Unlock MLS serves more than 18,000 real estate professionals across 18 Central Texas counties, from Bastrop to Williamson.
Getting its listings onto a WordPress site takes two things: an active Unlock MLS subscription and a RESO Web API credential.
The legal entity behind this feed is Austin/Central Texas Realty Information Service dba Unlock MLS, the wording used in the MLS's own Rules and Regulations. The trade association that owns and operates it is the Austin Board of REALTORS, or ABoR. They're governed together, not separately.
It goes back further than most MLSs you will ever connect to. The Austin Real Estate Board formed in 1941 with 13 founding members and incorporated on February 11, 1949. In January 1952 it built its own MLS, funded by roughly $2,500 put up by a small group of members and launched with 93 members on the books.
As of 1955, only 15 REALTOR associations in the country operated an MLS at all. The association took the Austin Board of REALTORS name in 1966, and the MLS runs under the Unlock MLS brand today. The whole run of it, decade by decade, is on Unlock MLS's own history page.
Today Unlock MLS serves more than 18,000 real estate professionals and runs out of Austin, Texas. Emily Girard has been chief executive officer since 2018, when she became the youngest and the first female CEO of ABoR and Unlock MLS, and she still holds the role.
For a licensed professional in Central Texas, Unlock MLS is the system you search every day and enter your own listings into. For everyone else, it's the source behind the Austin-area listings on agent websites and national portals, which is why getting that feed onto your own domain is worth the paperwork.
The subscription side opened up on June 1, 2025, when TREC-licensed Texas brokers and agents became able to subscribe directly, without joining a REALTOR association.
The credential side runs through three data delivery platforms, MLS Grid, Trestle and Bridge Interactive, and MLS Grid registration is the mandatory first step for all three, whichever one you finish on.
MLS Import is the plugin side of that. It syncs the feed hourly into native, indexable WordPress posts on your own domain, works with any theme, and costs $49 a month after a 30-day free trial. No iframe, no vendor subdomain, no listings parked on somebody else's servers.
Two separate subscription paths have existed since June 1, 2025. They aren't interchangeable. Which one applies to you decides what you pay, what your firm can do, and which form you fill in.
The traditional route, unchanged. You join a REALTOR association: ABoR if it's your primary, another Texas REALTOR association if you're joining as a secondary member. Secondary members carry one precondition worth knowing before you plan around it: you can only join Unlock MLS if your broker is already a subscriber.
That is a package deal, not a menu. Per NAR Bylaws, joining a local REALTOR association in Texas also means joining Texas REALTORS and NAR, all three tiers together. You then subscribe to Unlock MLS and, in practice almost always, add Supra eKEY lockbox access.
New since June 1, 2025. Any TREC-licensed Texas broker or sales agent can subscribe to Unlock MLS directly, without joining any REALTOR association, as long as they belong to (or set up) a non-REALTOR office: a firm whose principals hold no REALTOR membership at ABoR or at any other local association statewide.
The firm-level rule is all or nothing. If a firm's principals opt to be REALTORS, the firm pays a non-member assessment fee for all affiliated licensees. If the principals choose not to be REALTORS, then nobody at that firm may hold REALTOR membership.
One thing didn't change: the public still can't get into the MLS, REALTOR or not. Only TREC-licensed professionals can. And converting an office is a specific form, not a phone call. An existing Designated Broker completes the Office Election Transition form in the member portal, under Subscriptions, then Subscription Actions.
A new Designated Broker is walked through non-REALTOR office setup during the standard application. Policy questions go to [email protected]. Licensing questions are TREC's, at 512-936-3000.
The roles recognized across the two paths and the fee schedule:
Primary or Secondary REALTOR Member, or Appraiser.
Unlock MLS Subscriber, the non-REALTOR tier, split into agent and Designated REALTOR or broker levels.
Non-Licensed Assistant, who must be sponsored by a Designated REALTOR to reach the MLS at all.
Every path applies through the same standard application, in the member portal at Portal.ABoR.com.
Most REALTOR-affiliated MLSs in the country still require association membership before they will issue a login. Unlock MLS dropped that requirement on June 1, 2025. HousingWire's coverage placed the decision inside a live argument over whether REALTOR-owned MLSs should open to every licensed agent.
Phoenix Realtors was in a charter-revocation dispute with NAR over the same question, and the Alabama Association of REALTORS was pushing for comparable flexibility. ABoR isn't the only association decoupling MLS access, as HousingWire notes. Unlock MLS's own June 2025 policy is why a non-REALTOR licensee in Austin can hold a feed at all.
Flex by Unlock MLS gives a seller a phased path to market: control over timing, no public days-on-market clock, and the full Central Texas buyer pool waiting at the finish line. Three named phases, in Unlock MLS's own words: Enter Prepared, Launch Strong, Close with Confidence.
That matters to you more than it looks. A Flex listing runs through phases before it goes fully public, and there's no public days-on-market clock while it does. Both of those phrases are Unlock MLS's own.
