Zillow vs Realtor.com vs Redfin: where listings differ

Three sites, three numbers

Zillow vs Realtor.com vs Redfin is the search you run when one house shows up in three tabs and the values do not match. This comparison uses the pages those companies publish, opened October 5, 2026. A line that is their marketing stays attached to their page. It is not treated as a measured ranking.

The useful split is narrow. Zillow and Redfin each publish a value model and say how far that model typically sits from a sale price. Realtor.com says its RealEstimate comes from outside providers and does not publish one error rate. Redfin also describes itself as a brokerage with listing-service access, and it publishes a figure for how fast new listings from those feeds show up. Those are the differences a buyer, a seller, or an agent can actually check.

None of the pages opened here counted how many of the same homes appear on all three sites. This post does not guess that overlap. It also does not pull listing rows from any of them. The links below go to the pages the figures came from.

What each company says it is

Zillow's about page calls Zillow "the housing super app." The same page says it is "the most visited, most trusted and most preferred brand in the industry." That is Zillow's wording. The page also says 70% of actual buyers and sellers in the U.S. are on Zillow, that its living database is about 173 million homes, that average monthly unique users are 235 million, and that about 2.8 million rental listings are active on Zillow in an average month. Those figures sit on the about page. They are not on the Zestimate page, and they are not a count of homes for sale today.

Realtor.com's about page says it is operated by Move, Inc., and that it offers a list of for-sale properties plus tools for a decision. The page calls the site "The Home of Home Search." It describes a My Home dashboard where an owner can track a value over time, manage improvements, and look at similar nearby properties. That about page does not give a listing count or an error rate.

NAR's page on Realtor.com adds the ownership line the about page leaves aside. Realtor.com is operated by Move, Inc., a subsidiary of News Corp. NAR says no member dues dollars go to fund Realtor.com. The same page says Realtor.com is recognized as the #1 real estate site REALTOR agents recommend. That #1 is NAR's sentence. It is not a reason to call the site the best one for a buyer who has not asked an agent.

Redfin's data quality page starts from a different job. "As a brokerage, Redfin has access to the databases that all brokerages use to list properties." The page says the website and the mobile apps show the homes for sale via the local listing services agents use. Zillow's about page is a consumer brand claim. Redfin's page is a claim about brokerage access. Realtor.com's pages, plus NAR, place the site at Move and News Corp, separate from NAR dues.

The estimate each page will stand behind

An estimate is the number people screenshot. The three pages do not describe that number the same way, and only two of them publish a median error.

Zillow's Zestimate

Zillow's Zestimate page says the Zestimate is Zillow's estimate of a home's market value. It says Zillow publishes Zestimates for 120 million-plus homes. That 120 million is not the 173 million living-database figure on the about page. They are two counts, on two pages, and this post leaves them apart.

The same page says a neural network builds the estimate from county and tax assessor records and from direct feeds from multiple listing services. It also uses square footage, location, and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Zestimates are updated multiple times per week.

The error line on that page, as opened October 5, 2026, is the one to quote carefully. The nationwide median error rate for the Zestimate is NA for homes that are on the market and 7.20% for off-market homes. For listed homes, the page says the Zestimate is within NA of the final sale price half the time. For off-market homes, it is within 7.20% half the time. NA is what the live page prints. An older Zillow learn article, dated April 13, 2022, put the on-market median error at 1.9% and the off-market rate at 7.0%. That article is not the current Zestimate page. This post does not use 1.9%.

Realtor.com's RealEstimate

Realtor.com's RealEstimate page says you can estimate a home's value with up to three third-party valuations. It says the RealEstimate data is sourced from valuation providers independent from Realtor.com, and that those providers are used by the lending industry. The estimates come from computer models that use property characteristics, local market information, and price trends. The page says no automated model is 100 percent accurate, and that data from more than one source gives a more complete picture. It does not publish a median error rate. There is no number to put next to Redfin's 1.89% or Zillow's 7.20% without inventing one.

Redfin's estimate

Redfin's estimate page says the Redfin Estimate is a calculation of the market value of an individual home. It says the estimate is highly accurate, with a current median error rate of 1.89% for homes that are for sale and 7.38% for off-market homes. "Highly accurate" is Redfin's phrase. The figures a reader can check are 1.89% and 7.38%.

The page explains the median the same way Zillow does. For a home on the market, the estimate is within 1.89% of the sales price half the time. For an off-market home, it is within 7.38% half the time. Half the time is the other half. A median error is not a promise that your house lands inside the band.

Redfin says the algorithm considers hundreds of data points. A later line on the same page says more than 500 data points, for 92 million homes. The estimate updates daily for homes that are for sale, and weekly for off-market homes. Ninety-two million is Redfin's coverage line for this model. It is not Zillow's 120 million-plus, and it is not Zillow's 173 million.

Put side by side, the off-market rates are close: 7.20% on Zillow's current page and 7.38% on Redfin's. That is not a contest score. They are two methods, described on two pages, for homes that are not listed. On-market, only Redfin publishes a rate. Zillow's current page says NA. Realtor.com publishes neither.

