Rightmove, Zoopla and your own site: what the portal does, and what you own
What Rightmove and Zoopla do for an agent and what they cost, as far as anyone publishes it; the portal rules that reach your own site; what your site owns; how listings and enquiries run on Orbit; and the money per instruction. Checked 9 November 2026.
This is for the independent estate or letting agent who pays Rightmove or Zoopla every month and asks why a website is needed when the portals send the applicants. By the end you will know what the portals do and cost, what your own site does that they cannot, how listings and enquiries run on your own site, and what one extra instruction is worth. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, which can run an agent’s site, so weigh the Orbit parts with that in mind. Every figure was checked at its source on 9 November 2026.
In short
- Rightmove’s half-year results: 16,591 agency branches, 90% of portal time on Comscore’s measure, and average agency revenue of £1,636 a branch a month. Zoopla says 9 million visitors a month. Neither publishes a price list.
- A portal keeps the search, the alerts and the audience, and hands you an enquiry. Your site owns the valuation request, the landlord enquiry, your reviews, your area guides and the applicant list.
- Rightmove removes web addresses, phone numbers and emails from listing text and bans scraping. Your listings reach your site from your CRM or a spreadsheet, never from the portal.
- On Orbit a listing is a product with an enquiry form in place of a basket, its facts as custom fields and a gallery, typed in or imported from a spreadsheet. One average UK sale earns about £3,880 in fees including VAT; Orbit’s Solo plan is £25 a month before VAT.
What do Rightmove and Zoopla actually do for an agent?
They put your stock where the search starts. Rightmove’s results for the six months to 30 June 2026 report a 90% share of the time spent across Rightmove, Zoopla, PrimeLocation and OnTheMarket in June 2026, on Comscore’s measure, and 16,591 agency branches as members (Rightmove plc half-year results, 31 July 2026, checked 9 November 2026). Zoopla’s page for agents says “Reach the 9 million people who visit Zoopla each month” (Zoopla packages page, checked 9 November 2026).
Then they send you applicants: Rightmove counts more than 700,000 of what it calls Enhanced Leads a month, and its Online Agent Valuation tool reaches for the seller too. What the portal does not do is hand over the audience: the saved search, the alert and the data on who looked at what stay with it, and you get the enquiry on the portal’s rules.
What do Rightmove and Zoopla cost an agent in 2026?
Neither publishes a standard agent fee. Rightmove quotes per branch and package. The only public number is its own average: agency revenue per advertiser of £1,636 a month in the first half of 2026, up from £1,520 a year earlier (Rightmove results, as above). The top packages pull that average up, so it is not a price for your branch. Zoopla’s packages page lists Listing, Instruction and Complete, each built on Zoopla Core, with no prices; The Negotiator reported that “each package is tailored to the size and profile of the individual agency” (The Negotiator, 16 July 2026).
One reported figure sets the bill against earnings: Property Industry Eye carried an analysis by The Property DriveBuy putting Rightmove’s cost at an average 7.2% of an agency’s monthly sales commission, from 2.9% in London to 13.5% in Glasgow (Property Industry Eye, 13 November 2025). Treat it as one firm’s model, not a survey. Get both quotes in writing before you set a website budget; against them the site is the small line.
Which Rightmove rules affect your own website?
Three rules from Rightmove’s own documents decide how your site and the portal relate. First, the listing may not point to you. In June 2014 Rightmove told members it would be “automatically removing all telephone numbers, email addresses and website URLs” from listing text (Rightmove member news, 10 June 2014). Since 2019 it has stripped them before a listing goes live: “All contact will go through, and be tracked by, Rightmove itself” (Property Industry Eye, 12 July 2019). The applicant has to find you.
Second, the data. Rightmove’s membership terms make you “the proprietor and data controller” of your listing data, while applicants’ details are “User Data” of which Rightmove “remains the data controller”, passed to you as a controller of your copy (Rightmove General Membership Terms and Conditions, clause 7, checked 9 November 2026). The enquiry is yours once it lands; the audience is not. Third, you cannot copy your listings back off the portal: “Rightmove prohibits the scraping of its content” (Rightmove website terms of use, checked 9 November 2026). Zoopla’s rules sit in your membership agreement.
What does an agent’s website do that the portals do not?