So some Central Texas inventory reaches public display later than it otherwise would, and the public days-on-market figure is not counted from the day the seller started marketing. If you're about to promise a client every Austin listing live on their site, that's the caveat to say out loud first.
Unlock MLS publishes performance figures for Flex, drawn from its own transaction data on residential listings between September 2025 and April 2026, and they're good: sellers sell in about half the time and close roughly 2% closer to list price. Those are Unlock MLS's numbers about its own product. Pre-marketing is one of the most contested topics in the industry right now, and Flex is this MLS's branded answer to it, not settled practice.
May 1966: the first local REALTOR association in Texas to integrate racially, following the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 2018: the first REALTOR association in the country to livestream its Board of Directors meetings.
None of that changes a field mapping. What it tells you is how this organization tends to behave when the industry is mid-argument, which is the same instinct behind the June 2025 policy and behind Flex.
Unlock MLS describes its own footprint as running from Bastrop to Williamson Counties, and its own housing reports center on the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro.
The full 18, per its own coverage area page: Bastrop, Bell, Blanco, Burnet, Caldwell, Comal, Fayette, Gillespie, Gonzales, Guadalupe, Hays, Lampasas, Lee, Llano, Milam, San Saba, Travis and Williamson. Inside them sit 73 identifiable MLS areas, each with a two-character area ID and boundaries drawn along rivers, roads and freeways.
Unlock MLS also sits inside a three-way reciprocal data arrangement with the Houston Association of REALTORS and the San Antonio Board of REALTORS. Per SABOR's own October 2024 press release, the three organizations together cover approximately 80,000 professionals, "the equivalent of nearly 50% of the Texas housing market."
Read the practical limit carefully before you promise a client statewide inventory: SABOR subscribers see Unlock MLS listings inside SABOR's platform, connectMLS. Reciprocal reach is a benefit to subscribers, not something that widens the feed you license.
A smaller Key Reciprocity Program has run with the Four Rivers Association of REALTORS since 2015, covering Caldwell, Comal, Gonzales, Guadalupe and Hays counties.
Matrix has been the core member platform since 2012, per Unlock MLS's own history page.
Around it sits a subscriber tool bundle spanning forms, transaction management, tax and property data, plus perks like a free Inman Select subscription, all listed in Unlock MLS's own tools directory. Members sign in at Portal.ABoR.com, which is also where billing and the membership forms live.
Unlock MLS states on its own Data Licensing page that it has "a native database mapped to the Real Estate Standards Organization's (RESO) most modern standard," and the same page displays a RESO Platinum Certification badge. Both of those are Unlock MLS describing itself.
One consequence worth planning around: all three of Unlock MLS's data delivery platforms carry IDX, VOW and Back Office feeds. The feed type you need isn't constrained by the gateway you end up on, so choose a gateway on onboarding effort rather than on what it can carry.
Why it matters for an import: a natively mapped, standards-based feed means field names arrive the same way every time, and MLS Import relies on the RESO Data Dictionary so those common fields map consistently. That is the difference between an hourly sync that just runs and a developer re-checking a mapping every time the MLS changes something upstream.
Unlock MLS provides three data delivery platforms: MLS Grid, Trestle and Bridge Interactive. All three deliver data through web APIs, and all three offer IDX, VOW and Back Office feeds.
Here's the part almost every page written about this MLS gets wrong. Those aren't three independent, parallel choices. MLS Grid registration is the mandatory administrative front door for all three.
Unlock MLS says so plainly on its own Data Licensing page: even a technology provider, broker or agent signing up for a Trestle or Bridge feed still has to sign up with MLS Grid to begin the process. Budget for that step no matter which platform you intend to finish on.
Feed type is usually the easy call. A public-facing WordPress site runs on the IDX feed. VOW covers display to registered clients behind a login, and Back Office covers internal brokerage use.
One thing catches vendors out before they start. To be considered a third-party vendor at all, your company needs at least one active Unlock MLS subscriber already ready to sign up for your services, so line up that sponsoring subscriber before you apply rather than after.
Start at MLS Grid, always. Create an account at app.mlsgrid.com/register. Same starting point for all three paths, no exceptions, no shortcuts around it.
If MLS Grid is where you're staying, follow MLS Grid's own Data Consumer Access Guide, which Unlock MLS links directly from its Data Licensing page.
If Trestle is your destination, wait for MLS Grid approval, then create a Trestle account through the Trestle documentation Unlock MLS links from that page. Already have one? Add Unlock MLS as a new connection through the same documentation.
If Bridge Interactive is your destination, again after MLS Grid approval, email [email protected] to request a Bridge invite. Already a Bridge user? Request an Unlock MLS feed inside the platform, approved once your MLS Grid step is complete.
Connect the credentials to MLS Import and start an hourly sync into native WordPress posts on your own domain.
General vendor questions go to [email protected], not to whichever platform you picked.
Budget for a third cost while you're there: Unlock MLS doesn't publish feed pricing on its Data Licensing page. Staff verify your application and then provide more information, including pricing, so the number arrives after you register on Grid, not before.
