If you have tried to build anything on US residential property data in the last few years, you have hit the same wall everyone else has: there is no public Zillow API.
This post covers what changed, what the remaining options actually cost, and how to get for-sale, rental, sold, and valuation data without an MLS membership.
What happened to the Zillow API
Three things, in order:
2021 - the public API was retired. The old Zillow API, including the widely used GetSearchResults and GetZestimate endpoints, was shut down to outside developers. Anything you find referencing a Zillow API key from a tutorial written before 2021 no longer applies.
2023 - ZTRAX was discontinued. The Zillow Transaction and Assessment Database, which academics and analysts had relied on for bulk historical records, was retired.
Now - Bridge Interactive is the only official route. Zillow’s remaining data programme runs through Bridge Interactive, and it is not aimed at developers. It requires a real estate industry affiliation, MLS membership or broker licensing, an application process measured in weeks, and pricing that typically starts around $500 per month.
The practical consequence: if you are a proptech startup, an analyst, or a developer without a broker licence, the official path is closed to you. The Zestimate in particular is now surfaced only inside Zillow’s own products.
What people actually mean when they search for a “Zillow API”
Almost always one of five jobs:
- Listing search - homes for sale or rent in an area, with filters.
- Property detail - everything known about one address.
- Comparable sales - what similar homes actually sold for.
- A valuation - an automated estimate of what a home is worth.
- Agent data - who is selling in a market, and how active they are.
Zillow is simply the most recognisable brand attached to those jobs. It is not the only source, and for four of the five it is not even the most complete one.
The realistic options in 2026
Bridge Interactive (official Zillow)
The only sanctioned Zillow route. Genuine MLS-grade data with genuine MLS-grade friction: licensing requirements, weeks of approval, and a floor around $500 per month. Correct choice if you are already a licensed brokerage. Not an option for most software teams.
MLS and IDX feeds directly
Going straight to the MLS gets you the underlying data Zillow itself licenses. The catch is that there are roughly 500 separate MLSs in the US, each with its own agreement, its own data dictionary, and its own approval process. RESO has standardised much of the schema, which helps, but you are still signing paperwork per market. Sensible for a regional product, painful for a national one.
Commercial property data vendors
ATTOM, CoreLogic, Estated and similar vendors sell deep public-record data: deeds, tax assessments, mortgages, ownership history. Strong for records, typically weaker on live listings, and priced for enterprise. Entry points commonly start in the hundreds per month and rise quickly with volume.
Portal data via API
Rather than fighting for MLS access, read the data from the portals that already aggregate it. This is the self-serve route: no licence, no application, no minimum contract, and you can be querying it in the time it takes to copy an API key.
That is the category the Realtor.com Data API sits in.
What the Realtor.com Data API covers
Realtor.com is the second-largest US property portal and, unlike Zillow, it is fed directly by MLS data through its operator’s broker relationships. Across 37 endpoints, it maps onto all five jobs above:
Listing search. /properties-for-sale, /properties-for-rent, and /properties-sold share a filter surface of roughly 97 parameters: price, beds, baths, square footage, lot size, year built, property type, HOA fees, days on market, open houses, price reductions, foreclosure status, pet policy, and more. Search geographically by radius (/search-by-coordinates), by a custom map polygon (/search-by-polygon), or by drive time from a point (/search-by-commute). You can also paste a Realtor.com search URL into /search-by-url and get the same results as JSON.
Property detail. By property ID, by listing URL, or straight from a street address with /property-details-by-address, which resolves the address for you. /property-environment adds flood, wildfire, heat, wind, air and noise risk scores.
Comparable sales. /properties-sold is the comps dataset, and /similar-homes returns comparables for a specific property.
Valuation. /property-valuation returns the RealEstimate figure for a property across every automated valuation source it carries, with historical values and a forward forecast. This is the closest self-serve equivalent to what the Zestimate API used to provide.
Agent data. A searchable directory with true match counts, full profiles with licence and brokerage detail, reviews and recommendations, and an agent’s listings by status.
Beyond the five: school and district records, current mortgage rates by ZIP, a live lender rate table, market hotness scores, neighborhood guides, geo statistics with median list, rent and sold prices, and GeoJSON boundary polygons.
Answering the MLS question directly
A common follow-up: is this MLS data?
Realtor.com’s listing inventory originates from MLS feeds, so for-sale and rental listings reflect what agents have published. What you do not get through a portal API is the private, members-only layer of an MLS: agent remarks, showing instructions, commission splits, or the ability to write back to the feed. If your product needs those, you need real MLS membership and there is no shortcut around it.
For search, analytics, valuation, lead generation, and market research, the portal layer is the same data your users would see on the site, and it is available today without a licence.
Choosing between them
| You need | Route |
|---|---|
| Agent remarks, showing data, or write access | MLS or Bridge Interactive |
| Deeds, tax assessments, ownership history | A records vendor like ATTOM or CoreLogic |
| Listings, comps, valuations, agents, schools | A portal API |
| One regional market, deep integration | Direct MLS or IDX feed |
| National coverage, live in a day | A portal API |
The honest summary: if you are licensed, use the official channels, because you can. If you are not, portal data covers most of what the old Zillow API was used for, and you can start today.
Getting started
The Realtor.com Data API is on RapidAPI with a free tier for testing. /locations-autocomplete resolves a place name into the location IDs the search endpoints expect, so that is the first call to make. /enums returns every accepted filter value, which saves a lot of guessing against a 97-parameter search.
For distressed and auction inventory, which the mainstream portals do not cover well, see the Auction.com API for foreclosure, bank-owned and auction listings with live bid status. For the wider catalog, browse the Real Estate Data hub.
Disclaimer
Happy Endpoint is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Zillow, Realtor.com, Move Inc., or any MLS. All data is collected from publicly available sources. Pricing and access terms for third-party services are as we understood them at the time of writing and change without notice.
