MLS
The BrokerFold Team — Product + Engineering
Last reviewed
MLS stands for Multiple Listing Service: the cooperative system a real estate board operates so competing brokerages can pool their listings and work each other’s inventory. In Canada, MLS® is a certification mark owned by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), and there is no single national database behind it — each board runs its own system under the shared mark. When people say “it’s on MLS,” they mean a board’s system has the listing.
How the MLS works in Canada
A listing brokerage enters the property into its board’s system; from that moment every member of that board can see it, show it, and bring a buyer. The database holds far more than the public ever sees — sold history, brokerage remarks, showing details — and the board decides which slices may leave the building, under which licence. Public-facing portals sit downstream. Boards vary in size from a few hundred members to tens of thousands, and their footprints matter: the Toronto board’s system reaches across much of Ontario, while three Lower Mainland boards share one system between them.
The MLS and your website
Consumers cannot subscribe to an MLS, and neither can a website. What a member’s site gets are licensed display feeds carved out of the system: an IDX or Reciprocity feed for public active listings, and a VOW feed for the registered sold layer. Each is an agreement with your board, arranged through your brokerage and a registered vendor — the practical path is described in MLS listings on your website. Agents working across board boundaries need an agreement per board; membership in one does not unlock another’s data.
Common confusions
The MLS is not a website — it is the system of record that websites draw from, and the same listing may look different on different sites depending on how each one syncs. The MLS® mark itself is protected: how and where it renders on a member site is governed by CREA and board rules, which is a platform’s problem to solve, not yours. And an “MLS number” is simply the identifier a board assigns to a listing — useful for lookups, meaningless across board lines. For how listings travel beyond board systems entirely, see the CREA DDF entry.
Frequently asked questions
Is REALTOR.ca the MLS?
No. REALTOR.ca is CREA's national advertising portal, fed by listings members choose to share there. The MLS systems themselves are the board databases behind it, which carry more listings, more fields, and faster updates than any public portal shows.
Is there one MLS for all of Canada?
No. Each board or association operates its own system, though some regions share one — the Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley, and Chilliwack boards run a single combined MLS, for example. An agent's data access follows their board membership, not a national subscription.
Keep reading
- IDX IDX is the framework that lets a realtor display their board's active MLS listings on their own website. How it works in Canada, board by board.
- 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.
- 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.
- Can I display listings from multiple boards? Yes — with a separate data agreement per board and a platform that can merge feeds. The hard parts are per-board display rules and cross-listed duplicates.