Zillow Flex referral fee: what Zillow Preferred takes now, and every rate change since 2021

What percentage does Zillow Flex take?

A share of your gross commission on the transaction, before splits, and the share depends on where the property is and what it sold for. Zillow's fee formula is Success Fee = GCI × Success Fee %, and the percentage “currently ranges from 15-40% of the logged GCI”. Every ZIP code has its own grid, and you can read yours on the Zillow Preferred pricing page.

Zillow's full pricing sheet sorts every market into five pricing groups, and all five run 15, 25, 30, 35 and 40%. What differs is where the bands start. In Group 1, the cheapest markets, the 15% band ends at $75,000 and the 40% band begins at $300,000. In Group 5 the 15% band runs to $225,000 and 40% starts at $900,000. Chicago is Group 1, Denver is Group 3 with 40% from $500,000, and Los Angeles is Group 5. Most markets are Group 1: 376 of the 509 on the sheet.

Seller connections are simpler. The pricing page says the success fee for all seller originated connection transactions is 40%, in every market. Zillow can change any of this on 15 days' notice by posting the new fee on the same page, and the change applies to connections you receive after the notice period. There is no upfront charge. The FAQ names a Follow Up Boss subscription as the only required expense besides the success fees.

When did the fee go from 35% to 40%?

September 1, 2023 in six markets and January 1, 2024 everywhere else we checked. Zillow's own lookup shows it. Enter a ZIP code on the pricing page and a dropdown labeled “Connections received on or after” offers one grid per date. In Denver, New Haven, Cape Coral, Reno, Oklahoma City and Greenville the later option is 09-01-2023. In Chicago, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, New York City, Boston, Austin, Nashville, Charlotte and Kansas City it is 01-01-2024. Eighteen ZIP codes, two dates.

Mike DelPrete reported the first step in Inman on October 12, 2023: the fee had been 35 percent for years and had risen to 40 percent in a half-dozen markets, and the change had happened quietly in September. His six markets are the same six.

The step was a re-tiering, not a flat five-point rise. Before, most grids had four bands at 20, 25, 30 and 35%. After, five bands at 15, 25, 30, 35 and 40%. The 40% band sits above the old top: from $300,000 in Chicago, New Haven, Cape Coral, Oklahoma City, Greenville and Kansas City, $400,000 in Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville and Charlotte, $500,000 in Denver, Reno and Austin, $700,000 in Seattle and Boston, and $900,000 in Los Angeles and New York City. The bottom band fell to 15% in every market. Phoenix and Atlanta had run two bands, 25% and 35%, and New York City had run 25, 30 and 35%.

What did Zillow Flex charge before 2023?

A top band of 35%, with a graduated grid under it. Zillow Group's 2021 annual report dates the program to October 2018, when Zillow began testing the Flex pricing model in certain markets, with partners paying only when a transaction closed. No Zillow page from before 2021 states a percentage. The Flex FAQ of 2021 said only that the fee was paid out of escrow and was specific to each market.

The Flex pricing page of November 2021 is where most of the “Flex is 35%” shorthand comes from. It said that for a property outside the listed Flex markets “the referral fee will be 35%”, and that inside a listed market the fee came from the per-market rate card on the page. The card could change on 15 days' notice, the same term Preferred carries today.

The rate card itself, as of March 2022, had 389 market tables. Bands were drawn from 20, 25, 30 and 35%. 382 tables topped out at 35%, six at 30%, and none at 40%. Denver's was 20% to $149,999.99, 25% to $274,999.99, 30% to $424,999.99 and 35% from $425,000, and that same grid still sits under the 01-01-2017 option on Zillow's lookup today. Two markets had earlier steps. New Haven ran two bands, 20% and 30%, until October 25, 2020. New York City moved to 25, 30 and 35%, with 35% from $1,000,000, on July 14, 2021.

Did every sale pay more after the change?

No. Sales above the new 40% threshold pay more, sales in the middle pay the same, and small sales pay less. Take Denver, assuming a 2.5% buyer-side commission, which is our figure because Zillow publishes no worked example. A $500,000 sale carries $12,500 of commission. Before September 2023 it sat in the 35% band and the fee was $4,375. Now it sits in the 40% band and the fee is $5,000, $625 more. A $450,000 sale paid $3,937.50 before and pays $3,937.50 now, because it was 35% on both grids. A $100,000 sale fell from 20% to 15%, so $500 became $375.

On the comparison people quote, a sale with $12,000 of commission, a 35% fee is $4,200 and a 40% fee is $4,800. The step costs you $600 on that sale. On a seller connection the same $12,000 pays $4,800 in every market.

That is the number to hold onto. On a Flex or Preferred closing you hand Zillow up to 40% of the commission at the table, so what you spend running the file matters more than it does on a deal you sourced yourself. DeedSpring is priced for exactly that. It is an AI transaction coordinator that reads the executed contract into deadlines, chases the parties and drafts the client updates for you to send, and you pay per closing with no per-agent fee: $15 a month for one closing, or $25 a closing on Standard, less at volume.

What changed when Flex became Zillow Preferred?

The name, the seller-side rule and the Follow Up Boss requirement. Everyone in Flex on or before October 15, 2025 became a Zillow Preferred partner automatically, and Zillow's Zillow Pro announcement that day calls the program Zillow Preferred, formerly Flex. The fee grids did not move with the rename. The latest date options on the lookup are still 2023 and 2024.

The flat 40% on seller connections is a Preferred-era statement. Flex pages priced a purchase or a sale from one grid. By November 2025 the Preferred pricing page said the success fee for all seller originated connection transactions is 40% for all markets. Zillow has not said when that began, so assume it applies to every seller connection you take now.

The Follow Up Boss subscription is new too. The 2021 and 2023 Flex FAQs mention no such requirement. The Preferred FAQ names a Follow Up Boss subscription as the only required expense besides the success fees, and the fee article says Follow Up Boss does not support the commission additions and deductions, so you enter those in the Premier Agent app.

When you owe the fee has its own help article. A fee is due on up to two transactions per connection. None is due if the first closes more than two years after the connection, or the second more than two years after the first. The agent and the broker are jointly and severally liable, so if one cannot pay, the other does.

Why do some sites still say 35%?

Because 35% was the number for years and it was the easy one to repeat. Mike DelPrete described Flex in May 2022 as featuring a 35 percent commission share. Online Marketplaces was still calling the fee typically 35% of commission in January 2024, the month the 40% band reached the twelve bigger markets. The Close's June 2026 guide works its example at $12,000 × 35% = $4,200 and never mentions 40%. Jamil Academy corrected its page in September 2026 and said its 35 percent midpoint had come from a third-party report.

Zillow's only published reason for the structure is one line in the Flex FAQ: “The established success fees are specific to each market in order to account for local pricing trends.” Nothing Zillow has posted explains the 2023 and 2024 steps, the seller-side 40% or the Follow Up Boss requirement. Use the ZIP lookup with the latest date option and treat the result as your rate until Zillow posts a new one.

What a Flex agent can do about the 40%

You cannot negotiate the grid. It is posted, and it changes on notice. What you control is the cost and the time it takes to get each connection from executed contract to closing, and that is the job DeedSpring does for agents and teams. Upload the executed contract and it reads the price, deposits, contingencies and dates into deadlines on the file. It checks every open closing every hour, flags what is slipping, and drafts the chases and client updates for you to send, with anything sensitive or negotiable always waiting for a person. Your buyers and sellers get a portal that shows them where the deal stands.

Starter is $15 a month for one closing a month. Standard is $25 a closing, less at volume, with unlimited agents and teammates and unused closings rolling over. Both are month to month.