How does Zillow make money?

Zillow is the largest online real estate marketplace in the United States. Founded in 2006, it set out to make home buying, selling, and renting easier for everyone.

Today, Zillow attracts more than 200 million unique visitors each month and has become a household name thanks to its popular Zestimate home valuations. In 2024, the company reported $2.2 billion in revenue, fueled by rentals, agent advertising, mortgages, and software tools for real estate professionals.

Real estate involves high-value but low-frequency transactions—the average person only buys or sells a home a few times in their life. So to build a sustainable business, Zillow had to diversify its revenue with complementary services that generate income more consistently.

This strategy offers practical inspiration for marketplace founders. Many platforms face the same challenge: how to grow when core transactions don’t happen every day. By studying Zillow’s model, you can see how to layer new revenue streams, increase customer lifetime value, and build resilience over time.

In this article, we’ll explore how Zillow works, its revenue streams, and the growth strategies behind its success. We’ll also draw out lessons you can apply when building your own marketplace.

Zillow launched in 2006 as a free online home-search portal. Its standout feature was the Zestimate: an automated home-valuation tool that gave users an instant estimate of what their property might be worth.

The Zestimate helped Zillow quickly become a household name in real estate. In fact, as of 2025, Zillow commands over 50% of all U.S. real estate portal traffic—more than double that of its nearest competitors.

At its core, Zillow is a listings marketplace. It connects buyers, sellers, renters, landlords, and agents, offering tools that make the process of finding or marketing a home easier. But, over time, the company expanded into several other business areas:

• Listings portal: Zillow’s flagship product, where millions of for-sale and rental properties are posted and browsed every month.
• Premier Agent network: A lead-generation and advertising program for real estate agents and brokers.
• Fintech services: Mortgage origination through Zillow Home Loans and lead sales to third-party lenders.
• Software and data products: Tools like ShowingTime+, dotloop, and Bridge Interactive that agents and builders use to manage transactions and marketing.

Together, these services make Zillow more than just a property search engine. Now, it’s a full ecosystem for real estate across the United States.

Zillow connects buyers with sellers, renters with landlords, and agents with prospective clients on one online platform. It facilitates the entire journey—from property discovery and messaging to lead generation and transaction support—without directly owning property.

(Note: Zillow did invest in a brief but unsuccessful venture to buy and flip homes that we’ll explore later.)

Here’s how the experience looks for each type of user.

• Map search: Zillow’s interactive map makes it easy to explore neighborhoods and see nearby homes at a glance with estimated prices and school ratings.
• Filters: Users can refine results by price, square footage, number of bedrooms, amenities, and more, so they’ll only see homes that fit their criteria. Helping customers find the right product is central to any marketplace experience.
• Saved searches: Buyers and renters can save searches and get notified as soon as new listings appear so that they can move quickly in competitive markets.
• Personalized recommendations: Zillow uses browsing and search history to suggest homes that match a user’s preferences and make discovery more efficient.
• Online rent payments: Renters can pay securely through Zillow’s platform to manage monthly payments and keep records in one place.

• Free owner listings: Homeowners can list their properties as “For Sale by Owner” on Zillow without paying upfront fees.
• 3D Home® tours: Sellers can upload interactive virtual tours that showcase their property to potential buyers who can’t visit in person.
• Pricing guidance: Zillow’s Zestimate and pricing tools help owners set competitive prices based on real estate market trends and similar properties.
• Owner dashboard: A centralized dashboard shows real-time data on listing performance, such as views, saves, and traffic sources, while making it easy to edit photos or property details.
• Open-house promotion: Sellers can schedule and promote open houses, boosting visibility among local buyers.

