How Canadian MLS data reaches a website
- CREA DDF: a national feed of listings that brokers opt into. Realtors request access through CREA; a technology provider or plugin then pulls the feed.
- Board IDX feeds: TRREB, REBGV, CREB and others provide their own data feeds under their own agreements, often with more listings and more fields than DDF for that area.
- Framed IDX: a third-party search embedded in an iframe. Fast to set up, weak for SEO.
- Native import: listings written into your WordPress database as real pages. Best for SEO, more to maintain.
Plugins and services that support Canada
- DDF-capable plugins such as WP-Property with a DDF extension, Realtyna's RPL with CREA support, and Estatik's Canadian integrations import DDF into native listing pages.
- Hosted IDX services such as IDX Broker, Showcase IDX and iHomefinder support several Canadian boards and embed search on WordPress with varying degrees of native rendering.
- Board-specific providers: for TRREB or REBGV, regional vendors often have the most complete feeds.
Check three things before paying: the specific board or DDF coverage, whether listings render as native pages, and who handles the feed approval paperwork.
Framed listings versus native pages: the SEO trade-off
A framed search puts every listing on the vendor's domain. Your site gets no listing pages, no long-tail rankings, and no content to link. Native import creates a page per listing on your domain, which can rank for neighbourhood and address searches, but needs correct canonicals, noindex on expired listings, and a plan for thousands of pages that come and go. Most successful Canadian realtor sites use native listings for their own and featured properties, plus a search for everything else.
What it costs
Plugins with DDF support run from roughly $100 to $500 a year; hosted IDX services from $50 to $150 a month; board feed fees vary and some boards charge the brokerage. A professional WordPress realtor site with native MLS integration in Canada typically costs $5,000 to $20,000 to build depending on design, plus the feed subscriptions.
What a proper build looks like
- Feed approval handled up front, with the board or CREA.
- Native listing pages with schema markup, canonical tags and expiry handling.
- Fast hosting, because listing pages are image-heavy.
- Lead capture on every listing, connected to your CRM.
- Neighbourhood and buyer-guide content that the listings link to.