TL;DR:
Open Homes offers two distinct 3D virtual tour technologies:
Matterport provides a depth-accurate “digital twin” of a home which is supported by our fully automated production pipeline. Once your Visual Artist completes the scan, the tour is processed and automatically delivered to your dashboard and integrated into your Open Homes property website.
Matterport holds a modest edge in scan accuracy and immersion and a smoother end-to-end pipeline.
Zillow 3D Home uses 360 image panoramas and is currently the only 3D tour that embeds natively on Zillow since they discontinued Matterport support in late 2025. However, it is a newer platform with a less mature infrastructure. This often results in inconsistent processing times and the absence of automated alerts once a scan is ready for viewing.
Zillow 3D Home’s advantage is the native Zillow embed.
Key Takeaways
- Matterport is our default 3D tour service. Professional-grade, depth-accurate scans with a Dollhouse View, optional 2D, 3D, and Color floor plans, and native embedding across virtually every major platform except Zillow itself. Our production pipeline is fully automated end-to-end, so your completed 3D tour gets deployed to your dashboard and property website without you having to lift a finger.
- We also offer Zillow 3D Home as a standalone service. One of our trained Visual Artists captures the scan onsite, and Zillow processes and hosts the tour, including a basic 2D floor plan. It’s the only 3D tour that embeds natively on Zillow since October 2025, when Zillow stopped supporting Matterport.
- The biggest practical difference isn’t the camera — it’s the production pipeline, technology, user interface, and website or platform support. Matterport’s technology and platform have been evolving for over 15 years . Zillow’s is newer and less polished: turnaround times vary, and no notification fires when your scan is ready, so using this product on a listing with a tight deadline can carry some risk. Plus, we’re not currently seeing full support across market places and website platforms.
- For most of your listings, Matterport is the smoother experience and the more flexible asset. However, if you prioritize visibility on Zillow and are utilizing their paid models such as Zillow Showcase, Zillow 3D Home could be the right call for your listing.
- Matterport was acquired in February 2025 by CoStar (Homes.com), one of Zillow’s largest competitors. Afterwards, in October 2025, Zillow announced the end of life support for Matterport on Zillow.com in favor of their new Zillow 3D Home Tour platform.
Two different tools, two different functions
Before we get too far into the weeds, here’s the simplest way to think about what you’re choosing between:
- Matterport is a 3D virtual walkthrough that lets your buyers move through the home online and get a feel for the layout and flow — a virtual, “always open” open house.
- Zillow 3D Home is also a 3D walkthrough, but it’s more about visibility and presentation inside Zillow itself: it helps your listing stand out and creates a more engaging presentation for buyers browsing on Zillow.
Put another way: Zillow gets you increased visibility and presentation within Zillow; Matterport gives you an immersive 3D tour of the home that currently travels with you everywhere else. Both have typical HTML “embed” code for distribution on personal websites or Open Homes Property Websites.
What is Matterport?
Matterport is a professional 3D platform that produces a “digital twin” of your property — a depth-accurate*, navigable model that lets your buyers move through the home as if they’re walking through it. The capture is done with a Ricoh Theta 360 camera (nearly all of Open Homes’ Visual Artists use these) or a Matterport Pro2 camera. The Visual Artist sets the device up, steps out of line of sight, and captures the 360-degree scan. They repeat this throughout the home in order to make a fully immersive tour.
See examples of our Matterport scans.
What does a 3D Matterport Tour include?
- Dollhouse View — In addition to the normal walkthrough experience, Matterport provides a unique, 3D overview of the entire home that buyers can rotate and explore
- Cross-platform embedding — Matterport tours can be added to your MLS listing or embedded on your property website, CRM, email campaigns, and most other portals (with the exception of Zillow)
- Measurement tool — useful for approximate distances between two or more points within the digital model
- Outdoor 360 Photo integration (add-on request) — allows the addition of 360 photos to be added to scans.
- VR Camera support — Matterport spaces can be viewed on most modern VR hardware
Matterport’s measurement tool allows users to calculate approximate distances between two or more points
What are the optional add-ons to a 3D Matterport tour?
- 2D Floor Plan, Black & White ($150)
- 2D Color Floor Plan ($200)
- 3D Floor Plan ($250)
- Up to 10 Outdoor Scans ($100)
- Detached Scans for separate structures such as ADUs ($50)
Note: floor plans derived from Matterport don’t include square footage calculations or room dimensions.
*Depth accuracy requires iOS or Matterport Pro3+ Cameras with LiDAR technology.
What is Zillow 3D Home?
