Where NYC Apartments Actually Get Listed: A 17-Platform Data Report
Published June 2026. Based on NYC rental listings observed April 1 – May 31, 2026.
Apartment hunting in New York feels like a full-time job, and part of the reason is that no single website shows you everything. We wanted to know how true that is, so over the spring leasing season we tracked every NYC rental listing we could find across 17 platforms — StreetEasy, Zillow, Craigslist, the big brokerages, and the direct-landlord portals — and matched them back to a single apartment by building address and unit.
We ended up with 52,603 unique apartments. Here's what the data says about where they actually show up, and which sites get them first.
The short version
- Two-thirds of apartments were listed on only one site. If you watch one site, you're missing most of the market.
- Zillow showed the earliest timestamp on 96% of the apartments that appeared in more than one place.
- Listing volume spikes on specific weekdays. CitySnap posted 52% of its listings on Thursdays.
- The same Manhattan apartment search returns very different price points depending on which site you're on.
1. Most apartments are listed on only one site
This is the finding that matters most. Of the 52,603 apartments we tracked, here's how many sites each one showed up on:
| Listed on… | Apartments | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 site only | 34,458 | 65.5% |
| 2 sites | 13,115 | 24.9% |
| 3 sites | 4,153 | 7.9% |
| 4 or more sites | 877 | 1.7% |
Two-thirds of apartments appeared on exactly one site. Only about one in three was listed in more than one place.
That has a direct consequence: if you only watch StreetEasy, or only Zillow, you are looking at a minority of what's on the market. Every site holds a pocket of listings that never reaches the others. The only way to see most of the market is to watch several sites at once — which is the whole reason this report exists.
2. Which sites list apartments first
For the roughly one in three apartments that did appear on multiple sites, we can see which one carried the earliest timestamp. That tells you where new listings tend to break first.
| Site | Times it appeared on multiple sites | % it was first | Typical delay when it wasn't first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zillow | 11,918 | 96.3% | ~0h |
| KWNYC | 752 | 65.0% | ~0h |
| Corcoran | 1,124 | 61.0% | ~0h |
| Compass | 1,160 | 59.9% | ~0h |
| UDR | 322 | 41.3% | 17h |
| RentHop | 2,791 | 24.8% | ~5 days |
| OpenIgloo | 2,267 | 21.1% | ~2 days |
| StreetEasy | 17,079 | 19.7% | ~1 day |
| Avalon | 68 | 7.4% | ~14 days |
| CitySnap | 4,453 | 6.1% | ~7 days |
| Equity | 433 | 1.4% | ~12 days |
Zillow was first almost every time — 96% — which makes it the single best site for catching a listing early. The brokerages (KWNYC, Corcoran, Compass) were usually first when the listing was their own.
The flip side is just as useful. When StreetEasy, RentHop, CitySnap, or OpenIgloo weren't first, they often trailed by days, not hours. StreetEasy in particular ran about a day behind on listings that started elsewhere — worth knowing if you treat it as your primary source.
None of this means the slower sites are useless. They still carry inventory you won't find anywhere else (see Section 1). It just means speed and coverage are two different jobs, and no one site does both.
3. When new listings go live
Listings don't trickle out evenly. Volume spikes on specific weekdays, and the pattern is different on every site.
| Site | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| StreetEasy | 5.1% | 18.7% | 19.6% | 17.2% | 17.1% | 17.0% | 5.4% |
| Zillow | 16.7% | 20.1% | 18.0% | 16.6% | 16.5% | 6.1% | 5.9% |
| RentHop | 6.1% | 7.4% | 10.6% | 37.0% | 23.3% | 7.8% | 7.8% |
| CitySnap | 5.7% | 14.0% | 6.4% | 8.8% | 52.3% | 8.7% | 4.0% |
| OpenIgloo | 11.2% | 5.8% | 6.0% | 14.5% | 21.8% | 27.1% | 13.7% |
| Craigslist | 10.1% | 19.1% | 16.5% | 13.4% | 14.6% | 15.7% | 10.6% |
CitySnap put up more than half its listings on a single day, Thursday. RentHop concentrated about 60% of its listings on Wednesday and Thursday. StreetEasy and Craigslist were the steadiest, spreading listings fairly evenly Monday through Friday. Across almost every site, the weekend was dead.
The time of day splits cleanly too. Direct landlords publish in the morning; brokers publish at night.
| Site | Avg. posting time |
|---|---|
| Equity (direct landlord) | 7:12 AM |
| Avalon (direct landlord) | 8:24 AM |
| StuyTown (direct landlord) | 9:42 AM |
| StreetEasy | 1:12 PM |
| Zillow | 4:06 PM |
| Corcoran (broker) | 7:06 PM |
| KWNYC (broker) | 8:00 PM |
If you're chasing big rental buildings, check in the morning. If you're chasing broker listings, check in the evening. We can't see each site's internal workflow, so treat these as patterns rather than rules — but they held up consistently across the two months.
4. The same search, very different prices
Sites aren't neutral pipes. Each one skews toward a different slice of the market, and it shows up in the median rent — even inside a single borough. Here's Manhattan, held constant:
| Site | Manhattan listings | Median rent |
|---|---|---|
| Craigslist | 428 | $4,100 |
| UDR | 408 | $4,736 |
| StreetEasy | 16,991 | $4,795 |
| Corcoran | 667 | $4,800 |
| Zillow | 6,892 | $5,150 |
| RentHop | 9,406 | $5,200 |
| CitySnap | 4,392 | $5,250 |
| Compass | 479 | $5,500 |
| OpenIgloo | 3,588 | $5,601 |
| StuyTown | 185 | $5,821 |
That's a $1,721 gap — about 42% — between the cheapest and most expensive Manhattan median, in the same borough over the same two months. Craigslist sits at the bottom because it carries more small-landlord and lower-priced units (37% of its NYC listings were under $2,500, versus single digits on most of the big aggregators). The direct-landlord portals sit at the top because they only list their own buildings, which are all premium high-rises.
