How to get MLS listings on my website
The BrokerFold Team — Product + Engineering
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Getting MLS listings onto your website is a licensing exercise before it is a technical one. There are exactly three compliant routes in Canada — an IDX feed from your board for active listings, a VOW agreement for sold and off-market data behind a registration gate, and CREA’s national DDF service — and every one of them runs through your membership and your broker’s signature. Nothing else is a route: if a vendor can put listings on your site without board paperwork, what they have is scraped data, and it puts your access at risk. Here is how each path works and how to actually get connected.
Route one: IDX, the default
IDX is your board licensing its active listings for public display on members’ websites — the standard reciprocal deal where everyone’s listings appear on everyone’s compliant sites. It covers what most agents mean by “MLS search on my site”: the live inventory, photos, and details, shown to anonymous visitors, with the board’s display and attribution rules applied. If you want one feed, this is it. The deeper comparison of what each licence covers lives in IDX vs VOW.
Route two: VOW, for sold data
A VOW agreement licenses the expanded data set — solds, and off-market history — for display only to registered visitors who accept terms of use. It is the route behind every sold-price site in Canada, and it carries real compliance mechanics: the registration gate, password expiry on the board’s schedule, audit logging, and board-specific rules about how sold records render. Most serious agent sites run IDX and VOW together on one domain: open actives, gated solds.
Route three: CREA DDF, the national syndication feed
DDF is CREA’s national data distribution service rather than a board feed. Its strength is geography — one connection can carry listings from many participating boards, which matters in markets no direct feed serves. Its limits are structural: it carries only listings whose brokerages opted into syndication, so it is a subset of any board’s full inventory, and it is active listings only — no sold data, ever. Treat DDF as the broad-but-shallow option: right where it is the only option, second-best where a direct board feed exists.
The paperwork chain, step by step
Whatever the route, the sequence is the same four hands. You pick a platform or vendor that holds (or applies for) data access with your board. You sign the board’s data agreement for your site — typically an online workflow naming the exact website URL the feed will serve. Your broker of record approves it, because the board’s licence runs to the brokerage. The board processes and activates. The technology on either side of that chain is fast; the approvals are the critical path, and the single best accelerator is telling your broker the request is coming. Costs vary by board and route — platform subscription plus, at some boards, data fees; the honest numbers are broken out in what an MLS data feed costs.
Board specifics worth knowing
Each board runs its own version of this machinery. Toronto-area agents go through TRREB’s online agreements — the step-by-step is in how to get TRREB listings on your website. In Greater Vancouver, one shared MLS system serves the tri-board region (Greater Vancouver REALTORS, the Fraser Valley board, and Chilliwack’s), so a single data agreement covers the combined inventory — with BC-specific display rules, including a 30-day VOW password cycle, that your platform must implement. Wherever you are, the pattern holds: member in good standing, vendor with board access, broker signature, board activation.
What to actually do this week
Confirm which board (or boards) your market needs and whether you want solds — that decides IDX alone or IDX plus VOW. Pick a platform that already holds access with your board and handles the display rules natively; MLS listings on Canadian websites covers what to look for. Then start the paperwork and warn your broker. On BrokerFold, the MLS-setup screen walks the agreement steps board by board — including the website URL the forms ask for — because the feed is never the hard part; the chain of signatures is.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get MLS listings without being a REALTOR?
Not as a display on your own site. Every route — IDX, VOW, DDF — licenses data to board members and their brokerages. If you are unlicensed or between brokerages, there is no compliant feed available to you, and anything a vendor offers outside the licensed routes is scraped data that can end your future access.
Whose signature do I actually need?
Your broker of record (managing broker in BC). Boards license MLS data to brokerages, not to individual salespeople, so every data agreement your site runs on needs that approval. It is usually routine — the practical tip is to warn your broker before the request email arrives, which often turns a week of waiting into a day.
How long until listings appear on my site?
On the platform route, the technology takes minutes and the approvals take days: your signature, your broker's approval, and the board's processing are the critical path. A realistic expectation is days to a couple of weeks end to end, mostly depending on how quickly the humans in the chain click approve.
Do I need a separate agreement for every board I want?
Yes. Each board licenses its own data, so an agent who wants two markets on one site signs two data agreements, each approved by the broker and each carrying that board's display rules. Multi-board display is a platform architecture problem as much as a paperwork one — the site must apply each board's rules to its own listings.
Keep reading
- How to get TRREB listings on my website Two routes: a platform that holds TRREB/PropTx data agreements, or building direct against the RESO Web API. The steps, the approvals, and the slow part.
- MLS listings on your website, Canada The three routes to MLS listings on a Canadian website: portal widgets, IDX plugins, and platforms with direct board feeds. A decision table with trade-offs.
- IDX vs VOW IDX shows active listings to everyone; VOW adds sold and off-market data behind free registration. Most Ontario agents should run both. Where DDF fits.
- CREA DDF CREA's Data Distribution Facility is the national feed that syndicates REALTOR.ca listings to member and third-party sites. What it carries and what it doesn't.
- How much does an MLS data feed cost? Two cost layers: board fees (TRREB charges none for IDX or VOW; some Ontario boards charge ~$1,500/yr for VOW) and vendor/platform fees — usually the real cost.