• Zillow Rental Manager: Landlords can create rental listings for free. They also have the option to pay to boost visibility so their property appears higher in search results.
• Rent Zestimate and trend dashboard: Zillow provides a free rent-price calculator and city and ZIP-level market trend data to help landlords set competitive rents that still attract tenants.
• Centralized tenant inbox: Applications, messages, and documents are organized in one place to reduce the need for back-and-forth across multiple platforms.
• Automated rent collection: Property managers can use Zillow to automate reminders, track incoming payments, and apply late fees.
• Digital lease creation: Lease agreements can be generated and signed online, streamlining paperwork for both landlords and tenants.

• Lead routing: Zillow’s Premier Agent program connects buyer and renter inquiries with participating agents, giving them access to a steady flow of new leads.
• CRM tools: Built-in lead management features allow agents to organize contacts, schedule follow-ups, and track conversations all within the Zillow platform.
• Paid SaaS add-ons: Agents can subscribe to ShowingTime for appointment scheduling, dotloop for e-signatures and transaction paperwork, and Bridge Interactive for MLS data management.
• Performance analytics: Zillow provides detailed metrics so agents can measure the ROI of their ad spend and refine their lead-generation strategies.

Trust is critical in real estate. Buyers need to know listings are accurate, sellers want reliable offers, renters need confidence their payments are secure, and agents rely on a fair reputation system to win clients.

To support all sides of the marketplace, Zillow built the following features to make the platform safer and more transparent:

• Verified reviews: Buyers and sellers can leave reviews of agents, creating a reputation system that helps users choose who to work with.
• Transaction histories: Past sales data, including price and timeline, is displayed to give users confidence in the accuracy of listings.
• Secure messaging: Built-in chat tools allow buyers, sellers, and agents to communicate safely without exposing personal information, which reduces fraud risks.

Zillow generates revenue by monetizing the activity that happens across its marketplace. While listings are free for homeowners and renters, the company sells advertising space to agents, charges fees for rental services, originates mortgages, and offers software and data products to real estate professionals.

Rentals are one of Zillow’s fastest-growing businesses. With millions of Americans renting rather than buying, Zillow has built tools that help landlords market their properties and tenants apply with less friction.

While listing a rental is free, Zillow monetizes the process through a set of paid add-ons:

• Listing boosts: Landlords can pay to “pin” their rental listings higher in search results, improving visibility and reducing time-to-lease.
• Tenant screening fees: Renters pay for background and credit checks when applying through Zillow. This gives landlords trusted information while generating additional revenue for Zillow.
• Application payments: Zillow charges a small fee for each rental application submitted, which can often be shared across multiple listings to make the process more attractive to renters.
• Online rent payments: Tenants who use Zillow to pay rent online generate processing fees, while landlords benefit from automated reminders and easy tracking.

Zillow’s rental marketplace has grown steadily. In 2024, Zillow’s rentals revenue reached $453 million, up 27% year over year. With a total revenue of about $2.2 billion, rentals represented roughly 20% of the business for a meaningful contribution to Zillow’s diversified model.

For marketplace founders, Zillow’s approach shows how even free listings can become a revenue driver when you layer on optional upgrades and transaction services. Instead of charging upfront for access, Zillow monetizes the workflow around rentals to help both renters and landlords while creating recurring income.

At the same time, free access alone won’t sustain a business. Zillow continuously innovated its business model by layering monetization opportunities around the rental workflow: premium placement for landlords, application and tenant screening services, rent payment processing, and even advertising. Each of these services solves a clear pain point for users, while also creating recurring revenue streams for Zillow.

The backbone of Zillow’s business is its advertising network for real estate professionals. This category includes several products under Zillow’s IMT (Internet, Media & Technology) segment, but the Premier Agent program is the core piece.

Through the Premier Agent program, agents and brokers pay Zillow for qualified buyer and renter leads. When a user clicks “Contact Agent” on a property listing, they become a qualified lead, and Zillow routes that inquiry to participating Premier Agents in the area. This pay-per-lead model ensures agents only pay when potential clients express genuine interest.

