Editorial: Zillow’s Ban is Bad Business
NOVEMBER 2025
Local photographers and videographers are more important than ever to realtors.
That’s my takeaway from the battle going on between Zillow and CoStar over Zillow’s sudden ban of Matterport 3D virtual tours from its listings.
It leaves independent commercial photographers as the only media producers who can deliver the best quality for your clients and guarantee your freedom to use your real estate media as you see fit.
Matterport cameras and 3D rendering services provide the most immersive, interactive user experience in the industry for exploring virtual spaces. Why would Zillow ban them on its platform, after years of co-existence?
The Dispute
Zillow banned Matterport tours effective October 20, 2025, removing all Matterport 3D tours from its listings. This decision was a result of a dispute with CoStar Group, which acquired Matterport last year. Zillow claimed that CoStar has implemented new terms restricting how the tours could be used on third-party sites. Put a pin in that last sentence; we’ll come back to later.
Here’s Zillow’s announcement in full, still available on their PR page:
“We know how important 3D virtual tours are to real estate professionals, builders and property managers when it comes to marketing homes and helping home shoppers get a more complete visual representation of a listing.
“At this time, Zillow does not show Matterport tours. We understand some partners are receiving conflicting messages from CoStar and the Matterport team. However, their ambiguous application of their terms to their products create legal risk for many parties, including Zillow brands. We have repeatedly requested CoStar provide clear, consistent and legally-binding terms directly to us so we can ensure Matterport tours are being shown in a compliant way across platforms.
“Our asks are simple and fair. We need to see specific changes made and no action has been taken at this point. If that happens, all partners will hear directly from us about Matterport tour reinstatement.
“CoStar and Matterport can operate their business however they choose, however, the current terms present risk for Zillow and we will not host Matterport media without clearly defined, public-facing terms that authorize us to do so. We’ve asked for specific changes and they have not been made. Until then, we will work with partners on alternative solutions.
“We continue to accept tours from many third-party vendors and also offer solutions through our own Zillow Media Experts solution, Zillow Home 3D. Additionally, Zillow 3D Home terms make it clear you can use the tours and floor plans outside of Zillow sites wherever you choose to market the home because that’s what’s best for you and the home shoppers viewing your listings.
“Our goal in this situation is clarity for everyone and compliance for us.”
Note that Zillow offers no specific explanation of what it wants “clarified” or how their API agreement with CoStar puts them at risk. Their statement about “risk for many parties” may offer a clue. From what we can see, the concern is over how Zillow uses Matterport-produced content in its own products and in products like ChatGPT with whom they have distribution agreements.
What the Battle’s Really About
The battle started in earnest a year ago when CoStar, owner of homes.com and other online real estate marketing platforms, purchased Matterport, the premier technology platform for creating 3D virtual tours. Until then, Matterport and Zillow business models complemented each other; Matterport was a photographic tech company and Zillow was a listings portal. But when Matterport was acquired by CoStar, which owns homes.com, it became a Zillow competitor.
One of the most confusing aspects of the dispute is the apparently conflicting claim over the use of Matterport’s API, a software interface that allows Zillow and other concerns access to Matterport tour data. Zillow claims that since CoStar acquired Matterport, it has not renewed its agreement allowing CoStar to use the API. CoStar responded that the non-renewal of the API is a "red herring" as Zillow has not used this specific feed for years – and it does not affect a customer's ability to share content via other means, such as a URL or HTML embed code. The Matterport API is used by enterprises to access and update tour data from other applications, and by Matterport software partners add features to tours, such as placing directories and menus around them. That Zillow would not use the API makes sense, because Zillow has developed its own 3D tour app, 3D Home.
Since allowing realtors to put Matterport URLs on Zillow’s site has nothing to do with using the Matterport API, Zillow seems to be conflating the API dispute to ban Matterport tours and compel realtors to use its 3D Home app, Content produced in that app cannot be used outside of the Zillow ecosystem, ensuring its control not just of content, but where it can be viewed.
An AI Connection?
With the AI revolution going on all around us, you’ve probably heard that ‘data is the new oil.”
That’s because AI algorithms are only useful if they have large volumes of data and content to pick through - the larger, the better. By large, I mean terabyte-to-petabyte-large. It appears that Zillow v CoStar is a battle between large AI tech companies over rights to data - including media - and how it’s distributed and consumed through other platforms, including AI-powered ChatGPT. We in the real estate marketing industry are now caught in the middle of that battle.
A few months after CoStar’s acquisition of Matterport, OpenAI signed a deal with Zillow that allows ChatGPT to ingest data and content from Zillow. As Zillow puts it, “When you start a ChatGPT prompt with “Zillow” — for example, “Zillow, show me homes for sale in Kansas City” — ChatGPT will automatically surface the Zillow App in your chat and use relevant context to deliver real listings. The app will also show photos, maps and pricing, and guide you seamlessly back into Zillow to schedule a tour, connect with an agent or explore financing. It’s a new way to navigate your housing journey with Zillow and AI.” See Zillow’s full ChatGPT announcement here.
Now it seems both CoStar and Zillow have the same mission: to build the largest database of real property data and become the dominant medium for accessing it.
CoStar has already sued Zillow over its use of Matterport-watermarked content and updated its terms of service to prohibit the use of CoStar-owned assets in third party platforms. Perhaps this was a response to Zillow’s ChatGPT deal, as it was carefully worded to distinguish between tours produced by independent photographers and CoStar-employed photographers, and as such, it should present no reason for Zillow to exclude content from the latter.
We speculate that this is the main reason Zillow responded by dumping all Matterport tours from its platform - not just those produced by CoStar. No matter the legalities, disrupting third-party business relationships – like those between media producers and their realtor clients and their buyer clients – in order to compete with a rival tech company is an anti-competitive and disgraceful business practice. Hopefully, it will be fairly adjudicated, but until then we need to be clear about our options as media producers and marketers.
The Bottom Line
There is one way in which nothing has changed: A photographer owns the copyright to everything he produces, regardless of the tool used to capture it - unless he surrenders or extends those rights. Since CoStar offers its own photography services, and Zillow asserts ownership of tours produced with the 3D Home app, here's what we're telling our clients:
If you order a Matterport tour directly from CoStar, CoStar is the photographer and owns the rights to the content. You cannot place it anywhere but on CoStar properties like homes.com and their affiliates.
If you order a Zillow Showcase tour through Zillow, Zillow owns the rights even if it was captured by us. The tour can only be displayed by Zillow’s permission.
If you order a Matterport or LandVision360 tour from Latitude & Light Photography or other independent photographers, we/they grant you rights to place the tour and photos wherever you choose: your own web site, MLS, homes.com, realtor.com, etc.
We will bundle Zillow tours into our Whole Home services for realtors who need them for a nominal fee. See our Real Estate Services page for details.
None of us needs the confusion of a platform war, like the old wars over operating systems and web browsers. It didn't advance the state of the art then and does not do so now. It distracts us from the core mission of using technology – to produce the best marketing for our clients – but together we can find our way through.
“None of us needs the confusion of a technology platform war, like the old wars over operating systems and web browsers. It didn't advance the state of the art then and does not do so now. It distracts us from the core mission of using technology – to produce the best marketing for our clients – but together we can find our way through.”