Zillow 3D Home is a virtual tour platform designed by the Zillow Group. It’s available as a free DIY app, where you capture panoramas yourself using a supported iPhone, Android device, or 360 camera (currently Insta360 X2, X3, X4, X5, One RS 1-inch 360, and Ricoh Theta Z1, X, SC2, V).
The scan is processed on Zillow’s platform, and the finished tour appears automatically on Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin listings for your property. You can also share it to MLS, social media, and your property website via a link.
Zillow’s own marketing claims that listings with a 3D Home tour see roughly 2x the views of listings without one, and sell about 10% faster on average. Because those stats are from Zillow, you should take them with the appropriate grain of salt — but the broader point still stands: a tour, even a basic one, generally improves engagement on your listing page.
What Zillow 3D Home doesn’t do: depth-accurate spatial scanning, ANSI-standard floor plans, a Dollhouse View, professional- grade resolution, or seamless embedding on platforms outside Zillow Group. And as covered below, the production pipeline behind it is certainly less mature than Matterport’s.
You can see one of our property websites featuring a Zillow 3D Home tour here.
Zillow 3D Home includes an interactive tour; Green squares indicate scan points and blue circles indicate photos
What does Zillow 3D Home include?
- A walkthrough tour of the listing with limited controls (unlike Matterport, you can’t zoom in or out)
- An interactive floor plan which pins photos of the home in their correct spaces so the viewer can “walk through” the house via photos
- Basic Black & White 2D Floor Plan schematic
- Native embed function on Zillow
3D Matterport vs Zillow 3D Home: the key differences
Production and pipeline when you order through Open Homes
At Open Homes, Matterport runs on a battle-tested pipeline. We’ve been creating 3D Matterport Tours for a decade, and our process has sharpened over the years alongside Matterport’s own platform. According to one Matterport blog post, Matterport has digitized over 30 billion square feet across more than 10 million spaces — a scale that reflects how standard the technology has become in real estate. Pairing that maturity with our production framework gives you a genuinely seamless experience.
The process is simple: your Visual Artist scans the property on-site and submits the scan. From that point on, no one at Open Homes needs to do anything manual with the tour. Matterport processes the scan, the finished tour drops into your Open Homes dashboard, your “ready” email links it, and, if you ordered an Open Homes Property Website, your Matterport tour deploys to your property website automatically.
Zillow 3D Home is a different story — not necessarily because of our process, but because of Zillow’s. The on-site capture itself works fine: a trained Visual Artist scans the home the same way they’d scan a Matterport. The downstream is where it currently gets rough. Specifically:
- Turnaround varies. Zillow’s processing generally takes 4-6 hours. Even so, your scan could arrive that evening or the next day, with no way to know in advance.
- No notifications. Zillow doesn’t send an email or any other alert when a scan finishes processing. Someone has to manually check the platform to see when your tour is live.
- Zillow limits off-Zillow embedding. Zillow doesn’t provide sophisticated embed code for websites beyond Zillow.com. We’ve built our own integration so the tour works on your Open Homes property website, but it’s a workaround on top of a platform Zillow never built for off-Zillow use.
None of this means Zillow 3D Home isn’t worth ordering. It’s the only option for a native Zillow embed, and for listings where that matters, the trade-offs may be worth it. It’s simply a newer pipeline than Matterport’s, and we hope it will keep maturing. If you know the Matterport experience through Open Homes, just plan for a less automated workflow on Zillow’s side.
Capture and equipment
A professional captures Matterport tours using a Ricoh Theta, Matterport Pro camera, or LiDAR-enabled device, which produces a true depth-mapped scan. The vast majority of our Visual Artists use Ricoh Theras. To preserve quality and avoid misalignment, Matterport uses a dense set of capture points — generally one every 4-6 feet. Zillow 3D Home tours rely on a smartphone or a supported consumer 360 camera, with the app stitching panoramas together. You can do that yourself, or order it as a standalone service and have an Open Homes Visual Artist run it.
Tour quality and immersion
Matterport’s Dollhouse View and smooth navigation produce an immersive walkthrough: buyers can pivot in place, zoom in on details, and orient themselves in a way that closely mirrors an in-person visit. Zillow 3D Home is a simpler experience — useful for getting a sense of room flow, with a slightly less refined feel than Matterport. The capture method also makes a modest difference: a Matterport scan generally uses more capture points, which contributes to its accuracy and polish.
Floor plans and measurements
We offer three types of floor plans (2D, 3D, and Color) generated from your 3D Matterport Tour. Zillow 3D Home generates a basic 2D black-and-white floor plan plus an interactive floor plan that’s helpful for navigation and understanding flow.
Important: neither service includes square footage measurements. If accurate measurements are a priority, we recommend our Professional Floor Plan service, where one of our trained draftspersons produces a floor plan complete with square footage totals and room dimensions.