Everything that happens before an applicant searches and after a sale completes.
- Valuation requests and instructions. A seller who found you on the portal still looks you up before they call: your Google rating, your team, your fees and your area guides are what they compare, where a portal shows your logo and a branch page. Your valuation form lands in your inbox with nobody else copied in.
- The landlord relationship. Landlords choose on fees, management and client money protection, none of which a listing shows. A landlord page, a fee list and the certificates are website jobs.
- Local content. Area guides and market updates are the pages a search engine ranks for “estate agents in” your town, and they stay yours; SEO that ships by default covers the plumbing.
- Applicant registration you own. A portal’s saved search belongs to the portal. A register-with-us form puts the applicant in your own customer list, with marketing consent recorded and a CSV export, and your new-instructions email goes out to that list through the Mailchimp or Omnisend sync plugin.
| What | On Rightmove or Zoopla | On your own website |
|---|---|---|
| Where buyers and tenants search | The portal; Rightmove alone holds 90% of portal time on Comscore’s measure | Your stock, for people who know your name or search your town |
| Applicant enquiries | Sent to you; contact routed and tracked by the portal; no link to your site | From a form you wrote, with the reference attached |
| Valuation requests | Through the portal’s valuation tool, where you buy it | Your form, your inbox, nobody else |
| Landlord enquiries, fees and certificates | Not shown on a listing | A landlord page and a fee list |
| Cost | Quoted per branch; Rightmove’s average is £1,636 a month | Orbit from £25 a month before VAT, plus your time per listing |
How listings run on your own site
Here is how an agent’s stock runs on Orbit. A listing is typed in or imported from a spreadsheet, then the photos and floor plan are added, and the portal keeps its own copy. Enter one listing in the trial, time it, and multiply by your monthly instructions.
- A home is a product. The price is the asking price or monthly rent, the SKU is your reference, and the listing template, built in the page builder, has no add-to-basket, buy-now or quantity box.
- The facts are custom fields. Bedrooms, tenure, council tax band, EPC band and floor area are custom fields: text, number, yes or no, date, a pick-one list or a file for the EPC certificate, each shown on the page or kept internal.
- The gallery and the filters. Up to 2,000 files per listing with images up to 20MB; collections (for sale, to let, by area) fill themselves from a rule; tags cover garden, parking and chain free; a listing can be scheduled to go live.
- An enquiry form replaces the buy button. A contact form sits beside the reference, and “Arrange a viewing” and “Book a valuation” lead to it, so a free viewing or valuation comes in as an enquiry with the reference attached.
- In by spreadsheet, out by spreadsheet. New stock goes in by hand or from a CSV or Excel file through the column mapper; a price-change sheet keyed on your reference updates existing listings; the whole catalogue exports, custom fields included.
The same pattern runs holiday cottage sites and used car stock lists.
What is one instruction worth against the cost of the site?
The sum uses two public figures: the UK House Price Index average of £273,000 for August 2026 (gov.uk, published 21 October 2026) and HomeOwners Alliance’s “average estate agent fee in 2026” of 1.42% including VAT, a consumer group’s figure (HomeOwners Alliance, checked 9 November 2026). Put your own average price and fee in instead.
| Line | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average UK house price, August 2026 | £273,000 | UK House Price Index, gov.uk |
| Average estate agent fee, 2026 | 1.42% including VAT | HomeOwners Alliance |
| One average instruction | About £3,880 including VAT (£3,230 before VAT) | The two lines above, multiplied |
| Rightmove, average agency branch | £1,636 a month, about £19,600 a year | Rightmove half-year results |
| Orbit Solo plan | £25 a month before VAT, £300 a year at the monthly price | Orbit pricing |
One extra instruction a year covers the Solo plan more than ten times over; the question is whether the valuation form, the landlord page and the reviews bring one. Add your time per listing, a premium theme if you choose one (a one-off charge priced in the theme store) and any add-ons, priced on their own listings. A letting agent runs the same sum with a management fee. None of this is a forecast.
The rules a listing must meet, wherever it appears
Pointers only, not legal advice. The Estate Agents Act 1979 still governs estate agency work and is enforced by the National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team (National Trading Standards, checked 9 November 2026). The consumer rules in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 have applied since 6 April 2025, and “not telling consumers something they need to know” is a misleading omission under them (gov.uk, updated 3 December 2025).
