99acres vs MagicBricks: Which Property Portal Is Worth It for Builders and Brokers?

Almost every property search in India touches a portal. Buyers check 99acres, MagicBricks or Housing.com before they call anyone, and most brokers and builders have paid for a portal package at least once. Some swear by them. Many say they paid for “leads” that ten other brokers also called within the hour. This guide explains how property portals work, how 99acres and MagicBricks compare, what they charge for, how reliable their enquiries are, and when your money works harder on your own landing page and ads. It is written for builders, brokers and channel partners, but buyers will find the reliability section useful too.

What property portals are and how they make money

A property portal is a listings website and app where owners, brokers and builders advertise flats, plots, villas and commercial space, and where buyers and tenants search by city, locality, budget and size. When a buyer likes a listing, they send an enquiry or tap “contact”, and the advertiser gets their name and phone number.

Buyers use portals for free. The money comes from the supply side:

• Broker and dealer packages: a number of listings for a period, with more visibility (higher placement, “featured” or “premium” tags) in the bigger packages.
• Builder and project promotion: project pages, banners, home-page and locality slots, email and app pushes, and launch campaigns.
• Owner plans: owners can usually post a basic listing free, and pay for extra visibility or help from the portal’s own team.
• Other services: home loans, rental agreements, packers and movers, and data or research reports.

Keep this model in mind for everything that follows. A portal earns from the number of advertisers it sells to, not from your site visits or bookings. That is not a criticism, just how classified marketplaces work, and it explains most of what brokers complain about.

The main property websites in India

Five names cover most of the market:

• 99acres: owned by Info Edge, the company that also runs Naukri.com. Launched in 2005, it is one of the oldest and largest Indian property portals, with listings for sale, rent, new projects and commercial property.
• MagicBricks: part of the Times Group (Times Internet), launched in 2006. It covers the same ground (resale, rent, new projects, commercial) and also sells home loans and rental services.
• Housing.com: part of REA India, which is majority owned by Australia’s REA Group and also runs PropTiger. Strong on new projects and rentals.
• NoBroker: built around owner-to-buyer and owner-to-tenant deals without brokers. It earns from paid plans for tenants, buyers and owners rather than from broker packages.
• Square Yards: a Gurugram-based company that combines a portal with its own brokerage, mortgage and data services.

Which one is “number one” depends on who is measuring. The portals regularly publish competing traffic claims, and website-traffic tools can’t see app usage, where much of the searching happens. For a broker or builder, the better question is which portal your buyers use in your city and price band, and you can only answer that by testing.

99acres vs MagicBricks: side by side

On features, the two are closer than their ads suggest. Both offer listings for owners, dealers and builders, project pages, verified tags, locality pages, price trends and lead management in an app. The differences that matter show up locality by locality, not in the feature list.

	99acres	MagicBricks
Owner	Info Edge (Naukri group)	Times Group (Times Internet)
Launched	2005	2006
Owner listings	Basic listing free, paid plans for more visibility	Basic listing free, paid plans for more visibility
Brokers and dealers	Paid packages by number of listings, period and placement	Paid packages by number of listings, period and placement
Builders	Project pages, banners, featured slots, launch campaigns	Project pages, banners, featured slots, launch campaigns
Package price	Varies by city and package, and is often negotiable	Varies by city and package, and is often negotiable
Who sees an enquiry	The advertiser of that listing; the same buyer usually enquires on several listings	Same

Prices change often and depend on your city, the number of listings and how much visibility you buy, so we don’t quote them here. Get a written quote from both, and ask the same three questions of each salesperson:

1. How many enquiries did similar listings in my locality and budget get last quarter?
2. How many other advertisers are paying for the same locality and budget band?
3. Can I start with the smallest package for one month before committing to a longer one?

If a salesperson can’t answer the first two with numbers, treat any promise of “guaranteed leads” with caution.

Does 99acres charge money? Is MagicBricks free?

For buyers and tenants, both are free to search and enquire. For owners, both let you post a basic listing free, with limits on the number of free listings and on how prominently they appear. For brokers, dealers and builders, the useful features are paid.

