Zillow vs Redfin vs Realtor.com: Which Real Estate Data Source Should You Scrape in 2026?

Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com all list roughly the same national inventory of homes, sourced ultimately from the same MLS feeds. But none of the three offers a usable public API for developers, and the three sites do not expose the same fields, the same reliability, or the same architecture underneath. If you are building anything on real estate listing data — a comps tool, a lead list, an investor pipeline — the source you pick determines what data you actually end up with.

TL;DR: Zillow has the richest valuation data (Zestimate, Rent Zestimate) and the largest active-listing coverage, at the lowest price. Redfin is the best source for agent and broker names on listings, plus MLS status detail like days-on-market. Realtor.com is the strongest single source for agent leads, since every listing carries both an agent name and a brokerage office. All three run HTTP-only with no API key or login required.

The three sources, side by side

	Zillow Search	Redfin	Realtor.com
Architecture	HTTP-only, 512 MB, no browser	HTTP-only, no browser	HTTP-only, no browser
Login/API key required	No	No	No
Price per 1,000 results	$1	$2	$2
Free tier	None — pay from result 1	None — pay from result 1	None — pay from result 1
Location input	City, ZIP, neighborhood	City, ZIP, or direct URL	City or ZIP
For-sale listings	Yes	Yes	Yes
Recently-sold mode	Separate actor (Recently Sold Scraper)	Same actor, soldWithinDays param	Same actor, soldMode param
Automated valuation	Zestimate + Rent Zestimate	Not included	Not included
Listing agent name	Not included	Yes	Yes
Listing broker/office name	Not included	Yes (broker)	Yes (office)
MLS ID	Not included	Yes	Not included
Days on market	daysOnZillow	daysOnMarket	Not included
HOA fee	Not included	Yes	Yes
County	Not included	Not included	Yes
Year built	Not included	Yes	Yes
New construction flag	Not included	Yes	Not included

Where each source is uniquely strong

Zillow’s edge is valuation data and coverage. The zestimate and rentZestimate fields are Zillow’s own automated valuation model outputs, published on most listings — nothing comparable exists in the Redfin or Realtor.com data. If your use case involves estimating value or rent without an appraisal, Zillow is the only one of the three that hands you a starting number for free. Zillow also has, in practice, the broadest active-listing coverage of the three sites, and its results cost half of what Redfin or Realtor.com results cost ($1 vs $2 per 1,000).

Redfin’s edge is transaction and agent detail. Every Redfin record carries listingAgentName, listingBrokerName, mlsId, mlsStatus, and daysOnMarket — the fields that matter for tracking a listing’s life cycle and for building agent outreach lists. Redfin also exposes a newConstruction flag Zillow and Realtor.com don’t surface, useful for filtering builder inventory out of (or into) a dataset. Redfin’s soldWithinDays mode returns sold price and sold date in the same actor and schema as active listings, so switching between for-sale and sold comps doesn’t require learning a second data shape.

Realtor.com’s edge is agent and office pairing for lead generation. Every listing carries both agentName and officeName — the two fields a real-estate lead-gen or CRM-enrichment workflow needs together. Realtor.com is also the only one of the three that returns county, useful when a target market spans multiple counties with different tax or zoning rules. Its soldMode toggle works the same way as Redfin’s — one actor, one schema, switch a boolean.

Pricing at scale

Volume	Zillow	Redfin	Realtor.com
1,000 listings	$1	$2	$2
10,000 listings	$10	$20	$20
50,000 listings	$50	$100	$100

None of the three has a free tier — all bill from the first result — but failed pages and blocked requests are never charged, so a small test run against a real search costs only what actually comes back.

Zillow’s per-result price is half of Redfin’s or Realtor.com’s, which matters at volume: pulling 50,000 listings monthly for a national dashboard is a $50/month line item on Zillow versus $100/month on either of the other two. But price per result isn’t the whole picture — if the job specifically needs agent names or MLS status, Zillow’s cheaper price doesn’t help, because the fields aren’t in the data at all.

Which one for which job

Comps and CMA work → Zillow, for the Zestimate cross-check and the lowest cost per result, using the dedicated Zillow Recently Sold Scraper. Redfin’s sold mode is a strong second choice when you also want MLS status and days-on-market context for each comp.

Agent and broker lead generation → Realtor.com first, since agent name and office are paired on every record. Redfin is a close second and adds MLS ID, useful if the downstream workflow needs to cross-reference MLS listings directly.

Investor deal sourcing by price/bed/bath filters → Any of the three works for the base filter; Redfin’s daysOnMarket and newConstruction fields add useful signal for identifying stale or off-plan inventory an investor might negotiate on.

Cross-portal enrichment and de-duplication → Running all three against the same metro and matching on address is the most complete picture — Zillow’s valuation numbers, Redfin’s MLS and agent detail, and Realtor.com’s county and office data, merged into one record per property.

Building a combined pipeline

Because all three actors return flat JSON with a compatible address/city/state/zip shape, merging results from multiple sources for the same metro is a straightforward join:

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

apify = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])

def pull(actor_slug, location, **kwargs):
    run = apify.actor(actor_slug).call(run_input={"location": location, "maxItems": 200, **kwargs})
    return list(apify.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())

zillow = pull("themineworks/zillow-search-scraper", "Austin, TX", minBeds=3)
redfin = pull("themineworks/redfin-scraper", "Austin, TX", minBeds=3)
realtor = pull("themineworks/realtor-scraper", "Austin, TX", minBeds=3)

# Simple address-based join
by_address = {}
for source_name, listings in [("zillow", zillow), ("redfin", redfin), ("realtor", realtor)]:
    for l in listings:
        addr = (l.get("address") or l.get("addressLine1") or "").lower().strip()
        if addr:
            by_address.setdefault(addr, {})[source_name] = l

print(f"Matched {sum(1 for v in by_address.values() if len(v) > 1)} addresses across 2+ sources")

Each source’s actor accepts the same base parameters (location, maxItems, minPrice, maxPrice, minBeds) with source-specific extensions — Zillow’s propertyType and daysOnZillow, Redfin’s soldWithinDays, Realtor.com’s soldMode.

For a deeper walkthrough of building this exact multi-source pipeline, including how to normalize the schema differences and what to do with unmatched addresses, see Building a Real Estate Data Stack: Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com. For source-specific Python guides, see Zillow Scraper in Python: A 2026 Guide, Redfin Scraper in Python: No API Required, and Realtor.com Scraper: Pulling Agent Data at Scale.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do any of these require a login or API key?

No. All three run over plain HTTP against the sites’ own public search backends, with no login, cookies, or API key needed on your end. You only need an Apify account to run the actors.

Which source has the most listings?

Zillow generally shows the broadest active-listing coverage of the three, since it aggregates from the widest set of MLS feeds and syndication partners. Coverage varies by metro, so cross-checking a specific target area before committing to one source is worth the small cost of a test run.

Can I get sold data from all three?

Yes. Zillow uses a separate actor (Zillow Recently Sold Scraper) for sold homes. Redfin and Realtor.com both toggle sold mode within the same actor — soldWithinDays for Redfin, soldMode for Realtor.com.

Is scraping these sites legal?

Scraping publicly available real estate listing data is generally permissible, but results may include personal data (agent names, broker names) subject to regulations like GDPR depending on where you operate. Use the data for a legitimate business purpose and follow applicable law.

Which is cheapest for large-scale pulls?

Zillow, at $1 per 1,000 results versus $2 per 1,000 for Redfin or Realtor.com. That gap only matters if Zillow’s fields cover your use case — for agent/broker data specifically, Redfin or Realtor.com are required regardless of price.