twice. HousingWire reports the program is available nationwide except in states where commission refunds are prohibited by law. Among the states it names: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Tennessee. Check your own state before counting on it.
Redfin vs Realtor.com: What “Redfin vs Realtor” Actually Means
Start with a clarification, because Google serves two answers here. People searching redfin vs realtor get pages comparing Redfin’s brokerage model against hiring a traditional agent, and pages comparing Redfin the portal with Realtor.com the portal. This is the second one.
Realtor.com is the official site of the National Association of REALTORS: MLS-listed homes only, no owner self-listings, so a FSBO that appears on Zillow won’t be there. Redfin also runs on MLS feeds with no direct owner upload, so on raw inventory the two sit close.
The difference shows up after you click. Realtor.com sends your inquiry to an agent who paid for that market or joined a referral program, and more than one agent can receive it. Redfin keeps it in-house: a Redfin agent or a Redfin Partner Agent, never the outside agent who listed the home.
Want the listing agent? Neither route gets you there. That agent’s own website does.
And since July 2025, in-house at Redfin means inside Rocket Companies, which matters if you care who picks up the phone.
Trulia vs Zillow: Same Data, Different Front Door
Zillow owns Trulia, and the two share listing data. Post a FSBO on Zillow and it turns up on Trulia. Trulia is an active Zillow Group brand alongside StreetEasy and HotPads, named as such in Zillow’s April 2025 announcement, with no shutdown announced.
So the honest answer on zillow vs trulia is that you aren’t choosing between two inventories. You’re choosing between two presentations of one inventory, and two front doors into the same Premier Agent system. On both, the contact button goes to an agent who paid for the placement, not the listing agent.
Agents get one practical consequence. The June 30, 2025 three-strike block was never Zillow-only: a blocked listing disappeared from Trulia too, for the life of that listing agreement.
What Does Realtor.com Advertising Actually Cost an Agent?
Search realtor.com vs zillow advertising and you’ll find plenty of opinion and few prices.
Realtor.com sells agents three named products, and only one of them will sell to an individual agent rather than a brokerage. That’s Connections Plus, which gets you Realtor.com’s lead flow in a market you pick, non-exclusive unless your brokerage also buys Market VIP. ListWithClever puts Realtor.com lead spend at $200 a month and up, with exclusive leads in popular markets pushing past $1,000.
The other two sit at brokerage level. ReadyConnect Concierge charges at closing: a concierge team phone-screens the lead and transfers the call, though Realtor.com doesn’t publish the cut it takes. Market VIP, the third name, is thinly documented beyond that.
On the Zillow side, leads run $20 to $60 each in HousingWire’s cost breakdown, which puts a typical Premier Agent at $300 to $500 a month in non-metro areas and $1,000 a month or more in metro areas. Zillow itself publishes no price: it wants you on the phone for custom pricing based on your location. What you spend depends on your ZIP code, local home values, and how many agents are competing for it.
📌 Pro Tip: Ask each vendor to quote one ZIP code before you commit. Zillow prices by phone call, so the rep’s number is the only one that counts, and it’s worth comparing notes with agents you trust locally.
Should You Run Your Own IDX Website Instead?
Maybe. Here’s the honest version, including the part that argues against us.
The structural case is in the table above: every inquiry goes to you. No paid placement, no referral fee off the closing, no competing advertiser beside your listing.
What that isn’t is a conversion-rate claim. No independently published comparison of portal-lead conversion against agent-website conversion exists, and the “industry benchmarks” you’ll find mostly come from companies selling a competing lead product.
Disclosure: MLS Import is our product. It’s a WordPress plugin that imports approved MLS listings into your site through the RESO Web API, for the WpResidence, WpEstate, Houzez, and Real Homes themes (full MLS Import plugin overview). MLS Import pricing is $49 a month, or $504 a year ($42 a month billed annually). The default sync interval is hourly, with other intervals available.
Now the limits. MLS Import supports one MLS connection per site, so a business needing two feeds needs two WordPress installs. You still need your own MLS-approved credentials: the MLS approves the feed, not us, and if your board says no, the plugin can’t say yes. Board fees are their own line item, so read what MLS access costs before you budget.
📌 Pro Tip: Apply for your MLS’s API access before you buy a theme or a plugin. Board approval is the long pole here, and nothing else on your list can start until it clears.
A year of Realtor.com leads at $200 a month is $2,400, against $504 a year for MLS Import plus MLS fees and hosting. The portal buys leads someone else may also receive; the site buys an asset on a domain you own. For a brand new agent with no sphere, portal spend is often the faster answer.
Key Takeaways
- Rocket Companies completed its $1.75 billion Redfin acquisition on July 1, 2025, and CEO Varun Krishna has run Redfin directly since January 13, 2026.
- Zillow dropped its one-business-day MLS entry rule on March 17, 2026, replacing it with a “broadly accessible to the general public” test.
- Redfin’s Sign and Save refunds buyers 0.25% of the purchase price when they sign before their second tour, except where state law bars commission refunds.
- Zillow Premier Agent leads run $20 to $60 each in HousingWire’s reporting, with non-metro agents typically paying $300 to $500 a month.
- Zillow and Trulia run on one shared data pool, so their listings are the same inventory behind two interfaces.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Trulia or Zillow better?
Neither has listings the other lacks. Both are Zillow Group brands on the same data pool, routing contacts through the same Premier Agent system, so “better” is down to which interface you prefer. For an agent, what changes the outcome is whether an inquiry lands with a paid advertiser or with you, which is what listings on your own site running MLS Import are for.
What is the difference between Realtor.com and Redfin?
Realtor.com is the official National Association of REALTORS site: MLS-listed homes only, no owner self-listings. Redfin is a brokerage as well as a portal, owned by Rocket Companies since July 1, 2025, takes no direct owner uploads, and sends inquiries to its own agents or a Redfin Partner Agent rather than the listing agent. Getting the inquiry yourself means owning the site it arrives on, which is the job MLS Import does.
Is “Redfin vs Realtor” about two websites or a portal versus a real estate agent?
Both readings are live, and search results mix them. One compares Redfin’s brokerage model against hiring a traditional commission-based agent, covering listing fees and service levels. The other compares Redfin the portal with Realtor.com the portal: data source, owner uploads, and where an inquiry goes. Agents weighing their own IDX website, built with a tool like MLS Import, usually mean the second one.
Does Zillow still require MLS listings within one business day?
No. That requirement started on April 10, 2025 and was removed on March 17, 2026, when Zillow revised its Listing Access Standards and dropped timelines entirely.
MLS entry is optional now, as long as the listing is “broadly accessible to the general public in a manner that provides open access.” The anti-gatekeeping rule stayed: a listing consumers can only see by contacting the listing brokerage still fails the test and isn’t displayed. Zillow’s standards govern what Zillow displays, not what your site imports through MLS Import.
Bringing It All Together
The four portals aren’t really competing on listings. They’re competing on distribution, and each decides who answers when a buyer raises a hand. Zillow and Trulia sell that answer to a Premier Agent, Realtor.com sometimes to several agents at once, Redfin to the Rocket-owned brokerage. Your own site is the one place where the answer is you.
Anyone comparing Zillow vs Redfin vs Realtor for where the money goes should start there, then price the options honestly. What do you think? Let us know in the comments!