I Tried 4 Rental Websites to Find an Apartment — Here’s the Best One (and the Worst)

Even after moving five different times in seven years, I still feel like searching for an apartment to rent is like a new job with a steep learning curve. Even before I show up to tour appointments, hoping that my prospective future home lives up to the listing photos and description (with no nasty surprises or scams waiting for me), there’s so much research, outreach, and scheduling I need to do.

I’ve since moved into my new apartment and finally cleared the last boxes away, so to help fellow renters like me I’ve compiled this list of the best websites that I actually used and that, to varying degrees, worked for me.

For my latest search — a two-bedroom plus den apartment in Chicago where I’d be moving in with my boyfriend for the first time — I had the added step of taking into consideration two sets of wants, needs, and dealbreakers while also allotting enough space for both of our work-from-home lifestyles. To find our dream apartment, I used four different apartment rental platforms and rental apps: Apartments.com, Facebook Marketplace, Zillow, and Zenlist. After my latest apartment hunt, these sites stood out for their convenience, ease of use, and relatively quick response time, while other platforms made it frustrating to search for certain amenities (or even get a response back). 

For my latest apartment hunt, my boyfriend and I put together a list of things we needed with a maximum $4,500 rental budget in Chicago. We prioritized space over new construction homes and building amenities. We wanted a three-bedroom apartment with at least 1,700 square feet, as we both work from home (in addition to the significant amounts of stuff we’ve both accrued over the years). We also had some personal apartment wish lists. 

On my end, I prioritized a secure entry system, extensive closet space throughout the home for storage (again, lots of stuff), a bathroom with two sinks, a dishwasher, a good amount of kitchen or pantry storage, and a bathtub. Meanwhile, my boyfriend wanted indoor or gated parking for his car, an in-unit washer and dryer, a garbage disposal, an outdoor space, and a safe, desirable neighborhood with easy access to grocery stores and gyms. 

We were hopeful it would be a duplex with a fireplace, high ceilings, and a walk-in closet, but didn’t want to be unrealistic. But after using rental filters during our search, we were able to find a home with these features as well as everything else on our list (minus the dual-sink bathroom) while also staying under budget. 

Below, I’ve ranked Zenlist, Apartments.com, Zillow, and Facebook Marketplace from worst to best, including which apartment website features were useful for my hunt and which ones fell short in finding my dream home.

Apartments.com is a great database when you’re looking for properties directly listed from property owners, property managers, and real estate agents. The site aggregates rental properties from 11 different websites, including ForRent.com and ApartmentFinder.com.

My boyfriend really liked the map feature for setting perimeters around the neighborhoods we wanted, as well as the ability to filter our search for how many bathrooms and bedrooms we wanted, the maximum rental price, the square footage, and the type of dwelling. You can also search certain keywords (for example, I looked up “parking” and “bathtub”) or separately choose popular amenities like an in-unit washer and dryer, utilities included in the rent, a garage, a dishwasher, and walk-in closets. I also liked that it was easy to apply for properties on the website, including getting a background check run.

While the website and app was easy to use and offered cool visual features like 360-degree virtual tours, I only ended up touring one unit from Apartments.com in person. I didn’t always get responses back when I sent out queries to listings, and when they did reach back out most of the time it was days later to tell me that other people had toured the unit and submitted an application.

Sometimes I would also get messages back instantly that units were no longer available, but they didn’t update or delete their listings. I found myself wading through a backlog of these unavailable listings every time I searched, which made it a lot harder to find new and relevant postings.

While it’s unexpected, Facebook Marketplace can be a treasure trove of hidden gems from private owners and real estate agents who were previously on Craigslist. I found my last apartment there for a steal, and I saw a lot of listings on there that I didn’t see on the other apps and websites. I also noticed that posters were much quicker to respond to set up showings or answer questions compared to the other rental websites I used. 

However, there are quite a few cons. Like Craiglist, there are some scams (if something looks too good to be true, it is). It’s also difficult to search listings for maximum prices as well as certain features and neighborhoods, and I found myself having to do more digging to find certain details in incomplete descriptions. For example, I reached out to 10 different properties asking if there was in-unit laundry or a walk-in closet because it wasn’t immediately clear from the pictures and videos. 

I also didn’t like not being able to automatically see the address to Google it and see if it was in a safe area without reaching out to the poster. I also felt less safe going to private owner showings alone, so I had to work around my boyfriend’s schedule.

Like Apartments.com, Zillow also aggregates listings from property owners and managers from sites like Rent.com, Trulia, HotPads, and Apartment Guide. I felt like I saw some of the most promising listings and best prices during our search from private owners here, including the two-bedroom and den apartment with three bathrooms that my boyfriend and I ended up renting. 

We didn’t see this apartment on any other website, and it was a quick and easy process for him to go tour it. I also felt like there weren’t as many scams as on Facebook Marketplace, and people also got back a little more quickly to me than on Apartments.com.

When it came to the platform, I felt like Zillow’s search feature on the map wasn’t as intuitive as it was on Apartments.com. However, I liked that Zillow allowed you to set your move-in date as well as the usual pricing, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Also like Apartments.com, I could add keywords to find certain features that I wanted in my search, as well as the kind of building I was looking for. I noticed that many listings had virtual tour or instant tour availability, as well as instant applications, which made it easier for me to decide whether I was interested in going to check out an apartment or not (and take the next step if I wanted to). Just keep in mind that although there is an application option on Zillow, many landlords don’t seem to like it because renters don’t need to verify their income or credit score. 

My boyfriend and I also worked with a real estate agent during our apartment search, and he had us use Zenlist, an agent-to-client apartment listing site, to let him know which places we wanted to schedule a tour with each week. Like with Apartments.com, on Zenlist our agent was able to set a minimum and maximum price, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and other amenities for us so we weren’t scrolling through a lot of random listings. Zenlist is different from other apartment renting and home-buying websites because buyers and renters can only access it if they’re invited to it by an agent.

We also saw a lot of new properties on the Zenlist that we didn’t see in other platforms because they were coming directly through the Major Listing Service (MLS). The app updated frequently with new listings as they came on the market, and it was nice seeing photos of the unit, the address, the price, the number of bedrooms, parking availability, and square footage while scrolling without having to actually click in to see each listing. We also got email and app notifications whenever a new listing that fit our criteria came through, and I was able to see when my boyfriend saved different apartments. This was a game-changer for swiftly setting up showings and getting in as quickly as possible for apartments we were interested in.

Only licensed real estate agents can post on the app (which made me feel a little safer touring them), but the details of some listings varied depending on who created them as a result. Some of them didn’t even have photos, and I had to Google the address online to see what they looked like. Many also didn’t include dimensions of different rooms, and we were disappointed more than a few times showing up to a home to see that it looked way bigger in the photos or that it wouldn’t fit our furniture. 

Reaching out to get questions answered or even to book showings also took longer than it did on Facebook Marketplace, as the competition also seemed a lot more intense. We ended up bidding over the asking price on several apartments, but we still lost out to other prospective renters. However, Zenlist had the best track record with up-to-date listings that were actually still available, as well as an easy process for touring them, which put it at the top of my best rental websites ranking — even if it was Zillow, not Zenlist, that led us to our dream apartment.