How fast a new listing shows up

An estimate can be a day old and still be the number on the screen. A new listing is a different clock. Redfin's data quality page is the only one of these three that states a speed for new listings, and the sentence is narrower than a slogan.

The page says 70% of new US listings in MLS feeds received by Redfin will post within 5 minutes. Another line says most listings are updated every 5 minutes, and that line has an asterisk. The footnote was not in the extract we opened, so this post uses the 70% sentence only. It does not say every listing on every site updates in 5 minutes. The page also calls its listing data the best available. That phrase is a slogan. It is not a figure.

Zillow's Zestimate page says the model uses direct feeds from multiple listing services. It does not say what share of new listings appear within 5 minutes. Realtor.com's about page and NAR's page describe a list of for-sale properties and do not give a refresh time. If a speed is not on the page, this post does not borrow Redfin's 70% and paste it onto the other two.

Why the difference is worth knowing

A buyer who opens all three is usually trying to answer one question: is this price close to what the house will sell for? The pages answer a smaller question. They say how the model is built, and, for Zillow and Redfin, how large the typical miss is.

For a listed home, Redfin will tell you the current median miss, 1.89%, and that the estimate lands inside that band half the time. Zillow's current page will not give you that on-market rate. It prints NA. Quoting 1.9% from the 2022 learn article would be quoting a page Zillow is no longer using for that line. For a home that is not listed, both publish a wider band, 7.20% and 7.38%.

Realtor.com is useful here for a different reason. The RealEstimate page says you are looking at up to three valuations from providers outside Realtor.com, the kind the lending industry uses. That is a second and third opinion on one screen. It is not an error rate, and the page says no automated model is fully accurate. If you need a single published miss, Realtor.com does not give you one. If you need to see that outside models disagree, that is the page that says so.

For an agent, the practical gain is knowing which sentence you can repeat. You can tell a seller that Redfin's current on-market median error is 1.89%, because that page says it. You cannot tell them Zillow's current on-market error is 1.9%, because the live Zestimate page says NA. You can tell them NAR's line that agents recommend Realtor.com as the #1 site, if you are quoting NAR, and you should not turn that into a claim that the site is the one a buyer should trust for price.

How to use the three without treating an estimate as a price

Start with the listing, not the model. The list price, the photos, and the days the home has been up are on the listing. The estimate is a separate calculation. Redfin updates that calculation daily while a home is for sale and weekly when it is off the market. Zillow says Zestimates update multiple times per week. A number you saved last month may not be the number on the page today, and the off-market schedule is the slower one.

Then read the error the way the page defines it. If the home is listed and you are on Redfin, 1.89% is the median, which means half of sales were at least that far from the estimate. If you are on Zillow and the home is listed, write down that the current page does not publish the on-market rate. If the home is off the market, expect the wider band on both, a bit over 7%. If you are on Realtor.com, read the spread across the outside valuations and do not invent a median to fill the gap.

After that, the decision still needs the local comps and a person who will stand behind a price. The AI tools for real estate agents post is about listing copy and follow-up, which is a different job from this one. For a feed you control, the real estate data solutions guide and the Realtor.com scraper guide cover pulling listing data on purpose. A lead list is separate again, in the real estate lead generation guide.

A portal estimate is not a zip-by-zip list of new rows. The property tracker case study is that other job: one client's zip codes, written to a sheet, with repeats pulled out. The three sites in this post are where a person browses. The tracker is for the list those sites do not hand you as a file.

What these pages do not prove

They do not prove the three sites list the same homes. No page opened for this post counted the overlap. A house missing from one tab can be a feed delay, a syndication choice, or a listing that was never sent. Redfin's 70% line is about the MLS feeds Redfin receives. It is not a measurement of Zillow or Realtor.com.

They do not prove a winner. Zillow's about page claims the most visited, most trusted, and most preferred brand. NAR says agents recommend Realtor.com first among real estate sites. Redfin calls its estimate highly accurate and its listing data the best available. Each of those is a sentence on a named page. None of them is a shared scoreboard, and this post does not build one.

They do not prove a sale price. Zillow and Redfin both define the printed rate as a median. Half the sales sit further away. Off-market, that distance is 7.20% on Zillow's current page and 7.38% on Redfin's, at the median, before you reach the half of sales that miss by more. The pages do not say your house is the typical one.

When a portal number is the wrong tool

Use the three sites to see a listed home and to read how each company describes its estimate. Use Redfin's page when you need a current on-market error you can point to. Use Zillow's page when you need the off-market 7.20%, and say NA when the on-market cell is NA. Use Realtor.com when you want outside valuations on one screen and you do not need a single error rate.

Use something else when the job is a list: the zip codes you cover, the fields you want on each row, and a sheet that shows whether yesterday's check ran. That is the work we set up at BigiByte. To scope it, use the contact page and send the zips and the fields. This is not a quote, and it is not a claim that a custom list beats any of these three sites at browsing homes.