Written by HousingFeed, so read the table, not our opinion. No single API is best. If you will show listings to users, you need a display licence and the field narrows to three options. If you need data for research or comps, four analytics providers lead in different slices. Every fact below is from the provider's own pages, checked 2026-09-20; prices are as published.
| Provider | Best for | What it is | Freshness, as stated | Published price | May you display the listings? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HousingFeed Display Feed | Products that show rentals to users | US rental listings collected from property managers' own sites and leasing software, one schema, weekly deltas | Re-verified weekly; delistings delivered | Monthly licence by geography, quoted with a sample; 30 days free | Yes: public licence, attribution and link-back required |
| RentCast | US property records, rent estimates, comps | "150+ million property records, valuation estimates, active listings and real estate market trends" | "Over 500,000 property record and listing updates daily" | $0 (50 req) · $74 · $199 · $449 per month | Yes: its API terms grant display and distribution, no attribution |
| Dwellsy IQ | Institutional rent comps and analytics | "Unit-level rental comps via API" from "30+ direct property management system integrations" | "Updated continuously and in real time" | Not published | Not stated on its pages |
| HelloData | Multifamily comps and revenue analytics | Rent comps and expense benchmarks across tens of millions of units | Daily surveys of property sites | Partly published (per-record and unlimited tiers) | Not stated |
| Mashvisor API | Investor analytics: income, occupancy, cap rate | Analytics from "the MLS, Zillow, Rentometer, Airbnb.com, and the Census Bureau" | "Updated on a daily basis" | $129 · $249 · $599 per month, $0.30 per extra call | Restricted: MLS data only to identify prospective properties; redistribution needs Enterprise |
| MLS / IDX (Bridge Interactive, SimplyRETS) | Brokerages displaying MLS listings | MLS data via API; rentals are one property type among mostly for-sale listings | SimplyRETS: 30-minute refresh | SimplyRETS $49 · $99 · $199 per month plus $99 per feed; Bridge not published | Yes for MLS members, under the MLS's IDX rules |
| RealtyAPI | Live reads of portal pages for research tools | "Real Time Real Estate Public Data API" over Realtor, Redfin, Apartments.com, Zoopla and others | Live at request time | Free · $49 · $99 · $399 per month | Not stated; the portals' terms govern |
| Apify portal scrapers | One-off or research pulls of portal rows | Scrapers of Zillow, Realtor, Zumper, Apartments.com, Redfin pages | As of the scrape | About $1.30 to $1.50 per 1,000 rows | Not stated; the actor pages tell you to comply with each site's terms |
| HousingFeed Data API | Research, analytics, internal tools across countries | The whole HousingFeed database, portals included, 30 countries, one schema, three timestamps per row | Manager-direct sources weekly; portal snapshots dated per source | $1.20 to $2.00 per 1,000 rows on Apify by plan tier | No: internal use only |
Coverage figures are deliberately left out of the table: each provider counts something different (listings since 2020, property records, MLS listings, requests per month) and a single column would mislead. Each linked page carries the provider's own coverage statement with its definition.
HousingFeed Display Feed for manager-direct rentals with the manager named and linked. RentCast if records-based data without a source link suits you and its terms fit. MLS via SimplyRETS or Bridge if you are a brokerage. Nothing else on this page states that right.
RentCast for a US address; HelloData for multifamily revenue; Dwellsy IQ for institutional unit-level comps; Mashvisor for investor metrics including short-term rentals.
HousingFeed Data API for many sources and countries in one schema; RealtyAPI or an Apify scraper for live portal pages. None of the three grants display.
Four criteria, in this order: whether the provider states a right to display listings to your users; where the listings come from; what freshness and removal handling it states; whether prices are published. We did not score accuracy or completeness, because none of us publishes a comparable measurement, and we did not include providers whose pages we could not read (Bridge Interactive's own site returned 403 on 2026-09-20; its offer is described from Zillow Group's developer pages). Corrections to hello@housingfeed.com; we will change the page.
There is no single best. For listings you will show to users, the shortlist is HousingFeed's Display Feed (manager-direct, attribution required), RentCast (records and feeds, display permitted by its terms, no source link) and, for brokerages, an MLS feed. For research and comps, RentCast, Dwellsy IQ, HelloData and Mashvisor each lead in a different slice, and HousingFeed's Data API covers the most countries.
RentCast (50 requests a month), RealtyAPI (250 requests a month) and HousingFeed's Data API (new Apify accounts carry free credits; a keyless 10-row sample runs on our docs page) all have free entry points. None of the free tiers comes with a display licence except what RentCast's terms grant.
Because a rental product shows listings to people, and the right to do that belongs to whoever published the listing. Portals do not grant it to third parties; MLSs grant it to members under IDX rules; property managers publish on their own sites to be seen, which is what HousingFeed licenses. Scraped rows carry no right at all. Display rights, explained →
As each states it: Dwellsy IQ real time, RealtyAPI live per request, SimplyRETS 30 minutes, RentCast and Mashvisor daily, HousingFeed weekly with source-confirmed removals, scrapers as of the scrape. Faster is not automatically better for a marketplace that ingests inventory; a removal signal you can act on is. How we verify →
Tell us your cities. A real export, the coverage numbers and the terms that would apply, within one business day.
Usually within one business day. How pricing works →
You will have the export, the coverage numbers and pricing within one business day.
Twenty minutes on your exact ZIPs, field completeness and how the weekly deltas fit your stack.
Book 20 minutesOr just reply to the sample email.
HousingFeed