Zillow Feed Connect: Which Route Fits Your Units (2026)
Zillow lists rentals by two routes. Its own pages show three doors: Rental Manager, a feed someone runs, or your own. Which fits your units.
By Yas Rajah
· 18 min read
Contents
Zillow publishes rentals by two routes, Zillow Feed Connect or Zillow Rental Manager, and the right one depends on how many units you list and who already holds your data. Zillow’s help centre says “All rentals listings displayed on Zillow are published through Zillow Feed Connect or Zillow Rental Manager.” This page is about the rental feed, not the broker and MLS feed that carries for-sale homes. Under 25 units, Zillow points you to Rental Manager, which is free. With more, you have two ways into a feed: use one that your property management software or a syndication platform already runs, or build your own.
Building your own is Zillow’s “free automated feed program” for property management companies and property management systems. “There is no cost to participate in the program”, but you need Zillow’s approval before any work starts, and testing “typically takes 4-6 weeks”. Promotion on top of a feed is a paid product that Zillow sells through its sales team and doesn’t price in public. Zillow’s own feed guide tells owners with “a small number of properties” to use Rental Manager “or using a third-party syndication platform, rather than building and maintaining your own feed.”
We read Zillow’s own pages for this (the Feed Connect page, the help centre, the Zillow Group developer pages and the August 2026 feed guide) and checked them on 25 October 2026. Every quote below is Zillow’s, with the page it came from in the sources at the bottom.
Which door is yours?
Zillow doesn’t state a minimum number of listings for a feed on any page we read. It does draw two lines by size: 1 to 24 units, and 25 or more.
| Your situation | Door | What Zillow says | What it costs, per Zillow |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 24 units, and you enter the listings | 1. Rental Manager | ”If you’re trying to list and/or manage properties with 1-24 units, Zillow Rental Manager may be a better fit.” | Free to publish; optional $39.99 premium |
| Any size, and your property management software or a syndication platform already sends listings to Zillow | 2. A feed someone else runs | ”Check with your website provider, broker, MLS, or other partners to see if they already syndicate to Zillow Rentals.” | Set by your provider; Zillow’s feed program itself has “no cost to participate” |
| A management company with developers, or a software vendor | 3. Your own feed | ”you must submit a request to integrate and receive approval from our Rentals Integrations team before beginning work on a feed" | "no cost to participate”; testing “typically takes 4-6 weeks” |
| Larger portfolio that wants promotion on top of a feed | 3. Your own feed, plus Feed Connect advertising | ”partners with larger portfolios advertising through a PMS, MLS or CRM can use one of our paid advertising products” | Paid, through Zillow sales; no public price |
| One community of 25 or more units | Multifamily advertising | ”We refer to anything 25 units or greater as a multifamily business.” | Paid, through Zillow sales; no public price |
Checked 25 October 2026. The sources section has each page and its date.
Which Zillow door is yours?
4 questions, 20 seconds. Find the way to get your rentals onto Zillow that fits your units.
Question 1 of 4
How many rental units do you list?
Question 2 of 4
Where do your listings live today?
Question 3 of 4
Do you need your rentals on other sites besides Zillow?
Question 4 of 4
How long can you wait to go live?
Your answer
Door 1: post in Zillow Rental Manager
Zillow says Rental Manager may be a better fit for 1 to 24 units, and posting is free: "all listings posted directly to Zillow Rental Manager are free to publish". The listing reaches Zillow, Trulia and HotPads, usually within 24 hours. It's a hand-entry route, so it works best while you list few units on few sites.
How to post a rental on ZillowYour answer
Door 2: use a feed someone already runs
Check whether your property management software or a syndication platform already sends listings to Zillow, and switch Zillow on there. Zillow's guide recommends this over building your own for small portfolios. Send each unit to Zillow from one system only, because Zillow publishes a single version of each listing. Reallyo is one such tool: it sends rentals to 19 rental sites through 11 partner feeds, Zillow's network included, free for one active listing.
See rental listing syndicationYour answer
Door 3: apply for your own feed
Zillow's feed program is for property management companies and software vendors. It's free to join, but Zillow must approve you first and testing typically takes 4 to 6 weeks. Build to Zillow's Rental Listing Feed Guide and plan for a developer. Promotion on top of a feed is paid and priced by Zillow's sales team.
