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Redfin Data Center vs Zillow Research

Both are free, downloadable U.S. housing-market datasets; they differ in methodology, source data and which specific indices they publish.

Side by side

Redfin Data Center Zillow Research
Vendor Redfin Corporation Zillow Group, Inc.
Pricing model Free Free
Free tier Yes Yes
Deployment Cloud Cloud
Open source No No
Best for Economists, journalists and analysts who need a free, MLS-sourced dataset for U.S. housing trends. Economists, journalists and analysts who need a free, standardized reference dataset for U.S. housing trends.
Pricing

All datasets are free to download with no account or payment required.

Checked on the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026: no prices are published. Expect to be quoted.

All datasets are free to download with no account or payment required.

Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site.

Features
  • Weekly and monthly U.S. housing market tracker
  • Redfin Home Price Index
  • Investor home purchases and starter-home market data
  • Interstate migration pattern data
  • Housing affordability tracker
  • Price drop, cancellation and delisting metrics
  • Free downloadable CSV files by metro and county
  • Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) by geography
  • Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI)
  • For-sale inventory and days-on-market data
  • New construction and sale price trends
  • Data available at national, state, metro, county and ZIP levels
  • Free downloadable CSV files, updated monthly

Verdict

Redfin Data Center and Zillow Research are the two most commonly used free references for U.S. housing-market trends, and neither costs anything or requires an account — both are aggregate, geography-level datasets, not records for individual properties, so neither replaces a paid property-data provider like ATTOM for parcel-level work. The practical difference is source and which specific indices are published, not price or access. Redfin's data is drawn from Redfin's own brokerage and MLS-sourced listings, and includes weekly market-activity tracking, a Buyer/Seller "Balance of Power" measure, and quarterly data on investor purchases and interstate migration that Zillow doesn't publish in the same form. Zillow's flagship outputs are the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), a smoothed, seasonally adjusted typical-home-value measure, and the Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), drawn from Zillow's own listings and Zestimate data at national scale.

Because methodology and update cadence differ, analysts commonly check both rather than treating either as the single source of truth.

Choose Redfin Data Center if

  • You want weekly, not just monthly, housing market activity tracking.
  • Interstate migration patterns, investor home purchases or starter-home market data specifically are what you need.
  • MLS-sourced listing data matters to your use case over Zillow's own listings and estimate data.

Choose Zillow Research if

  • The Zillow Home Value Index or Zillow Observed Rent Index is the specific series you or your audience already reference.
  • You need data down to the ZIP-code level, not just metro and county.
  • You want a long-standing, widely cited reference series for comparability with other published research.

What they share

Both are free CSV downloads updated regularly, both are aggregate market-trend data rather than individual property records, and both are commonly cited together rather than as alternatives — pulling the same metric from both before publishing a number is a reasonable sanity check given the methodology differences. For paid, property-level data, see choosing a real estate data platform.

Last reviewed September 22, 2026

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