Most brokers choose between Crexi and LoopNet based on which one their mentor used. The actual 2026 ROI math is almost never done. Here it is, starting with the one input that nearly every published comparison of these two platforms quietly invents.
Both products sell exposure. Neither guarantees lender introductions, buyer lead quality, or deal close rates. And exposure is not uniform across deal size, which is where the real decision lives.
Crexi quotes its paid tiers on request, so the math starts with your own two quotes
Crexi does not publish a rate card, and CRE Daily's Crexi review, updated February 2, 2026, states that pricing for all paid plans is available on request and that buyers must contact the company directly. The same review describes LoopNet as monetizing through site memberships without quoting a LoopNet price either.
That single fact reorders the whole exercise. You cannot compare sticker prices, because there are no published sticker prices to compare. You can only weigh the two proposals you personally receive against the leads each platform actually delivers to you.
CRE Daily's review lists three paid PRO tiers (Listing PRO, All PRO, and Enterprise PRO, the last aimed at organizations of ten or more users, adding volume discounts, white-glove training, and dedicated customer success management), plus Crexi Intelligence as a separate standalone annual data subscription. The marketplace itself is free to list on and free to search. On the LoopNet side, the review notes that paid or premium memberships enhance a property's visibility.
So the first move is not a subscription. It is two written proposals, priced on your seat count, with the renewal number named. Apply the same discipline you would to any other CRE tool line item.
What actually differs between Crexi and LoopNet?
The two platforms differ most in age, ownership, audience scale, and how much market data arrives bundled with a listing subscription, and those differences are documented rather than estimated. CRE Daily's review dates Crexi to 2015 and LoopNet to 1995, and notes that CoStar Group acquired LoopNet in 2018.
| Dimension | Crexi | LoopNet |
|---|---|---|
| Founded / ownership | 2015, independent | 1995, CoStar Group (acquired 2018) |
| Paid pricing | Quoted on request; free tier available | Site memberships; no price quoted in the review |
| Audience scale (CRE Daily) | More than 2.5M users interacting monthly (Feb 2026 review) | More than 12M unique monthly visitors (as of 2023) |
| Listing inventory (CRE Daily) | More than 500,000 U.S. properties for sale or lease | Not stated in the same review |
| Bundled data | Crexi Intelligence: 153M+ property records, 46M+ verified sales and lease comps | Not described in the CRE Daily review |
| Document tooling | Crexi Vault extracts 24+ data points from offering memorandums and rent rolls | Not covered in the review |
Read the audience row with its vintages attached. The Crexi figure comes from a review updated in February 2026; the LoopNet visitor count in that same review is dated 2023. They were not measured on the same day, and neither one is a lead count. Traffic is not inquiries, and inquiries are not offers.
The review also offers one comparative judgment on price: CRE Daily concludes that Crexi's premium services, PRO and Intelligence, cost less than the comparable LoopNet services. The same page discloses that it may earn a commission on links, so weigh it accordingly. The review does not show its work on that, and it is a judgment rather than a price comparison. Treat it as a prior to test against your own two proposals, not as a finding. If the bundled data layer is what you are really buying, price it against the standalone CRE data providers before you buy it inside a listing subscription.
How do you run the ROI math without a public price list?
You run it on the two quotes you were given rather than on the internet's guesses, and you settle it with one division instead of a feature comparison. Take the annual cost difference between the two proposals and divide it by your average net fee on a closed deal.
The result is the only number that matters here: how many extra closings per year the more expensive platform has to produce before it pays for itself. If the answer is a fraction of one deal, the premium is cheap. If it is two or three deals, you are buying a brand rather than a pipeline.
Four inputs make that division honest, and only one of them comes from a vendor:
- Annual cost, all-in: base subscription, per-seat charges, data add-ons, featured-placement upgrades, and the renewal price rather than a first-year promotional price.
- Qualified inquiries per listing, counted from your own inbox rather than from the platform's dashboard.
- The origin of every deal you actually closed in the last twelve months, tagged at first contact.
- Your net fee after splits and referral fees, because gross commission overstates what one marginal deal is worth to you.
Most brokerages cannot supply the third input, which is exactly why the renewal gets signed on instinct. Tag first contact for one quarter and the argument settles itself.
Which platform fits your deal size?
Deal size is the strongest single predictor here, because the two platforms carry different buyer mixes and a listing only performs when its audience is genuinely shopping in that price band. Match your median transaction to the audience first, then let the two quotes decide the rest.
Under $5M
Crexi's free marketplace makes it the cheaper experiment at this size, and CRE Daily's review positions Crexi as a free-to-list marketplace for buyers, sellers, and investors. Institutional buyers are not the audience for a small strip center, so paying a premium for institutional reach spends money on the wrong readers.
$5M to $25M
Both platforms carry real buyer pools in this band, and this is the only range where a genuine bake-off earns the double spend. Run both through one full listing cycle, tag every inquiry by source, and cut whichever produced fewer qualified conversations. Ninety days is usually enough if you are actually tagging.
$25M and above
Ownership starts to matter at institutional size: LoopNet sits inside CoStar Group, and CRE Daily's review credits LoopNet with the longer operating history, more monthly visitors, and stronger brand recognition. Crexi is closing that gap (the same review calls its marketplace the fastest-growing in CRE), but on visitor scale and name recognition LoopNet is still ahead.
Neither platform gets your deal financed
Crexi and LoopNet are listing and buyer-discovery products; they help you find the buyer, and neither one shops the debt once a deal goes under LOI. That gap is where broker teams quietly lose weeks, and no subscription upgrade on either platform closes it.
The 2026 debt market rewards teams that shop it properly. CRE Daily, reporting CBRE Research's Q2 2026 figures, put year-to-date US commercial real estate investment volume at $250.3B, a 21% year-over-year increase, with alternative lenders taking 38% of non-agency loan closings, up from 34% a year earlier. Commercial mortgage spreads narrowed 21 basis points to 204 bps over the same period, and average mortgage rates settled at 5.7%. More lender types competing on price means the distance between your first quote and your best quote is wider than it used to be, and you only see that distance if you ask more than one lender. The same CBRE lending data is worth reading before your next debt conversation.
That second search is what a commercial mortgage broker exists to run. Per Wikipedia's entry on the role, the broker is the intermediary who takes a borrower to potential lenders, gathers multiple quotes, and manages the financing process from there. YieldStack is a commercial mortgage brokerage, not a lender. A 5-minute submit returns 5–8 matches from 5,000+ loan programs, at $0 upfront, with a broker fee of 0.50–1.00% paid only at closing. Every credit decision is made by the lender.
Compare lender-fit options for your deal
The bottom line
Crexi is the cheaper, faster experiment below roughly $5M, LoopNet's CoStar ownership and larger audience matter most at institutional size, and running both only makes sense for a mid-market book with volume across sizes. But you cannot settle it from published prices, because Crexi quotes paid pricing on request and CRE Daily's review does not put a LoopNet number on the page either. Get both proposals in writing, tag the source of every closed deal for a quarter, and divide. Then handle the debt as its own search, because neither platform will do it for you.