How Does On The Market Stack Up When Compared To Rightmove And Zoopla in 2024?

Which property buying website is the best?

Find out how property website On The Market compares to big names like Rightmove and Zoopla.

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Most people who have ever looked at buying or selling a house are familiar with the names Rightmove and Zoopla, but there is another site that is proving to be a real contender to these giants – On The Market.

On The Market was created by a group of estate agents in 2015, and went through a big rebrand at the end of 2021 along with a shiny marketing campaign, including some quirky ads (that one where the people are made of cake??). On The Market have been stealing Zoopla and Rightmove’s thunder since their inception with their offer to estate agents; they could list their properties on On The Market, but then they could only list on Zoopla OR Rightmove, not both – effectively splitting the market. A court ruling upheld their decision to do this after complaints it was anti-competitive, and this disruptive tactic is still in place today. They also list some properties a full 24 hours before they are listed on other sites, giving them a further advantage. Costs tend to be a little lower for estate agents to list on On The Market than Zoopla or Rightmove, making it an even more attractive prospect.

These are some smart moves by On The Market, but how do they really compare to the bigger property search portals? Let’s find out.

Is On The Market better than Rightmove?

Rightmove have been around since 2000, making them practically grandparents in the internet age. As well as having the most experience and seniority, Rightmove certainly has the advantage of being trusted by Google so for searches like ‘houses for sale in [city]’, they will almost certainly be the first or second search result. Rightmove also releases their House Pricing Index every month, which shows the asking prices of houses in England and Wales, showing regional trends, average asking prices and more. On The Market have attempted to do their own monthly report in the form of their Property Sentiment Index, which shows more qualitative data such as vendor and buyer confidence levels.

The Numbers

Over 95% of properties for sale are listed on Rightmove, or over 1 million – this is a pretty impressive statistic, although On The Market is apparently hot on its heels with “thousands” of properties listed per month (actual stats not available although they claim to have 57% of all properties for sale or rent in the UK listed). In terms of website visits, Rightmove certainly dominates with over 200 million visits per month as of 2021 compared to On The Market’s 21 million hits per month. Rightmove posted revenue of £302 million in 2021, whereas On The Market’s revenue in 2021 was literally a tenth of this at £30m – however On The Market’s growth percentage since 2020 was 32%, pretty respectable for a much younger and smaller company

Site design & features

Rightmove home page. Screenshot: rightmove.com

Rightmove’s site has all the features you would expect a property search engine to have; homes to buy, homes to rent, etc. The site design does look a little old-fashioned compared to On The Market or Zoopla, and some pages are not mobile responsive. Rightmove do offer home valuations but it is not instant like On The Market or Zoopla, this does mean the valuation is more likely to be accurate but is no good for a quick check. The option to filter search results by keyword is a nice touch, although this is not unique to Rightmove – Zoopla has a similar feature, and On The Market has the ‘Wish List’ function which does the same, but only allows you to select 5 keywords.

On The Market Wish List. Screenshot: onthemarket.com

Both Rightmove and On The Market have a ‘where should I live’ feature which asks the visitor a few questions and suggests properties based on their answers. This is something Zoopla is lacking, although most people have a good idea of where they want to live so it’s hard to say how useful this feature actually is. The aforementioned ‘Only With Us’ feature on On The Market property listings creates a sense of exclusivity and urgency – this is unique to On The Market. Properties are only exclusive to that platform for a day, but that 24 hours could make all the difference.

Is On The Market better than Zoopla?

Zoopla has been around since 2007, and was founded by the same people who brought to you the now-defunct LoveFilm. The parent company, ZPG Ltd, also owns price comparison sites Uswitch and money.co.uk as well as other websites and brands. Since their inception, Zoopla have also acquired other property search websites primelocation.com, globrix.com findaproperty.com and upmystreet.com. While not as old as Rightmove, Zoopla are hardly new to this game, and were long established by the time On The Market appeared on the scene.

Screenshot: zoopla.co.uk

The numbers:

Zoopla has slightly less listings than Rightmove at 927,000, which is still a lot more than On The Market. As of 2021, Zoopla was enjoying 120 million website visits per month compared to On The Market’s modest 21m hits. Zoopla posted revenue of £241 million in 2021, many times more than that of On The Market, although this is to be expected of a larger and more established company.

Site design and features

The design of the On The Market and Zoopla sites is very similar – again, both have all the features you would expect, but their layout and even font choices are uncannily similar. Zoopla does have the highly convenient map feature, where site visitors can look at properties for sale on a Google Maps style interface – something that is not offered by On The Market or Rightmove. Rightmove has the ‘draw a map’ search feature where you can choose your preferred area with a map tool, but it’s not as good as seeing properties for sale on an actual map.

Zoopla’s map view. Screenshot: zoopla.co.uk

Both Zoopla and On The Market offer instant valuations on their website, both were tested with the same address to find out if there are any discrepancies between them or any unexpected results. The values of £204k (Zoopla) and £206k (On The Market) show that On The Market and Zoopla are more or less on the same page with regards to property values, although their estimated value of this specific property could be seen as a little over-generous.

Zoopla valuation. Screenshot: zoopla.com

On The Market valuation. Screenshot: onthemarket.com

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On The Market sends out an email with details of the instant valuation, with the chance to sign up for an actual valuation by an estate agent, something that Zoopla does not. This kind of attention to detail and proactivity shows that On The Market are not likely to sleep on their marketing strategy, which the long-established Zoopla may be doing.

Conclusion

The layout of the listings is basically identical across all three sites – large images of the property, details below, agent details to the right side, so there is not much to compare here. The longevity of Rightmove’s tenure as a property search engine is not to be ignored, and their listing numbers and website visits reflect this. Zoopla is a close contender and has made some bold moves, buying out its competitors Prime Location, Globrix and Findaproperty.com in 2011, just four years after launch.

The appeal of On The Market is partly due to its ownership comprising of estate agents (their current CEO is a former agent) who know the market inside out, but mostly due to their smart business decisions such as their ballsy ‘divide and conquer’ approach to their competitors, the production of their own monthly report, the ticking clock urgency of the ‘Only With Us’ listings, and their irreverent yet modern advertising campaigns. While the competition is long-established to the point of being household names, On The Market’s star can only continue to rise.