How Zillow syndication worksYour answer
Talk to Zillow's multifamily team
Zillow treats 25 or more units as multifamily and says individual listings in a community that size can't be posted directly. Those go through Zillow's advertising team, and Zillow doesn't publish the prices.
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What is Zillow Feed Connect?
Feed Connect is the name Zillow uses for sending it rentals by feed. Zillow’s help centre uses the name for the whole route: rentals reach Zillow “through Zillow Feed Connect or Zillow Rental Manager”. Its Feed Connect page, at zillow.com/rentals-network/listing-feeds, is a sales page headed “Single-family advertising built to fill vacancies fast”. It offers two options, “Listing-level promotion with Listing Spotlight” and “Portfolio-level coverage”, with a line that reads “Use your PMS and feed as usual”. Both go to Zillow’s sales team, and the page carries no price and no eligibility rule.
Zillow’s own wording separates two things that share the name in everyday talk. The feed program is the technical route: a property management company or software vendor sends an XML file. Feed Connect advertising is the paid layer: Zillow’s rentals-network page says “Multifamily and Feed Connect advertisers can seamlessly integrate their existing Property Management Software with ours.” We don’t know from Zillow’s pages whether every feed listing is a Feed Connect listing, so we describe each by its own quote.
One more split matters for search. Zillow also has an older broker feed, described in its 2017 Zillow Listings Feed Guide, that mostly carries for-sale homes. The current rental guide lists that guide’s “Zillow Interchange Format (ZIF)” as deprecated. Everything below is the rental feed.
Door 1: post in Zillow Rental Manager
Rental Manager is Zillow’s own tool for posting and managing rentals. Zillow says “As of May 2022, all listings posted directly to Zillow Rental Manager are free to publish”, and the one optional charge is a $39.99 premium for up to 90 days. Listings appear on Zillow, Trulia and HotPads, and Zillow says a new listing or an edit “can take up to 24 hours to post or update”. Our cost breakdown has the premium details and our posting walkthrough has the steps.
This door fits when you list a few units and don’t mind entering each one. It stops fitting when you list the same units on several sites, because each edit is then repeated by hand.
Door 2: a feed someone else already runs
You don’t have to build a feed to use one. Your property management software or a syndication platform may already have a feed that Zillow accepts, and you switch Zillow on. Zillow’s feed guide recommends checking for this first: “Check with your website provider, broker, MLS, or other partners to see if they already syndicate to Zillow Rentals.”
Zillow doesn’t publish one list of these partners. What it does publish is a help-centre article for four systems, plus a fee-data page that names others. Here is what those pages say.
| System | What Zillow’s page says | Source date |
|---|---|---|
| AppFolio | Zillow, HotPads and Trulia show as Submitted in AppFolio’s Marketing tab when “the listing is set to Post to Internet and is included in the data AppFolio sends to Zillow”. Leads: the contact email “syndication@appfolio.com” “is not a real email inbox, but ensures that leads are delivered to AppFolio directly” | Updated 7 Aug 2026 |
| RealPage (LeaseStar) | Turn on in Marketing Center, then Listing Services, then 3rd Party ILSs: “Zillow will attempt to pick up the file 7 times a day, every 2 hours beginning at 7 AM CDT.” Pay-Per-Lease clients get leads “as integrated RealPage guest cards” | Updated 2 Dec 2024 |
| ResMan | Ask through the ResMan portal; “After integration has concluded, your listings take 24 to 48 hours to connect to Zillow.” | Updated 2 Dec 2024 |
| Rent Manager | Switch on under System Preferences, then Online Resources: select “Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads”. “The address must be the USPS verified address and cannot contain special characters like commas or dashes” | Updated 3 Sep 2026 |
| Entrata, Yardi (RentCafe), Funnel, Engrain | Named on Zillow’s fee-data page as supported for fee data; Zillow gives no listing setup steps for them there | Updated 29 Jul 2026 |
Three things we didn’t find: a Zillow-owned page for Buildium, Propertyware, DoorLoop or Rentvine; a published list of every approved partner; and a Zillow statement of which sites each partner sends to besides Zillow. For the other sites each system reaches, see our table of 13 property management systems, which comes from each vendor’s own pages.