Beyond lead generation, Zillow monetizes through a suite of subscription software tools under its Internet, Media & Technology (IMT) segment:

• Premier Agent advertising: Agents bid for leads in their local markets. They often pay hundreds of dollars per qualified contact in highly competitive areas.
• ShowingTime+: A scheduling tool that helps agents coordinate property showings, collect feedback, and manage appointments.
• dotloop: A transaction management platform for e-signatures, contracts, and compliance paperwork.
• Bridge Interactive: MLS data-management software that powers listings and back-end workflows for brokerages.

This segment is not only Zillow’s largest but also its most profitable. In 2024, Premier Agent and IMT services brought in about $1.6 billion, or just over 70% of the company’s total revenue.

For marketplace founders, Zillow’s model highlights the power of monetizing the professional side of the platform. Zillow helps agents win more business and work more efficiently to create a revenue engine that funds continuous growth while keeping access free for buyers and sellers.

This balance is crucial. Marketplaces are often celebrated for “cutting out the middleman,” but in real estate, the middlemen are exactly where the business opportunity lies. Zillow created a revenue engine that helps agents win more business and work more efficiently, funds continuous growth, and still offers a compelling, free experience for end users.

As our CMO, Sjoerd, discussed in this interview with Michael DeGiorgio, founder of Crexi, successful marketplaces can succeed by serving intermediaries better than anyone else, rather than removing them entirely.

Zillow also earns money through its growing financial services arm. Real estate is one of the few markets where financing is almost always required, which gave Zillow a natural opportunity to expand beyond offering a marketplace to providing mortgages and fintech services.

The company monetizes this segment in two main ways:

1. Zillow Home Loans: A direct mortgage origination business where Zillow earns fees by underwriting and funding home loans.
2. Mortgage marketplace leads: Zillow sells high-intent borrower leads to third-party lenders, who pay for access to prospective customers shopping for financing.

In 2024, mortgage services generated about $145 million, just under 7% of Zillow’s total revenue. While this is smaller than Premier Agent or rentals, this business line is strategically important: it gives Zillow a strong cross-sell opportunity at the point where buyers are making one of their biggest financial decisions.

Here’s the takeaway for marketplace founders: when your core transaction has a predictable secondary step—like financing, insurance, or shipping—you have the chance to capture that value instead of leaving it on the table.

But timing matters. Zillow only expanded into mortgages once its core marketplace was thriving, because success in adjacent services depends on already being the go-to platform for the primary transaction. If your marketplace delivers seamless transactions and earns user trust, customers will naturally want to complete the next steps in your ecosystem.

Beyond rentals, agent advertising, and mortgages, Zillow generates revenue from several smaller but strategically valuable channels:

• Promoted Communities: Builders and developers pay Zillow to feature new-construction homes more prominently in search results. This helps them attract buyers early in the decision process while creating another advertising revenue line for Zillow.
• Display advertising: Through Zillow Group Media Solutions, advertisers can buy display ads across Zillow, Trulia, StreetEasy, and HotPads. These placements reach millions of high-intent users researching housing options.
• Data licensing and analytics: Zillow licenses its datasets (including property records, listing histories, and the Zestimate API) to third parties for commercial, academic, or research purposes. While still a small revenue line today, this positions Zillow well as demand grows for AI- and data-driven real estate tools.

These ancillary streams accounted for a modest share of Zillow’s revenue, but they highlight the company’s ability to monetize its massive audience and extensive property data. They also show how Zillow continues to experiment with new services that can diversify its income without requiring ownership of physical assets.

For marketplace founders, these smaller revenue lines illustrate the long tail of monetization opportunities. Early on, your focus should be relentlessly improving your core marketplace experience. Over time, opportunities to monetize will emerge naturally, such as offering sellers better visibility, packaging data for partners, or opening new ad formats.

If you stay committed to creating value for users, you’ll spot new revenue streams at the moments when people are most willing to pay for them. Plus, new services will expand your revenue without significantly increasing overhead.