Across boroughs, the medians land where you'd expect:
| Borough | Listings | Median rent |
|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | 44,759 | $5,023 |
| Brooklyn | 27,133 | $3,926 |
| Queens | 9,356 | $3,300 |
| Bronx | 1,908 | $2,950 |
| Staten Island | 143 | $2,914 |
The takeaway for a budget search: if you're under $3,500, Craigslist will consistently surface cheaper listings than the polished aggregators — you just have to do more vetting to use it safely.
5. Borough coverage, briefly
The boroughs split by site too, though less dramatically. The short version: Craigslist is your outer-borough source, and a couple of aggregators are almost entirely Manhattan.
| Site | Manhattan | Brooklyn | Queens + Bronx |
|---|---|---|---|
| StreetEasy | 44.7% | 38.6% | 16.5% |
| Zillow | 53.9% | 32.1% | 13.9% |
| RentHop | 74.9% | 19.1% | 5.7% |
| OpenIgloo | 71.3% | 19.3% | 9.2% |
| Craigslist | 15.7% | 51.6% | 30.5% |
| Compass | 34.4% | 42.6% | 22.4% |
If you're searching Queens, the Bronx, or anywhere off the Manhattan core, Craigslist and StreetEasy cover far more ground than RentHop or OpenIgloo, which are effectively Manhattan tools.
6. A note on fees
"No-fee" is one of the most-used filters in NYC and one of the least reliable, especially now. The FARE Act has largely ended tenant-paid broker fees, but the data hasn't caught up: plenty of listings that aren't tagged "no-fee" effectively are.
Where the tag is populated, Compass (75.9%) and OpenIgloo (65.7%) flagged the most no-fee listings; StreetEasy flagged only 16.3%, with a big "unknown" bucket. RentHop, CitySnap, and the direct portals barely use the field at all. Bottom line: treat the no-fee filter as a hint, and confirm the fee before you tour.
7. What to actually do
- Watch more than one site. Two-thirds of listings live in only one place, so a single-site search misses most of the market. Pick three or four sources, not one.
- Use Zillow for speed. It had the earliest timestamp 96% of the time. It's the best early-warning system, even though it doesn't carry everything.
- Match the site to your budget. Under $3,500, Craigslist runs cheapest. In the $3,500–$6,000 range, StreetEasy and Zillow have the most volume. Above that, the brokerages and OpenIgloo over-index.
- Match the site to your borough. Manhattan: Zillow, StreetEasy, RentHop. Brooklyn: StreetEasy, Compass, Craigslist. Queens and the Bronx: Craigslist and StreetEasy.
- Time it. Most listings post Monday–Thursday. Big rental buildings publish in the morning; brokers publish in the evening. The weekend is slow everywhere.
8. How we put this together
We analyzed NYC rental listings across the 17 sources listed below, published between April 1 and May 31, 2026. For each listing we used the listed_at timestamp the site itself shows to estimate when it went public, then matched listings across sites to a single apartment by building address and unit.
A few honest limits:
- The 17 sites aren't every source. There are smaller broker sites and landlord portals we didn't include.
- Cross-site matching relies on normalizing addresses and units. On sites with messy formatting, mostly Craigslist, a few listings may be double-counted or merged.
- These are counts of what got posted, not what's available right now. A unit listed April 3 and rented April 20 is still in the data.
- This is one season — spring, NYC's busiest. Timing patterns in particular can shift in slower months.
- Timestamps are self-reported by each site, so they're solid for comparing sites against each other but not a perfect record of the exact minute a unit hit the market.
FAQ
Which site should I use? There isn't one. Two-thirds of listings show up on only a single site, so the efficient move is to watch three or four sources matched to your borough and budget.
Why does Craigslist look so much cheaper? It carries more small-landlord and lower-priced units than the big aggregators. That makes it genuinely useful for budget searches, but it also takes more work to screen for scams.
Is the StreetEasy "Just Listed" filter worth using? For what it shows, yes. Just remember "new to StreetEasy" and "new to the market" aren't the same thing — when StreetEasy wasn't first on a listing, it trailed by about a day on average.
How do you measure which site is "first"? We compare each site's own listed timestamp. Those are self-reported, so they're reliable for ranking sites against each other, not for pinning the exact moment a unit came online.
Why did CitySnap post 52% of its listings on Thursdays? We can't see its internal workflow, but the pattern over these two months was overwhelmingly Thursday-heavy, which points to a weekly batch upload.
When's the next report? We refresh this each quarter. The next one covers the late-summer turnover (July–August 2026), historically NYC's tightest market.
Stop checking eight sites every morning
If most apartments only show up on one site, the only complete search is one that watches several at once. That's the whole point of RentReboot: set your criteria once — price, neighborhood, bedrooms, no-fee — and get an alert the moment a matching listing appears on any of the sources we track. Free tier, no credit card.
If you'd rather build your own stack by hand, Section 7 gets you most of the way there.
Sources & methodology
- Window: April 1 – May 31, 2026.
- Geography: all five boroughs of New York City.
- Sources (17): StreetEasy, Zillow, Corcoran, Compass, KWNYC, RentHop, CitySnap, OpenIgloo, Craigslist, Apartments.com, Redfin, StuyTown, Equity, UDR, Avalon, Glenwood, Brick & Timber.
- Timestamps based on each site's self-reported
listed_atvalue. - Cross-site matching by canonical property (address + unit).
- REBNY RLS Listing Service — context on broker-side syndication.
- StreetEasy Rental Market Reports — context on borough-level rents.