99acres vs MagicBricks Lead Packages: Are Yours Worth It in 2026?

Almost every agent and builder in India pays a property portal something. Very few can tell you what a usable lead from that portal actually costs them.

The comparison of 99acres vs MagicBricks is usually argued on feel — which one “gives better leads” this quarter. That is not a comparison, it is a mood. This article gives you the arithmetic instead, because the packages are structured to be hard to compare on purpose.

First, understand what you are actually buying

Portal packages in India are sold in three broadly different shapes, and people routinely sign one thinking they bought another.

• Listing visibility. You pay for your listings to be shown more often or higher up. You are buying placement, not leads. Nothing guarantees a single enquiry.
• Response or contact packages. You pay for a defined number of buyer contacts, or for the ability to view contact details of people who enquired. Here you are buying leads by the unit.
• Branding and project microsites. Banner placements, featured project slots, developer pages. You are buying impressions, and attribution is close to impossible.

Mixing these into one annual invoice is standard practice. It is also why so many people cannot answer the only question that matters.

Where to find real, current pricing

Do not rely on a price you read in a blog post, including this one. Portal pricing changes, varies by city, varies between owner, agent and builder accounts, and is routinely discounted by the sales team on the phone.

Go to the source. 99acres publishes its subscription plans on its own buy our services page, split by account type, and MagicBricks and Housing.com run equivalent pages. Pull the current plan sheet for your city and your account class before any conversation with a sales representative, so you are negotiating from the published number rather than from theirs.

One warning worth stating plainly: the headline number on those pages is rarely the number you end up paying, in either direction. Annual commitments, bundled cities and free-month offers all move it.

The only calculation that settles 99acres vs MagicBricks

Cost per lead is the wrong metric here, because portal leads include a large share of contacts that were never going to transact. The metric is cost per usable lead, and you can work it out from data you already have.

1. Take one full billing period, not a good month.
2. Count every contact that portal delivered.
3. Count how many you actually reached on the phone. Not dialled — reached.
4. Count how many of those were in your budget band and your city.
5. Count how many turned into a site visit.
6. Divide what you paid by the site visit count.

That last figure is your true cost per site visit from that portal. Run it separately for each portal you pay, over the same period. The comparison stops being a matter of opinion.

Most people who do this exercise honestly for the first time find two things. The contact rate is far lower than they assumed, and one portal is quietly carrying the other.

The shared-lead problem nobody puts in the brochure

A buyer browsing a portal does not enquire once. They tap through several similar listings in an afternoon, which means the same person becomes a lead for several agents at roughly the same moment.

This has a direct consequence that changes how you should staff, not just how you should budget. A portal lead is a race, and the prize goes to whoever calls first. If your team picks up portal leads twice a day in a batch, you are paying full price for contacts that a faster competitor has already worked. The mechanics of this are covered in detail in our piece on speed to lead.

Leads from your own advertising do not behave this way. That single structural difference is usually worth more than any price difference between the portals.

Where each portal tends to be strong

Directional, not absolute, and you should verify it against your own data rather than trusting a generalisation:

• Coverage is city-specific. A portal that dominates Mumbai or Bengaluru may be thin in a tier-two Punjab or Gujarat market, and vice versa. National reputation tells you very little about your city.
• Segment matters. Resale, rental and new-launch inventory perform differently on the same portal.
• Account class matters. Owner, agent and builder accounts get different visibility on the same listing.

This is why the honest answer to “which portal is better” is a question back: better in which city, for which inventory, measured how?

When a portal package is genuinely the right buy

Portals get criticised reflexively by agencies who want the same budget. That is not honest either. There are situations where a package is clearly the better purchase.

• You need volume this month. Portals deliver immediately. A new ad account takes weeks to stabilise.
• You have nobody to run ads. A package with no operating overhead can beat a badly run campaign easily.
• Resale inventory in a mature locality. Search demand on portals is strong for exactly this.
• You are testing a new city and want demand signal before committing to a campaign.

Where packages stop making sense is when they are the only thing you do, indefinitely, because renewing is easier than measuring. The fuller trade-off is set out in property portal leads versus your own ads.

Before you renew, do these four things

1. Tag the source. Every portal lead should be identifiable in whatever you track enquiries in, even a spreadsheet. Without this, nothing else on this list is possible.
2. Log contact attempts and outcomes, not just the lead. Contact rate is where portal value is won or lost.
3. Ask for the renewal quote in writing before the call, then compare it to the published plan page.
4. Price the alternative. Work out what the same money would buy in your own campaign, using your own cost per lead if you have run ads before.

Common questions

Are portal leads fake?
Overwhelmingly no. They are usually real people at a much earlier stage than you wanted, contacted too late, and shared with competitors. That feels like a fake lead and is a different problem with a different fix.

Should I run portals and my own ads together?
Yes, if you can tell the leads apart. If both are on and untagged, you cannot attribute anything and you will eventually cut the wrong one.

Can I negotiate portal pricing?
Generally there is room, particularly near the end of a sales quarter and on multi-city or annual commitments. Go in holding the published plan page and your own cost per site visit figure.

Which is better for a builder rather than an agent?
Builder-class placements are priced and displayed differently from agent listings, so the agent experience in your city tells you little. Ask for builder-account performance data specifically.

The short version

You cannot settle 99acres vs MagicBricks by reading about them. You settle it by tagging the leads, measuring contact rate and site visits over one honest billing period, and dividing.

Do that once and the renewal conversation changes completely, because for the first time you are the one holding the numbers.

---

Portal plan names, inclusions and pricing change frequently and vary by city and account type. Always confirm current terms on the portal’s own pricing page or with its sales team before purchasing.