Zillow stopped rendering Matterport tours on listings in October 2025 and had not restored them by the middle of 2026. The virtual tour fields in your MLS did not go anywhere. This is what they take, what a hosted tour can honestly promise you, and the one part nobody has tested in public yet.
Zillow removed Matterport tours from its listings on 20 October 2025. Matterport's own blog said in May 2026 that Zillow still refused to restore them, and we found nothing after that reversing it. Inman, 20 Oct 2025; Matterport blog, 27 May 2026. Checked 8 Sep 2026.
The 3D Zillow does show on a listing is SkyTour, which launched in July 2025, covers exteriors, and appears on Showcase listings. Zillow's engineering write-up describes footage flown by more than 300 pilots trained inside its own media network. There is no submission path for footage somebody else captured, which is the part that matters to a photographer: the portal's 3D slot is not something you can buy your way into with better work. Zillow engineering post, 16 Mar 2026.
Showcase itself is a paid placement, reported in May 2026 at around $400 a month including one listing, with further listings between $300 and $1,150 depending on price band, and a cap near one in ten active listings in a market. Those are third-party figures, not Zillow's published rate card, so treat them as an order of magnitude. SofaBrain, 1 May 2026. Not verified against Zillow.
The effect on the ground is that a listing now often carries two tours rather than one. Photographers on the We Get Around Network forum through April and May 2026 describe clients asking for a Zillow tour and a Matterport tour because of the ban, which is two products, two fees and two links for the same house. We Get Around Network forum, Apr to May 2026.
Almost every MLS carries two virtual tour URL fields, named by the RESO data standard: VirtualTourURLBranded for the page that may carry your marks and the agent's, and VirtualTourURLUnbranded for the one syndicated onward, which may not. Around 92% of the 344 RESO-certified organisations expose the unbranded field. RESO certification data, as read 8 Sep 2026.
How many links you get per listing is set by your own MLS rather than by RESO. CRMLS, for example, allows two unbranded and one branded. Read your board's rules before you fill anything in; they differ and they change. CRMLS listing rules, as read 8 Sep 2026.
The general shape of the rules has not moved: unbranded links go out through IDX and to the portals, branded links stay where your name is allowed. Nothing we could find in 2026 changed that.
A hosted tour on a URL you control is portal-neutral by construction. It does not need a portal's permission to exist, it does not disappear when one changes its mind about a vendor, and you can hand the same link to an agent, a brokerage site and an email. What each field will and will not accept is its own page.
What we can promise. A scene gives you a hosted tour on a link, an unbranded version of that link with no badge and no sign-up line when a visitor opens it as its own page, an iframe snippet for a site you control, a flythrough video, and the scene files to download and keep.
What we cannot promise. Whether Zillow, Realtor.com or Homes.com render an arbitrary unbranded tour URL, link it, or ignore it, is a decision each portal makes and we have not tested it end to end. We are running that test on a real listing and will publish what every portal does with the same link, the failures included. Until that is written down, treat anyone's "works on Zillow" as untested, including ours if we ever slip and say it.
One thing we do know from our own configuration rather than from a vendor's marketing: our tour and embed pages allow themselves to be framed, so an iframe on a site that permits one will render. Whether a given listing platform permits one is that platform's call, not ours.
Walk the property slowly with a phone, or fly it. Wide, overlapping passes matter more than resolution, and the exterior is the part portals have taught buyers to expect.
Drop the clip on the convert page, which lists what it accepts and how long it takes. Processing runs on our GPUs, so you can close the tab and come back to an email.
The scene's name is visible on the unbranded page. A scene called after a brokerage is a branded page wearing an unbranded URL, so name it after the address or the property.
Take it from the share panel while the scene is still unlisted, which is the only way to get one with a key of its own that you can revoke later. That is the link for the unbranded field.
Publishing is what turns the ordinary scene link into a public one, so do it before that link goes in the branded field or the listing remarks. On an unlisted scene the same button hands you a private link instead, which is not what the MLS should be syndicating.
The flythrough comes with every scene, sized for the MLS media slot and for social feeds, which is where a tour reaches people who will never open a 3D viewer.
A standard scene costs one credit, and credits come in packs:
Your first scene is free once your email is verified, a scene that fails to build is never charged, and there is no monthly fee to keep a listing's tour online while the scene is on your account. The pricing page has the rest of it.
For comparison, the per-space model prices the hosting rather than the capture: Matterport's Professional plan is listed at $69 a month for 25 active spaces, with $20 a month for each space beyond that, and photographers discussing their own rates put a residential scan itself at $200 to $300. Matterport published plans and r/RealEstatePhotography pricing threads, as read 8 Sep 2026. Plans and limits vary and change.
We do not know, and we would rather say so than guess. Zillow's own 3D on a listing comes from its own capture network, and what it renders from a third-party virtual tour URL is a product decision we have not tested end to end. We are running that test on a real listing and will publish what each portal does with the same link, including the cases where it does nothing.
The unbranded link for the scene, which is the one with no badge, no sign-up line and no owner controls on it when a visitor opens it as its own page. The branded field and the listing remarks take the ordinary scene link.
No. A slow walk around the property with a phone works for most houses, and a drone helps on larger lots, roofs and anything you cannot walk around. Either one goes up the same way.
The tour works while the scene is on your account, with no monthly fee per listing. The unbranded link is open while the scene is published, and unpublishing takes it down. If you want one that outlives an unpublish, copy it from the share panel while the scene is unpublished, which gives it a key of its own that you can also revoke.
Yes. What you get is a URL, an iframe snippet, a flythrough video and the scene files, so it can sit beside whatever else you deliver rather than replacing it.
You do. Every scene downloads as a glTF with the KHR_gaussian_splatting extension, a PLY and a mesh, so the tour is not trapped in a subscription.