Zillow’s growth strategy centers on three main pillars: using data and AI to improve its products, expanding into adjacent high-margin services, and forming selective partnerships or acquisitions that extend its ecosystem. These initiatives allow Zillow to deepen user engagement while diversifying revenue beyond its core advertising business.

Zillow’s biggest asset is its data. Every day, the company processes billions of listing updates, user searches, and engagement signals. This data feeds into machine learning models that improve Zillow’s core products and keep users coming back.

Some of its most notable AI-driven features include:

• Smarter Zestimates: Zillow’s home-valuation model now combines historical sales, MLS data, and user interactions with advanced neural networks to deliver more accurate estimates.
• Photo-based predictions: AI tools can analyze listing photos to help refine price estimates and highlight features that matter most to buyers.
• Interactive floor plans: Zillow uses AI to stitch together photos and dimensions into virtual floor plans that make listings more engaging.
• Conversational search: Natural language tools let users type or speak requests—like “two-bedroom homes with big backyards under $500k”—and get results instantly.

Zillow continually upgrades its search and valuation tools to keep users engaged and builds a defensible “data moat.” For marketplace founders, the takeaway is clear: track and analyze your platform activity from day one. Even if your data doesn’t immediately become a revenue source, the insights you collect can spark ideas for differentiating features, help you respond faster to user needs, and gradually build defensibility that sets your marketplace apart.

Zillow’s growth strategy also emphasizes layering on services that sit just beyond the core listing search. These offerings solve the next set of pain points in the transaction process while generating higher-margin revenue.

Examples include:

• Rental applications and payments: Beyond free rental listings, Zillow earns money from application fees, background checks, and payment processing.
• Mortgage pre-approvals: Buyers can secure financing directly through Zillow Home Loans, which creates an additional touchpoint at a critical stage of the journey.
• ShowingTime+ SaaS: Agents pay for scheduling, marketing, and client management tools that extend far beyond the initial lead.
• Premium media packages: Add-ons like 3D Home® tours, video walkthroughs, and interactive floor plans help listings stand out while giving Zillow another revenue lever.

Each service is designed to capture more value from the same transaction flow. Instead of reinventing its business model, Zillow stacks incremental features on top of its existing marketplace to steadily improve margins without significantly increasing overhead.

Zillow has also pursued partnerships and acquisitions to extend its ecosystem without taking on the risks of owning physical assets. After shutting down its costly iBuying program in 2021, the company shifted toward collaborations that fit its asset-light model.

In recent years, Zillow has acquired software companies like ShowingTime, dotloop, and Bridge Interactive to strengthen its suite of agent tools. Each acquisition added capabilities that aligned with Zillow’s role as a marketplace facilitator rather than a property owner.

In 2022, Zillow partnered with Opendoor to allow sellers to request instant cash offers on Zillow. This gives homeowners more selling options without Zillow carrying inventory risk.

Ultimately, Zillow uses partnerships and acquisitions to offer more options for users and real estate professionals. This approach lets the company grow without adding costly operational complexity.

For marketplace founders, the takeaway is to stay focused on what you do best.

At every scale, carefully analyze whether your existing business gives you enough competitive advantage to justify a new strategic expansion. In the early stages, acquisitions are usually out of reach, so the more practical questions are:

• Which services and technologies are core to your marketplace’s value proposition and must be built or tightly controlled?
• What is better left to partners who can handle the heavy lifting?

By making those choices deliberately, you free up resources to double down on delivering your core value better than any competing solution.

Like any marketplace, Zillow’s model comes with strengths and trade-offs. Understanding both sides is valuable for early-stage marketplace founders because it reveals which strategies can be emulated and which pitfalls to avoid when building your own platform.