Agents with rentals in an MLS should know that this route doesn’t run through the MLS. Zillow told Inman in November 2020 that MLS rental listings “will no longer feed directly to Zillow” from 2021, and in September 2026 Canopy MLS still said “Zillow requires a newly executed contract for all Zillow Feed Connect partners before posting a rental listing.” Both are third-party pages; Zillow’s help centre has no matching article.
Door 3: build your own feed
Zillow’s feed program is for a “property management company or a property management system”. The path it describes:
- Send a request to integrate. Zillow has an intake form for it. “All new feeds must be approved by the Zillow Rentals business team.”
- Build to the spec. Zillow’s Rental Listing Feed Guide (last revised 13 August 2026) defines the XML. Zillow also accepts the MITS format.
- Meet the developer and test. Zillow tests with your production data: “The feed testing process typically takes 4-6 weeks.” The test platform resets every Monday and clears listing data.
- Go live. After a go-live meeting, Zillow says it will “syndicate all of your eligible listings” once testing is complete.
Speed after launch has two settings. For bulk feeds, “it may take a few hours for the updates to reflect on the Zillow platform.” Zillow also offers a separate API layer on top of a bulk feed, which it says gets updates “within a few minutes”. It’s an extra build, and the bulk feed still runs as a backstop.
Leads reach you by email by default, or by Zillow’s lead API: “We can deliver lead data to your webhook or endpoint via HTTP POST callback.” Zillow’s phone-number change in May 2026 is covered in our post on it; the sources it relies on report that listings under a Feed Connect contract keep a phone number.
The feed guide itself says who shouldn’t do this: “For owners or property managers with a small number of properties, consider creating listings directly via Zillow Rental Manager … or using a third-party syndication platform, rather than building and maintaining your own feed.”
What does a Zillow feed cost?
Joining the feed program is free; advertising on top of it is paid, and Zillow doesn’t publish the price. Zillow words the split this way on its rentals-network page: “Landlords who build their listings on Zillow Rental Manager can list for free, while partners with larger portfolios advertising through a PMS, MLS or CRM can use one of our paid advertising products.”
For pricing, Zillow’s Rental Manager help page sends feed users to a named address: “If you use a listing feed to syndicate rentals, please contact rentalfeedinquiries@zillowgroup.com to inquire about pricing options.” Listing Spotlight, the listing-level product on the Feed Connect page, says only “Pricing varies by market and portfolio. Contact your Zillow Rentals sales representative for details.” Any number you see elsewhere for Feed Connect is someone’s quote or a forum post, not a Zillow price.
One source per unit
Zillow states this rule in three places. Its Listing Quality Policy: “Zillow Rentals only permits one listing per address. Duplicate listings are not permitted. Any listing syndicated to Zillow Rentals via more than one source will appear on the Rentals Platform based on priority rules established by Zillow Rentals in its sole discretion.” And, for who can send: “Zillow Rentals will not approve the same unit to be advertised by more than one provider, landlord, or owner.” Its help centre adds: “Zillow will only ever publish a single version of a listing at any given time.”
A related rule is about where listings come from: “All feed listings will be direct listings and not re-syndicated. In other words, feed providers may not send Zillow Rentals feed listings that it receives from another provider.” In practice: pick one system as the source for each unit, and send that unit to Zillow from that system only. If your property management software already feeds Zillow, don’t also send the same units from a second tool.
Feed checklist from Zillow’s August 2026 guide
For a house, condo or townhouse listing, Zillow’s guide marks these elements required. Everything else in its table (photos, description, pets, fees, availability date) is marked optional.
| Element | Required? | Zillow’s note |
|---|---|---|
| Company: city and state | Yes | |
Listing id | Yes | ”Unique, static over time.” |
Listing type and companyId | Yes | RENTAL, CORPORATE (furnished) or SUBLET are published; VACATION is “not published” |
propertyType | Yes | CONDO, HOUSE or TOWNHOUSE |
| Street, city, state, zip | Yes | hide="true" on the street hides the address and offsets the map pin |
unit | When applicable | ”Send verbatim, no prefix/suffix.” |
lastUpdated | Yes | ISO 8601, UTC |
contactEmail and contactPhone | Yes | |
price, numBedrooms, numFullBaths | Yes |
The operating rules in the same guide:
- Transport and file. HTTP, HTTPS, FTPS or SFTP (“FTP (unencrypted) is no longer accepted”). Zillow doesn’t host the file. Static URL, UTF-8 XML.
