Ask Claude "what's this house worth?" and it will reason beautifully about a number it doesn't have. Language models know everything about real estate except the actual data — current prices, Zestimates, what sold last month. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) fixed the plumbing problem: agents can call tools. What's left is giving them a tool worth calling.
apillow-mcp is that tool for Zillow property data: an MCP server that lets Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf — any MCP-compatible agent — search listings and pull 50+ fields for any US property, live. Install to first query is about two minutes, and if you don't have an API key yet, the agent can sign itself up.
Install in two minutes
Claude Desktop — add to ~/.claude/claude_desktop_config.json:
Claude Code — one command:
Cursor and Windsurf use the same JSON shape in their respective MCP config files. Full details are in the docs.
No API key? Let the agent get one
This is the part that surprises people. The server ships account tools alongside the data tools, so onboarding happens entirely inside the conversation:
The free tier is 50 requests/month with every field included. When the quota runs out, the agent can call upgrade_plan() and hand you a Stripe checkout link — the payment page is the only step that ever touches a browser.
The tools
| Tool | What the agent can do with it |
|---|---|
search_properties(query, type, max_items) |
"Homes for sale in Beverly Hills under $2M" |
search_by_zip(zipcodes, type, max_items) |
"What's on the market in 44124?" |
get_property_by_address(address) |
"What's 1874 Bromton Dr worth, and what did it last sell for?" |
get_properties_by_addresses(addresses) |
"Pull data for every address in this spreadsheet" |
get_property(zpid) / get_property_by_url(url) |
Lookups by ZPID or a pasted Zillow link |
signup · check_usage · upgrade_plan |
Account lifecycle without leaving the chat |
Every property tool returns the full record — price, Zestimate and Rent Zestimate, beds/baths, price and tax history, schools, photos, and sold data including the sale date — so the agent can answer follow-ups without another round-trip.
What agents actually do with it
- Deal screening in chat: "Pull these 12 addresses, compute gross rent yield from the Rent Zestimate, rank them" — one message, no spreadsheet.
- Comps on demand: "What sold near 1874 Bromton Dr in the last six months, and at what price per square foot?"
- Watchlist agents: a scheduled Claude Code task that re-checks a ZPID list and flags price cuts or status changes.
- Coding with real data: in Cursor, the fixture data in your tests can be actual property records instead of lorem-ipsum houses.
Why this beats a scraping MCP server
Most "real estate MCP servers" you'll find in directories are hobby projects that scrape Zillow from your machine on every tool call. They work in a demo and then meet Zillow's anti-bot stack — PerimeterX fingerprinting, rotating page structures — from your residential IP. The failure mode is silent: the agent just starts getting empty results.
apillow-mcp is deliberately boring: a thin client over the same hosted API our REST customers use in production. The scraping, anti-bot handling, and off-market sold-data enrichment run on our infrastructure, monitored around the clock; your agent makes an authenticated HTTPS call. Nothing brittle runs locally, and your IP stays out of it.
| Hobby scraper MCP | apillow-mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs from your IP | Yes — blocks land on you | No |
| Sold data on off-market homes | Usually missing | Included (enriched) |
| Survives Zillow layout changes | Until the next one | Provider's problem, not yours |
| Onboarding | Clone, configure, pray | pip install, agent signs itself up |
| Cost | Free until it breaks | Free tier; from $9.99/mo |
Give your agent property data
pip install apillow-mcp — then ask your agent to sign you up. 50 free requests a month.
Related reading
- The unofficial Zillow API, explained
- Zillow ZPID lookup: find the property ID for any address
- Zillow sold data API: sale dates, price history, and comps
- Zillow API Python tutorial
Final takeaway
MCP made it trivial to hand an agent tools; the hard part was always the data behind them. A Zillow MCP server backed by a production API gives Claude, Cursor, and friends real property data — prices, Zestimates, sold history — with a two-minute install and an onboarding flow the agent runs itself. That last part still feels like the future every time.