Pros

• Multiple high-margin revenue streams: Zillow earns money from agents, landlords, renters, lenders, and advertisers. This range of categories creates a diversified business beyond just listings.
• Data moat and AI features: Billions of user interactions and listing updates fuel tools like the Zestimate and personalized search, which keep users engaged and are hard for competitors to replicate.
• Asset-light infrastructure: By avoiding ownership of property or physical inventory, Zillow keeps overhead low and scales more easily than traditional real estate businesses.
• Built-in trust levers: Verified reviews, transaction histories, and secure communication channels make the platform more reliable for buyers, sellers, and agents.

Cons

• Low-frequency transactions: Most people buy or sell a home only a handful of times in their lives, which limits repeat usage and makes innovating on additional revenue streams a necessity.
• Cyclical revenue exposure: Housing market slowdowns or rising interest rates can directly impact Zillow’s revenue.
• Dependence on professionals: A significant portion of revenue comes from agents and brokers, whose participation depends on Zillow continuing to deliver qualified leads.
• Competitive and regulatory pressures: Zillow competes with Redfin, Realtor.com, and Homes.com while also facing scrutiny over data accuracy, advertising practices, and fair housing compliance.

Zillow’s rise to the top shows how a marketplace can diversify, scale, and stay defensible over time. While most founders won’t be operating at Zillow’s scale or in the housing market, the principles behind its success apply broadly. From building trust to stacking revenue streams, here are some lessons you can use when growing your own platform.

Real estate is one of the most high-stakes transactions people make. Zillow understood early that its platform needed strong trust signals to succeed. Instead of leaving credibility up to individual users, Zillow built infrastructure that reduces perceived risk on both sides of the marketplace.

Trust is the foundation of any marketplace. If new users don’t feel confident in the people they’re transacting with, they won’t come back, and your platform won’t grow. Here are some ideas forbuilding credibility from the very beginning:

• Require verified profiles and ratings: Don’t wait until later to add reputation systems. Verifying users’ emails, IDs, or payment methods, and allowing for reviews or ratings after every transaction are common trust-building tools. Even simple verification builds confidence for early adopters.
• Surface activity data: Show buyers that a listing is active by displaying views, saves, or response times. For example, for a service marketplace, you could highlight how quickly providers reply or how often they complete jobs. These small signals make your platform feel alive and trustworthy.
• Make payments simple and secure: A clunky or risky checkout is one of the fastest ways to lose trust. Partner with an established payment provider to protect both sides, automate refunds, and keep transactions transparent.
• Protect payments with escrow: Handle money in a way that reassures both sides. An escrow system (where funds are only released after the service is delivered or the product is received) reduces risk and sets your marketplace apart from informal alternatives.
• Prioritize trust features in your MVP: It’s tempting to focus on flashy features, but things like moderation tools, secure messaging, and protected payments are what actually drive adoption. With Sharetribe, you can launch with these essentials already built in and layer on extras later.

By embedding trust levers directly into the transaction flow, Zillow turned what could have been a risky experience into one that users rely on. When you prioritize trust early in your marketplace, users can transact confidently and will keep coming back to your platform. This also accelerates the feedback loops that will inform new features and growth.

Zillow didn’t become a $2 billion company by charging for access to listings. It started with free tools to build scale, then layered in paid services like agent advertising, rental applications, and premium placement. That progression made the platform more valuable for users while steadily expanding revenue.

The lesson for early-stage founders: don’t spread yourself too thin in the beginning. Before adding more revenue streams, make sure you’ve proven your marketplace consistently solves a real user need, a stage known as problem-solution fit.