National Trading Standards withdrew its Parts A, B and C material information guidance in May 2025; the duty to disclose remains and the Competition and Markets Authority enforces it directly (Propertymark, 9 May 2025). The government’s roadmap promises listings guidance and a Code of Practice for agents in 2026 (gov.uk roadmap, updated 19 June 2026); on 9 November 2026 the National Trading Standards material information page pointed only to those reforms. The working rule: whatever a listing must say on the portal, it must say on your site. Redress, client money protection, fee publication and the Renters’ Rights Act are in our first estate agent post.
Where Orbit fits
The built-in features named in this post are on every plan, so the choice between plans is about staff accounts and storage. Solo is £25 a month (£19 a month billed yearly) with one staff account and 100GB, Team £85 a month (£64 a month billed yearly) with ten accounts and 300GB. Both prices are before VAT, and both plans have the 14-day free trial with no card and run on AWS in London with an SSL certificate on your own domain (pricing).
Listings and custom fields are covered on the products page; the enquiry form and the listing template are built in the page builder. For a longer valuation form, the Form Builder add-on from the plugin store (a free plan and paid plans) takes file uploads, emails you each submission and can create a customer account for an applicant who registers. Applicants are kept as customers, with segments by location and consent and a CSV export; newsletters run through the Mailchimp or Omnisend sync plugin.
The built-in blog has no post limit, runs as several blogs (Area guides, Landlords, Market updates) and puts a tag’s posts on any page, and Nebula, the dashboard assistant, drafts a post for you to edit. Rename a page or post and the old address redirects on its own; a redirect map from an old site imports from a CSV or Excel file (SEO). The Google Reviews element, a paid add-on priced on its listing, puts your Google rating and up to five reviews on any page, refreshed nightly, as Google returns them. The theme store lists free and premium themes by industry; pick one for an agency site and change its colours, fonts and logo in the dashboard, with every page editable in the page builder.
Read next: Auto Trader fees against your own stock list and Checkatrade or your own website.
Questions people ask about Rightmove, Zoopla and agent websites
Why do I need a website when Rightmove sends me the buyers?
Because the buyer is not the client. The portals send enquiries on stock you already have and keep the audience, the alerts and the tracking. The seller choosing an agent and the landlord choosing a manager look you up before they call, and the valuation request, the landlord page, your reviews and your area guides live on your site. So the portal brings the viewings and your own website helps you win the instruction.
How much do Rightmove and Zoopla charge estate agents?
Neither publishes a price list; each quotes agency by agency. The only public Rightmove figure is its own average, £1,636 a month per agency advertiser in the first half of 2026, pulled up by the top packages. Zoopla’s packages page lists Listing, Instruction and Complete, each built on Zoopla Core, with no prices; The Negotiator reported in July 2026 that each is “tailored to the size and profile of the individual agency”.
How do my Rightmove listings get onto my own website?
From your own records, since Rightmove’s website terms of use say “Rightmove prohibits the scraping of its content”. On Orbit, listings reach your site from a CSV or Excel export of your CRM through the column mapper, or are typed in by hand, and a price-change sheet keyed on your reference updates the ones already there; the portal keeps its copy and your site keeps yours.
Does Rightmove allow a link to my website in a listing?
No. Rightmove told members in 2014 it would remove telephone numbers, email addresses and website URLs from listing text, and since 2019 it has stripped them before a listing goes live, saying its technical guidelines have always barred extra contact details. Contact goes through Rightmove’s own buttons and is tracked by Rightmove, so your website has to be found by name or by search.
What must a property listing show on my own website?
The same as on the portal. Leaving out information a buyer or tenant needs is a misleading omission under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 rules in force since 6 April 2025, enforced directly by the Competition and Markets Authority. National Trading Standards withdrew its Parts A, B and C guidance in May 2025 and new listings guidance and a Code of Practice are promised for 2026; on 9 November 2026 the National Trading Standards page still pointed only to those reforms, so the old three parts remain the sensible checklist.
The 14-day free trial, no card required, is long enough to enter a handful of listings, time one, build the valuation page and send yourself an enquiry.