- Snapshot, not changes. “The feed is a complete snapshot of available listings. To remove a listing, simply omit it from the feed.”
- A 20% guard. “any single feed update that increases or drops listing count by more than 20% is flagged and held until confirmed as intentional.”
- Photos. You host them at public URLs. Minimum “415 x 330 pixels (landscape)”. Replace a photo and you must change its URL, because Zillow caches it.
- Real data only. “Placeholder or lorem ipsum content is not accepted for development, testing, or production publication.”
- Consent. Zillow requires a flag in your interface that triggers Zillow syndication, a clear notice that listings publish on Zillow, or Terms that say so.
- Reports. A feed run report and a per-listing status API show what Zillow accepted or rejected.
Two places where Zillow’s pages differ. The feed guide’s table marks the property description optional, while Zillow’s help article on missing feed listings lists “Property description” among the information required for syndication. And the photo minimum is 415 x 330 pixels in the guide and the help centre, but “330W x 220H” in the Listing Quality Policy, updated June 2023. If you build a feed, meet the stricter figure in each case.
Other limits from Zillow’s pages: residential only (“Zillow does not post any commercial listings”), 25 or more units goes through advertising, and “In certain areas of New York, listings need to be posted directly through StreetEasy or Out East.”
Where Reallyo fits
Reallyo (our product) is a version of door 2. You enter a rental once, or import it from a spreadsheet, an XML feed, an MLS (with the MLS’s approval) or a property management system export, and Reallyo keeps it in sync. It sends the rental to 19 rental sites through 11 partner feeds. Zillow’s network is reached through Reallyo’s HotPads-format feed, which Zillow ingests. That’s the same hotPadsItems XML format that Zillow’s current guide documents.
Three limits to know. It isn’t a Feed Connect advertising contract, and this page doesn’t claim any Feed Connect paid feature for it. It sends rentals only, in the US only, and acceptance depends on each partner’s rules, listing quality, location and account status. And the one-source rule applies to us too: if your property management software already feeds Zillow, keep Zillow on in that system and use Reallyo for the sites it doesn’t reach, or the other way round.
Where it helps: managers whose software doesn’t feed Zillow, who don’t want to build and test a feed, or whose inventory lives in a spreadsheet or an MLS. Reallyo is free for one active listing and $89 a month for 100, which is 89 cents a listing. See rental listing syndication or post a listing free.
US listings only. Acceptance depends on partner rules, listing quality, location, account status and platform policies outside our control; some partners may require identity verification or additional fees.
What we’d do
- Under 25 units, start in Rental Manager. It’s free, and Zillow itself says it’s the better fit.
- Over a dozen units, ask your software first. If it already feeds Zillow, turn Zillow on there and don’t send those units from anywhere else.
- Build your own feed only with a developer and a reason. Zillow’s testing alone takes 4 to 6 weeks, and its guide advises small portfolios against it.
- Ask Zillow’s sales team about price before you assume it. The feed is free to join; promotion isn’t, and the number isn’t public.
- At 25 units or more in one community, talk to Zillow’s multifamily team, because Zillow says individual listings in a community that size “can not be posted directly”.
FAQ
What is Zillow Feed Connect? It’s the name Zillow uses for sending it rental listings by feed. Zillow’s help centre says all rentals shown on Zillow are published “through Zillow Feed Connect or Zillow Rental Manager”. Its Feed Connect page is a sales page for single-family advertising, with listing-level promotion (Listing Spotlight) and portfolio-level coverage.
Is Zillow Feed Connect free? The feed program is free to join: Zillow says “There is no cost to participate in the program.” Advertising on top of a feed is paid, and Zillow doesn’t publish prices. For feed pricing, Zillow’s help page directs you to rentalfeedinquiries@zillowgroup.com.
Who qualifies for a Zillow rental feed? Zillow’s feed program is for “a property management company or a property management system”. Zillow approves each feed before work begins. We found no minimum listing count on Zillow’s pages. Communities of 25 or more units go through multifamily advertising.
How long does it take to set up a Zillow rental feed? For your own feed, Zillow says testing “typically takes 4-6 weeks” after approval. Through a property management system that already feeds Zillow it’s shorter: ResMan, for example, says listings take “24 to 48 hours to connect to Zillow” after integration.