Below is our recommended approach to monetization as you build your marketplace:

• Begin with a simple, success-based fee: The easiest place to start is charging a commission on each transaction. It’s straightforward for users to understand, aligns your incentives with theirs, and gives you early cash flow to reinvest.
• Test one lightweight upsell: Once transactions are flowing, consider piloting a simple add-on that users can pay for if they want more visibility or convenience, like premium listing placement or a “verified pro” badge. Zillow does this with rental listings, where landlords can pay to boost visibility.
• Diversify gradually to smooth out cycles: If your market is seasonal or high-value but low-frequency, like Zillow’s, add complementary streams such as subscription tiers, paid advertising, or analytics reports. That way, you aren’t dependent on a single revenue source.
• Match your monetization to your transaction type: High-value/low-frequency niches (like real estate) often work best with larger commissions or one-off upsells. In contrast, low-value/high-frequency niches (like on-demand services) may need smaller per-order fees or subscriptions.

Start simple and then stack add-ons like Zillow did to build a business model that grows with your platform instead of weighing it down too early.

One of Zillow’s most significant advantages is the data it collects. Every search, listing update, and user interaction feeds into products like the Zestimate, personalized recommendations, and neighborhood trend dashboards. These features open up entirely new revenue opportunities, like licensing data and powering advanced agent tools.

Remember: even small amounts of data can become an engine for growth if you know how to use them. Here are our suggestions for how to do this:

• Collect basic events from day one: Track searches, messages, and completed transactions. You don’t need sophisticated analytics at first—just start capturing signals that reveal what your users want.
• Turn insights into features: In the earliest stages, use your data to spot friction points and improve your core marketplace experience, like simplifying onboarding if many users drop off, or adjusting categories if searches aren’t matching results. Zillow’s Zestimate started as a basic valuation tool before evolving into one of its flagship products.
• Use data to drive trust and retention: Show activity data (views, saves, response times) so users know they’re engaging with a live marketplace. This keeps both sides more active and committed.
• Monetize data once volume grows: As your marketplace scales, consider offering anonymized trend reports, premium analytics for power users, or even data licensing. These streams can diversify revenue without changing your core transaction model.

By treating data as both a product and a feedback loop, you can improve user experience while opening up new paths to monetization—just as Zillow did with the Zestimate.

Zillow learned this lesson the hard way. Its iBuying experiment proved too risky and capital-intensive.

After three years, the company lost over $500 million from buying homes at premium prices and bearing renovation and selling costs. Due to these heavy losses, Zillow laid off 25% of its workforce, or about 2,000 employees.

After this disastrous experience, Zillow doubled down on an asset-light approach. As we mentioned earlier, they partnered with Opendoor to allow Zillow users to receive instant home-buying offers (without Zillow acquiring the properties themselves).

They also focused on software and data services instead, which don’t require many additional overhead costs. This shift allowed Zillow to keep growing without tying up billions of dollars in housing inventory.

For early-stage marketplace founders, the takeaway is simple: don’t take on operational complexity you don’t need. Instead, stay lean and use partners to handle the resource-heavy parts of your transaction flow.

Here are some practical examples of how to scale your marketplace:

• Outsource what’s expensive to run: Whether it’s shipping, financing, or insurance, find third-party providers who can handle these tasks better and more cheaply than you could.
• Plug in SaaS and APIs instead of building in-house: Tools like Stripe Identity for KYC or off-the-shelf scheduling platforms can add advanced functionality without slowing down your roadmap.
• Keep your focus on transactions: Your job as a founder is to make it easy for buyers and sellers to connect and complete deals. Leave the heavy lifting—logistics, compliance, or asset ownership—to partners.
• Expand strategically through partnerships: Like Zillow’s deal with Opendoor, look for collaborations that broaden your user options without straining your resources.

Stay asset-light to avoid the trap of scaling costs faster than revenue and give yourself the flexibility to experiment and grow sustainably.

Zillow has kept its edge in a crowded market by continually improving the user experience. From launching the Zestimate in 2006 to rolling out interactive floor plans, AI-powered search, and integrated mortgage tools, Zillow reinvests heavily in new features that make its platform more useful and harder to replace. This steady innovation helps Zillow maintain user loyalty and defend against its rivals.