Unlock MLS bills its own subscription fee semi-annually, not annually, in two fixed cycles: Spring, due March 31, and Fall, due September 30. REALTOR members carry a third, separate cycle for Association Membership, the bundled NAR, Texas REALTORS and ABoR dues, due December 31. All of it is paid to Unlock MLS and ABoR directly.
None of it has anything to do with your MLS Import subscription, which is billed by mlsimport.com. Every figure in the two cards below comes from ABoR's own published Membership Pricing schedule.
Covering the policy change in February 2025, HousingWire put the MLS-only subscription at $47.97 a month, or $575.64 a year, and reported that non-REALTOR subscribers pay the same MLS access fee as REALTORS do. That figure is the MLS subscription on its own; the $946.70 above bundles Supra eKEY with it, and the $533 difference between the two cards is the Association Membership cycle REALTOR members carry and direct subscribers don't.
The billing calendar is worth putting in your own calendar. That same Membership Pricing schedule has invoices posting March 1 and September 1, and Unlock MLS's payment and refund policies suspend access for any unpaid subscription on April 1 and October 1. So an Unlock MLS subscription can lapse mid-year, not only at a tidy annual boundary, and your feed depends on that subscription staying current.
Missing one costs more than the invoice. REALTOR dues, Unlock MLS subscription fees and Supra KEY fees are all non-refundable, and a reinstating subscriber gets no proration and no waiver, plus a $16.24 reinstatement fee including tax per service. Worse, application fees are charged again on any account that has let one full billing cycle lapse without service. An MLS billing cycle here is six months, per that same Membership Pricing schedule, so a single missed Fall invoice can push a subscriber past that line before the Spring cut-off on April 1, and the application fee lands a second time at $213.20 for an agent or $330.46 for a broker.
UnlockStats Data Assistant is the newest version of UnlockStats, a market-intelligence tool exclusive to Unlock MLS subscribers, built to return fast, relevant market insights on any city, county or zip code inside the 18-county service area.
Jointly Starter is a free contract-drafting tool now bundled into the standard subscription, described by Unlock MLS as giving subscribers the essential tools to draft compliance-ready contracts at no extra charge.
Neither one touches the data feed, but both tell you the organization is still shipping subscriber-facing product in 2026 rather than coasting on a platform it licensed a decade ago.
Yes, same organization. That was the MLS's brand from January 1, 1998, and it operates as Unlock MLS today.
The full legal name is Austin/Central Texas Realty Information Service dba Unlock MLS. Same 18-county footprint, same data, and MLS Import connects to that feed under the current name.
No, not since June 1, 2025. Any TREC-licensed Texas broker or sales agent can subscribe directly through a non-REALTOR office, a firm whose principals hold no REALTOR membership anywhere in the state.
The REALTOR member path still exists and is unchanged. MLS Import works with either one.
More than 18,000, per Unlock MLS's own current figure, working across 18 Central Texas counties centered on the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro.
MLS Import brings in the slice of that inventory you filter for, not all of it.
No. To be considered a third-party vendor, your company needs at least one active Unlock MLS subscriber ready to sign up for your services, so line up that sponsoring client before you apply rather than after.
General vendor questions go to [email protected]. MLS Import connects once the credentials are issued.
Register with MLS Grid first, at app.mlsgrid.com/register. That step is mandatory for all three of Unlock MLS's platforms, Trestle and Bridge Interactive included.
Once you're approved there, finish onboarding with whichever platform you chose, then paste the credentials into MLS Import to start an hourly sync.
Yes. Unlock MLS states its database is natively mapped to RESO's most modern standard.
Its three data delivery platforms, MLS Grid, Trestle and Bridge Interactive, all deliver data through web APIs, and all three offer IDX, VOW and Back Office feeds. MLS Import connects through that feed.
It depends on your path. A Primary REALTOR Member pays $1,479.70 a year ongoing. A non-REALTOR Unlock MLS Subscriber pays $946.70 a year with the Supra eKEY included.
Both are billed by Unlock MLS and ABoR, separate from MLS Import, which is $49 a month after a 30-day free trial.
Emily Girard, chief executive officer since 2018, when she became the youngest and first female CEO of ABoR and Unlock MLS.
Her office isn't the feed contact, though: data licensing goes to [email protected], and MLS Import handles the WordPress side.
A branded, phased pre-marketing listing product from Unlock MLS. It gives a seller control over timing with no public days-on-market clock before the listing goes fully public, across three phases Unlock MLS names Enter Prepared, Launch Strong and Close with Confidence.
MLS Import imports whatever the licensed feed sends.
Yes. MLS Import is a standalone plugin that syncs an Unlock MLS feed hourly into native WordPress posts on your own domain.
It works with any theme, with deeper native integration for WpResidence, WpEstate, Houzez and Real Homes, and it runs on your own approved RESO Web API credentials.
The subscription and the feed credential both come from Unlock MLS, not from us. Once you hold both, MLS Import handles the WordPress side. Route your question to the right desk below and you will skip a transfer or two.
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