How often does a Zillow feed update? Bulk feeds are processed on a schedule and can take “a few hours” to show. RealPage’s schedule, per Zillow, is a pickup “7 times a day, every 2 hours beginning at 7 AM CDT”. Zillow’s separate API layer gets updates “within a few minutes”. New listings and edits can take up to 24 hours to appear.
What format does Zillow’s rental feed use? XML that follows Zillow’s Rental Listing Feed Guide (last revised 13 August 2026), or MITS. The older Zillow Interchange Format is listed as deprecated in the current guide.
Which property management systems send listings to Zillow? Zillow has help-centre articles for AppFolio, RealPage (LeaseStar), ResMan and Rent Manager, and its fee-data page names Entrata, Yardi (RentCafe), Funnel and Engrain. It publishes no single partner list, so check with your vendor.
Can I send the same listing from two systems? No. Zillow says “Zillow will only ever publish a single version of a listing at any given time”, and the second source is “very likely” to be declined. Choose one system per unit.
Can I send my MLS rentals to Zillow? Not through the MLS. Zillow told Inman in 2020 that MLS rental listings would stop feeding Zillow directly from 2021. Post them in Rental Manager or send them through a feed route.
Does Reallyo use Zillow Feed Connect? No. Reallyo sends rentals to Zillow’s network through its HotPads-format feed, which Zillow ingests. It isn’t a Feed Connect advertising contract.
Free syndication & listing marketing
List Once. Syndicate and Market your listings. Everywhere.
Reallyo sends your rental to Zillow, Apartments.com and the rest of its 19-site rental network, then turns it into a listing page, a video, social posts and flyers. Free for one active listing, no card.
Sources
Checked 25 October 2026. Quotes are verbatim; “updated” is the page’s own date.
- Two routes. Zillow Help Center, How does Zillow get listings? (updated 7 April 2024): “All rentals listings displayed on Zillow are published through Zillow Feed Connect or Zillow Rental Manager.”
- Feed Connect page. Zillow, Zillow Feed Connect: “Single-family advertising built to fill vacancies fast”; “Use your PMS and feed as usual”; “Portfolio-level coverage”. Listing Spotlight: “Pricing varies by market and portfolio. Contact your Zillow Rentals sales representative for details.”
- Feed program. Zillow Rental Manager Help Center, Rentals Feed Integrations (updated 3 August 2026), same text on Zillow Group developers: “There is no cost to participate in the program. However, you must submit a request to integrate and receive approval from our Rentals Integrations team before beginning work on a feed.” “The feed testing process typically takes 4-6 weeks.”
- Feed guide. Zillow Rentals, Rental Listing Bulk Feed Guide (last revised 13 August 2026), and the Listing API Guide (27 May 2026): “the bulk feed still runs 1–2 times per day as a backstop”.
- Cost and size lines. Zillow, Rentals Network FAQ: “Landlords who build their listings on Zillow Rental Manager can list for free, while partners with larger portfolios advertising through a PMS, MLS or CRM can use one of our paid advertising products.” Rental advertising: “If you’re trying to list and/or manage properties with 1-24 units, Zillow Rental Manager may be a better fit.” Zillow Rental Manager Help Center, Paying for your listings (updated 24 August 2026): “As of May 2022, all listings posted directly to Zillow Rental Manager are free to publish.”
- Rules. Zillow, Rentals Listings Quality Policy (updated June 2023), sections 1.3, 2.1, 2.2 and 3.1. Zillow Help Center, Multifamily & Existing Feeds (updated 28 May 2026); Why aren’t my rental listings syndicating onto Zillow? (updated 23 October 2026); Listing Decline Reasons (updated 19 August 2026).
- Property management systems. Zillow Help Center: AppFolio Integration FAQs (7 August 2026), LeaseStar (RealPage) Integration FAQs (2 December 2024), ResMan Integration FAQs (2 December 2024), Rent Manager Integration FAQs (3 September 2026), Sharing Fee Data with Zillow (29 July 2026).
- Leads. Zillow Group developers, Lead API: “We can deliver lead data to your webhook or endpoint via HTTP POST callback.”
- MLS rentals (third parties, not Zillow). Inman, Zillow to end free rental listing syndication in 2021 (3 November 2020); Canopy MLS, Zillow Rentals (updated 15 September 2026).
- Older for-sale feed. Zillow, Zillow Listings Feed Guide V1.0.20 (12 January 2017).
- Reallyo. Pricing and rental listing syndication.
