What's the Difference between a Matterport 3D Tour and a Zillow 3D Home Tour?

If you are new to virtual tours, or are wondering why there is something called Matterport 3D and Zillow 3D, you are hardly alone. The names of these different virtual tour offerings sound a lot alike, but they differ vastly in their features! 

Over the last several years, Matterport has become the premium virtual tour offering for real estate, but in the Summer of 2019, Zillow launched a competing product to the Matterport 3D virtual tour platform - and named it "Zillow 3D". The Zillow 3D Home Tour is in fact, not at all a 3D tour, but is a series of 360°'s that shot with an iPhone or an iPhone plus 360° camera (for example we use the top of the line Ricoh Theta Z1), and are then manually connected to each other to create a tour flow throughout a property. 

Here is what you get with a Matterport 3D Tour: 

• 3D Dollhouse view and floor plans generated to preview in every tour
• 2D Schematic floor plans with dimensions can be generated and ordered directly from Matterport, within 1% accuracy using the types of cameras that we use at Hopscotch Interactive (Pro2 Cameras) 
• Walkable tour that can be viewed via link or embedded for viewing easily in the cloud on mobile and on any web browser
• Hosting fees that apply to all spaces (but we offer the first 90 days free on residential listings) 
• Great HDR photography that can be extracted and used in place of regular still photography for some properties 
• Mattertags, or interactive elements that can add storytelling capability to your tours
• Face blur (and coming-soon, blur anything!)
• Highlight reel
• Takes about 30-45 minutes per 1000 square feet for residential. Processing time is usually 2-12 hours. 
• And, of course, you can view this content extremely well in a VR peripheral device like an Oculus Quest or Quest 2

And with the Zillow 3D Home Tour here are the main differences: 

• Images are shot with an iPhone or the highest fidelity 360° camera such as a Ricoh Theta Z1
• Images cannot be extracted at all and are built only to be hosted in the cloud
• These tours are given priority visibility on the Zillow platform including their mobile app, and also on the desktop, as well as a 7 day boost in their search and email notifications to people with saved searches. This is a HUGE benefit to the Zillow 3D Home Tours
• App is free, but you need to know how to use it - and the right equipment goes a long way! I did create a tutorial for DIY photos using the app at the beginning of the shelter-in-place, and there have been several thousand views of that instructional video here. 
• Because the app is free and Zillow wants to have more users add their tours and *verify* them, this is important for their value to Zillow, so they let you keep them hosted at no charge
• Currently floor plans are only available in some cities, but they are not yet available in the Bay Area. I know that they are being piloted in nearby counties, but not yet in the immediate vicinity
• Also, the tours don't have a lot of detail that can be added, they are really just a straightforward walking tour. 
• Cost effective - at a low hosting price and with speedy capture, we have priced these in-line so that anyone can use them no matter the price bracket on their listing 
• Another thing I love is the 3D Home icon that shows up on the Zillow map. Matterport definitely doesn't have this!
• Speed - Zillow 3D Home Tour content can be created in about 15-25 minutes depending on the size of the home and the number of panos, and it is processed in 15 minutes! 

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So that's my take on the main differences between the Zillow 3D Home Tour and the Matterport 3D Tour...feel free to comment if you have any questions or want to know more about each tour. Zillow 3D Home Tours start at $150 when booked as a standalone service, or $75 when booked together with other services. Matterport always starts at $250, and is based on square footage.

One final question that I get asked a lot is if I need one or both, and my answer is that standing out on Zillow is often overlooked by agents, and I would definitely not list my own house without putting a Zillow 3D Home Tour on that listing. So, both is the best way to do it, but if the budget is just out there for one tour, then decide what you want to optimize for - the highest fidelity and best imagery in the tour (Matterport), or speed, efficiency, and the most eyeballs on your media (Zillow). It's a tough call, but either way, virtual tours are an essential piece of marketing and not having one is definitely not advised for any listing in the near future!