Compare / Apify portal scrapers
Apify's store has good portal scrapers: tri_angle's real-estate aggregator ("consistent output from Zillow, Realtor, Zumper, Apartments.com, and Redfin", about $1.50 per 1,000 listings) and maxcopell's Zillow scraper (7,800+ users, $1.30 per 1,000 results). HousingFeed's own Data API lives on Apify too, at $1.20 to $2.00 per 1,000 rows depending on plan, and reads from a database rather than scraping at run time. The difference that matters is not price. It is what you may do with the rows: every scraper's page tells you to comply with the portal's terms, and no portal's terms let you republish its listings.
| HousingFeed | Apify portal scrapers | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Display Feed: manager-direct listings licensed for display; Data API: 90+ sources incl. portals, for research | Scrapers that read portal search pages at run time and return the rows |
| Source of the rows | Property managers' own sites (Display Feed); portals held for research (Data API) | Zillow, Realtor, Zumper, Apartments.com, Redfin pages |
| Freshness | Weekly verification with delistings; Data API rows carry three timestamps | As of the scrape; no removal signal between runs |
| Pricing | Data API from $1.20 per 1,000 rows on Apify; Display Feed by scope | tri_angle: $0.003 per start + $0.002 per listing (about $1.50 per 1,000); maxcopell: $1.30 per 1,000; published, checked 2026-09-20 |
| Users on Apify | The HousingFeed actor and 13 single-source siblings | tri_angle 578 users; maxcopell 7,833 users (checked 2026-09-20) |
| What the actor page says about rights | Data API: internal use, no display; Display Feed: public licence with attribution | tri_angle: "Comply with each site's Terms of Service and your local laws"; maxcopell: "It is legal to scrape publicly available data"; neither states a display right |
| Licenses listings for public display? | Yes, via the Display Feed (manager-direct listings; portal listings excluded) | Not stated by either actor; compliance with the portal's terms is placed on the user, and portal terms do not permit republishing listings (checked 2026-09-20) |
You will show listings to users. The Display Feed is the only option here that comes with a licence to do that, and its listings come from the managers, not from a portal's copy.
You need a one-off or research pull of portal pages, want the portal's own fields (Zestimate, broker name), and have no intention of showing the rows to users.
Filter the Data API and get JSON back:
HousingFeedcurl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/housingfeed~rental-listings-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"country":"US","maxItems":100}'That is a question for a lawyer in your jurisdiction, and the scraper pages answer it differently. The practical point is narrower: even where scraping is lawful, the portal's terms do not grant you a right to republish its listings in your product.
It is a database of listings collected by HousingFeed and served on Apify; a run queries the database rather than scraping at run time. Its rows are for internal use. Public display is a separate licence, the Display Feed, which excludes portal rows.
For coverage measurement and research: knowing what a portal shows that managers' own sites do not tells us where the Display Feed is thin, and that gap is published per metro on the Zillow comparison page.
More comparisons: vs RentCast · vs Zillow API · vs Realtor.com API · vs Redfin API · vs Rentometer · vs HelloData · vs Apartment List API · vs Dwellsy IQ · vs RealtyAPI · vs Mashvisor API · vs MLS and IDX feeds
2.1M+ rows of rental listings from 90+ sources across 30 countries in one documented Data API, and a Display Feed of manager-direct listings licensed for display.
Apify portal scrapers is a trademark of its respective owner; HousingFeed is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by it. Comparison reflects public information; competitor pricing is published pricing, checked 2026-09-20, and may change.