Not sure which type of floor plan is right for you? See our guide: “Which floor plan is right for your listing? A guide for Bay Area real estate agents.”
Where the tour actually lives
This is where the comparison shifted significantly in late 2025. Historically, Matterport tours embedded natively on Zillow, giving you the best of both worlds — professional quality plus full Zillow visibility. That changed when Zillow removed native Matterport embeds from its sites following a dispute with CoStar (which acquired Matterport in early 2025). The practical impact for you:
- Zillow listings: Zillow 3D Home embeds natively. A Matterport tour appears as an unbranded external link — buyers click out to a separate tab to view it.
- Everywhere else (MLS, your property website, Realtor.com, Redfin, social, email, CRM): Matterport embeds natively. Zillow 3D Home is generally limited to Zillow Group sites and basic link sharing.
If most of your buyer traffic comes through Zillow, the loss of the native Matterport embed is a real consideration. If your marketing leans on your property website, email, MLS, and other portals — most of which still embed Matterport natively — the change matters less.
Which one is right for your listing?
| If you want a… | Recommended Product | |
| A 3D tour that embeds the same way everywhere: your property website, MLS, Realtor.com, email, social, and your CRM | Matterport | |
| A predictable production pipeline — scanned today, tour delivered tomorrow | Matterport | |
| The ability to zoom in (detailed view) and out (Dollhouse view) in the tour and take rough measurements | Matterport | |
| A native Zillow embed option | Zillow 3D Home | |
| A complimentary interactive floor plan that ties photos in to an interactive map | Zillow 3D Home |
Frequently asked questions
Should I order a Zillow 3D Home tour if I already have a Matterport?
In most cases, no. The two produce roughly the same deliverable — a navigable 3D walkthrough — so ordering both means paying for two versions of the same asset. The one real reason to do both is if you specifically need the native Zillow embed and also need a Matterport for embedding everywhere else. For most listings, picking one is the better call.
Why did Zillow remove Matterport tours from its listings?
In October 2025, Zillow stopped natively embedding Matterport tours after CoStar — which acquired Matterport in February 2025 — declined to renew its API agreement with Zillow and updated Matterport’s terms of service. Both companies have publicly disputed each other’s framing. The practical result is the same regardless of who’s right: for now, Matterport tours on Zillow appear as an unbranded external link rather than a native embed.
Does Open Homes offer Zillow 3D Home tours?
Yes — Zillow 3D Home is available from us as a standalone service. A trained Visual Artist captures the scan and Zillow processes and hosts the tour on its platform, which is why it gets the native Zillow embed.
How much does a 3D Matterport Tour and a Zillow 3D Home Tour cost?
We charge the same price for Matterport tours and Zillow 3D Home, and these scale based on the property’s square footage. You can view those prices here.
Is a 3D tour worth it for a typical residential listing?
A 3D tour adds clear value when your buyers are likely to be doing remote diligence — out-of-area buyers, time-pressed buyers, or any listing where in-person showings are limited. It also makes a noticeable difference in click-through and engagement on your listing page. Whether you go with a Matterport or a Zillow 3D Home is a question of desired workflow and visibility — not property type.
How long does a Matterport scan take?
For a typical Bay Area home, the on-site scan is usually completed alongside the rest of your photography shoot and can be scanned relatively quickly, unless the layout is complicated and requires more scans than usual. Delivery is predictable — the finished tour is automatically sent to your dashboard, included in your “ready” email, and deployed to your property website the day after the shoot.
What’s the turnaround on a Zillow 3D Home tour?
It varies. Scans are typically ready within a few hours and floor plans usually within half a day, but Zillow doesn’t publish processing times and doesn’t notify you when a scan is ready — someone checks Zillow manually to confirm the tour is live. The on-site scan happens alongside the rest of your shoot; it’s the downstream processing, on Zillow’s pipeline rather than ours, that’s less predictable.
Ready to add a Matterport Tour or Zillow 3D Home Tour to your next listing?
Get a quote instantly at www.app.open.homes/request, or contact our team.
Sources
CoStar Group, CoStar Group Completes Acquisition of Matterport, Ushering in a New Era of 3D Digital Twins and AI-Powered Real Estate Innovation (February 28, 2025)
HousingWire, Zillow removes Matterport tours amid CoStar API dispute (October 20, 2025)
HousingWire, Zillow and CoStar continue to spar over Matterport 3D tours (May 2026)
Inman, Zillow removes Matterport 3D home tours from its sites (October 20, 2025)
Matterport, 10 Million Reasons to Celebrate (February 2026)
PR Newswire, Nearly 40% of Millennials are Comfortable Buying a Home Online (March 2021)