The common surprise is visibility. A free or entry-level listing often sits below featured and premium listings in search results, so it gets few views in a busy locality. That is why many brokers who post free get almost no calls, then buy a package, then find that the bigger package is what actually moves them up the page.

Before you pay, check three things in writing: how long the package runs, whether unused listings carry over, and whether the price includes GST.

Are 99acres and MagicBricks reliable?

As platforms, yes: both are long-running, established businesses. The reliability question is really about two other things.

For buyers: are the listings real? Most are, but stale and duplicate listings are common, and some “owner” listings are posted by brokers. Use the verified filters, confirm the RERA registration of any new project on the state RERA website (our RERA number check guide shows how), never pay a token amount before a site visit, and be wary of prices far below the rest of the locality.

For sellers: are the enquiries any good? Expect a mix. A portal enquiry is a real person who clicked on your listing, but:

• The same buyer usually enquires on five to fifteen similar listings, so you are rarely the only one calling.
• Many enquiries come from early-stage browsers, people checking rents, or other brokers.
• Some phone numbers are switched off or not answered, especially when you call hours later.

So “reliable” depends heavily on what you do in the first few minutes after an enquiry arrives.

How to get more site visits from portal leads

When ten brokers get the same buyer, the one who replies first and clearest usually gets the site visit. Speed beats package size. A simple routine:

1. Reply within five minutes, on WhatsApp and by call. Many buyers ignore unknown calls but read WhatsApp. Send the project name, price band, location pin and one photo straight away.
2. Ask two qualifying questions, not ten. Budget and timeline are enough to start. “Are you looking to move in within six months, or later?” works better than a long form.
3. Offer two site-visit slots. “Saturday 11 AM or Sunday 4 PM?” gets more replies than “When would you like to visit?”
4. Follow up three times over a week, each time with something new: a floor plan, a walkthrough video, a payment plan.
5. Log every lead with its source. At the end of the month you want cost per site visit by portal, not number of leads.

Steps 1 and 4 are exactly what WhatsApp automation handles well: an instant reply at 11 PM on a Sunday, when your team is asleep and the other nine brokers are too.

Portals vs your own landing page and ads

Portals and your own campaigns do different jobs, and most serious sellers end up using both.

	Property portals	Your own landing page + Meta and Google ads
Who sees the buyer	You and every other advertiser the buyer enquired with	Only you
Setup effort	Low: post listings and go	Higher: page, ads, tracking and follow-up to build
Control	The portal decides placement and design	You control the message, page, targeting and budget
Cost	Package fee, paid whether or not leads convert	Ad spend paid to Meta and Google, adjustable daily
Best for	Resale and rental stock, brand presence, buyers already searching portals	New projects, launches, plots and anything you want leads only you receive

For a new project, your own page and ads usually give you more control over cost per site visit, because each lead comes to you alone. The guide to generating real estate leads covers all the channels, and Google Ads vs Meta Ads explains which ad platform suits which project.

Which should you choose?

• Individual owner selling or renting one property: post free on both 99acres and MagicBricks (and NoBroker if you want to avoid brokers), with good photos and an honest price. Pay only if you get no calls in two weeks.
• Broker or channel partner with resale and rental stock: test the smallest package on the portal that is strongest in your localities for one month, track cost per site visit, then decide. Make sure your listings carry your RERA agent registration where your state requires it.
• Builder with a new project: use a portal project page for presence and credibility, but put most of the budget into your own project landing page, Meta and Google ads, and an instant WhatsApp reply. Organic reach from social media helps too.

Whatever you choose, judge it on site visits and bookings, not on the number of “leads” in a dashboard.

Common mistakes with property portals

• Buying a long package first. Start with one month and real numbers.
• Calling leads the next morning. By then the buyer has already spoken to someone else.
• Posting the same listing many times. Duplicates annoy buyers and can get listings removed.
• Wrong or missing details. No price, no carpet area, no RERA number, or photos that don’t match the property all cost you trust.
• Not tracking the source. Without it you can’t tell which portal, package or locality is worth paying for.
• Relying on one channel. If a portal changes its ranking or prices, a business that depends on it entirely has nothing to fall back on.

If you want a second opinion on where your property leads should come from, our free marketing audit looks at your listings, website, ads and follow-up, and gives you the first three fixes we would make.