Long-term success requires an ongoing commitment to product improvements, not just getting an MVP live. Here’s how to incorporate this approach into your business, even in its earliest stages:

• Prioritize features that increase match quality: Focus your roadmap on the tools that help buyers and sellers find the right fit quickly. This could mean adding smarter filters (e.g., location radius, availability), personalized recommendations based on past activity, or onboarding checklists that guide new users to complete strong profiles.
• Listen to user feedback loops: Don’t rely on assumptions. Run surveys after transactions, monitor messages and support tickets, and host user interviews to uncover pain points. Zillow improved its Zestimate by incorporating signals from millions of real interactions. You can mirror this by turning feedback into concrete changes like clearer pricing displays or more transparent messaging features.
• Dedicate a portion of revenue to product upgrades: Set aside a fixed percentage of every dollar earned, around 5–10%, for ongoing development. For example, you could use early commission revenue to fund better search filters or faster payout options, which will ensure your product improves steadily as you grow.
• Stay ahead with emerging tech: This could include generative AI to auto-write listing descriptions, biometric logins for faster user access, or one-click payment providers that reduce checkout drop-off. Adopt them before competitors do, and you’ll create a stickier, more modern experience.

Innovation is what keeps a marketplace alive. The most successful platforms treat it as a continuous cycle, with each improvement building on the last and each feature deepening user value. That steady evolution turns a functional marketplace into an enduring business.

For more inspiration from founders and investors on how to future-proof your platform, check out our conversation with Upwork’s VP of Product Management, Jessica Tiwari.

Zillow’s growth highlights what’s possible when a marketplace focuses on trust, monetization, and constant improvement. Rather than trying to control every part of the real estate transaction, Zillow became the platform where those transactions take shape. Over time, it added new services—agent advertising, rental applications, mortgage leads—that deepened its role and turned it into a multi-billion-dollar business.

The same approach works no matter what niche you’re in. The most durable marketplaces start with a clear transaction flow, earn credibility with early users, and then expand carefully into new revenue streams that strengthen the core experience. That steady layering is what transforms a simple platform into an enduring business.

If you’re building a marketplace today, you don’t need Zillow’s resources or a decade of engineering to get started. With Sharetribe, you can launch your platform in days, not months, with all the essentials—listings, transactions, messaging, payments—ready out of the box. You can customize and extend your marketplace with powerful APIs, integrations, and design flexibility as your marketplace grows.

Ready to take the first step toward building your own marketplace? Start your free trial of Sharetribe today.

Let’s go over some of the most common questions about Zillow’s business model.

Zillow’s Premier Agent program uses a pay-per-lead model. Costs vary by market, with agents typically paying $20 to $60 per lead depending on location and competition. In high-demand metropolitan areas, top agents may spend thousands of dollars per month on Zillow advertising.

No. Zillow shut down its Zillow Offers iBuying program in November 2021 after reporting significant losses. Instead of buying and selling homes directly, the company now partners with Opendoor to provide instant offers while focusing on its core marketplace and software services.

Landlords can list properties on Zillow for free. However, Zillow monetizes through optional upgrades like paid listing boosts for higher visibility. Renters also pay rental application fees when applying through Zillow, which cover the cost of tenant screening reports for landlords.

Zillow competes with other large real estate portals and platforms, including:

• Realtor.com (owned by Move, Inc./News Corp)
• Homes.com (owned by CoStar Group)
• Redfin

These companies compete for both consumer traffic and real estate agent advertising spend.

In 2024, Zillow’s rentals vertical generated $453 million, or roughly 20% of total revenue. This segment has grown quickly as more Americans rent, making it Zillow’s second-largest revenue driver after Premier Agent services.

Zillow’s acquisitions—such as ShowingTime, dotloop, and Bridge Interactive—add recurring SaaS revenue and strengthen its value proposition for agents.

While smaller than advertising or rentals, these tools improve retention and create long-term growth opportunities by embedding Zillow deeper into agent workflows.