In Metro Seattle, Redfin Often Matches or Exceeds Zillow on New Listings
For new listings in Metro Seattle, Redfin generally delivers as many or more listing views than Zillow during the first 30 days on market.
Across nearly 500 new Metro Seattle listings, more than nine out of ten received at least 90% of Zillow’s view count on Redfin — and the majority exceeded it. Given Zillow’s much larger national audience, that result is notable.
Why This Result Surprises People
Nationally, Zillow and Redfin operate at very different scales.
In investor disclosures:
Zillow reports hundreds of millions of monthly unique users across its consumer platforms.
Redfin reports tens of millions of monthly visitors to its site and apps.
Those metrics aren’t perfectly comparable, but they clearly show that Zillow’s national consumer reach is several times larger than Redfin’s.
Based on that alone, most people would expect Zillow to dominate listing views everywhere.
That assumption does not hold in Metro Seattle.
What We Analyzed
To test this directly, we analyzed 3,519 randomly selected Seattle-area listings, then narrowed the focus to Metro Seattle homes that had been on the market for 30 days or fewer. This resulted in a sample of 491 new listings across:
Seattle proper
The Eastside (Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, Sammamish, Mercer Island)
Close-in North and South suburbs
These are the region’s most competitive markets, where buyers are actively searching, monitoring new inventory closely, and moving quickly when the right home appears.
We intentionally excluded rural and exurban markets, which show very different buyer behavior and tend to favor broad, discovery-driven browsing.
Why the First 30 Days Matter
Buyer interest is highest when a listing first goes live.
Zillow and Redfin report views differently:
Zillow reports views from the last 30 days
Redfin reports total views to date
By limiting the analysis to listings with 30 days on market or fewer, those two metrics align closely enough to allow a fair comparison of early listing exposure.
What the Data Shows in Metro Seattle
The results are unusually clear:
80% of Metro Seattle listings received 125% or more of Zillow’s views on Redfin
Listings where Redfin meaningfully trailed Zillow were rare
These patterns were consistent across Seattle neighborhoods and across suburbs
In practical terms, Redfin is not a secondary exposure channel for new Metro Seattle listings. It is a primary source of buyer attention.
Takeaways
Despite Zillow’s far larger national audience, in Metro Seattle Redfin frequently matches or exceeds Zillow’s listing views on new homes during the first 30 days on market. Across hundreds of listings, this pattern is consistent and difficult to dismiss as anecdotal.
For agents and sellers operating in Metro Seattle, Redfin is central to how buyers are finding homes, right from day one.