Why AI in time will break the ‘search portal’ habit
Thought Leadership by Andrew Stanton, CEO Proptech-PR
Rightmove the UK’s most profitable proptech
Rightmove is widely considered the most profitable proptech business in the UK, generating approximately £300m+ in annual revenue while sustaining exceptionally high operating margins in the region of 70%. Even allowing for modest margin compression in recent reporting cycles, it remains one of the most lucrative digital marketplace models in Europe.
The reason it wins is structurally simple but commercially powerful. Its marketplace model where agents pay recurring subscriptions, (which are increased annually) creates predictable, high-margin revenue. This is reinforced by a possible monopoly network effects in UK property listings, where scale begets scale, and by exceptionally low marginal costs relative to revenue once the platform is established.
In practical terms, no UK proptech comes close to its profit levels or margins. It is not just a market leader, until recently it was the ‘model’ that many proptech founders wished to emulate.
The misunderstood reality of UK proptech profits
Before diving deeper into Rightmove, there is despite hundreds of announcements of funding rounds a very hidden side to getting from mvp to exit, an area I have been involved in for a decade, working 1:1 with proptech founders. What most people misunderstand is that while the UK is home to 845 proptech companies, the majority are bootstrapped or venture-backed, focused on growth rather than profitability, and often operating at a loss or hovering around breakeven.
As a result, profit in UK proptech is highly concentrated in a small number of mature platforms, particularly marketplaces and data-driven businesses. The long tail of innovation exists, but the economic value is disproportionately captured at the top. Which I now predict will not be the case anymore.
The current hierarchy
We know then that the highest profit models has until recently remained consistent with Marketplaces (Rightmove) delivering the best margins. With data and analytics platforms in second place being highly scalable and capital light. Solidly bringing up the rear guard is vertical SaaS, for example property management, a slower growth model but durable.
AI will in time break the “search portal” habit
AI will not “kill” marketplace models like Rightmove overnight, that is a far too simplistic view. However, it does directly attack the underlying mechanics that enable those 70% margins: control of listings, aggregation of traffic, and agent dependency. Quietly like a thief in the night a structural, almost imperceptible change is coming. Let me explain.
Rightmove’s core value proposition has always been clear; ‘come to our site to browse listings. But AI inverts that model entirely: ‘tell me what you want, and I will bring you the best options.’
This is significant as users no longer need to browse twenty pages of listings. AI agents can aggregate properties from multiple sources simultaneously, shifting discovery away from the portal and into an assistant layer.
If the starting point for property search becomes AI-driven interfaces which we are seeing now, whether ChatGPT-style assistants, voice search, or embedded tools within banking and mortgage platforms then the user journey fundamentally changes. Traffic no longer flows to Rightmove’s front door. It is intercepted upstream.
2026 and listing aggregation becomes commoditised
Rightmove’s moat has always depended on two things, preferential access to listings and agent dependency.
AI, combined with scraping technologies and API-driven ecosystems, weakens both. AI agents can pull listings from multiple portals. Agents can distribute inventory across their own websites, social channels, and syndication networks. Buyers, in turn, become increasingly indifferent to the source of listings. The result is a profound shift, listings become data, not destination. And when listings become data, the platform loses its grip on inventory control.
Soon estate agents and developers will no longer need portals
Rightmove’s revenue model is built on agents paying for visibility. That dependency is now under pressure. AI enables agents to generate leads directly through SEO, AI-generated content, and conversational interfaces. It allows them to qualify buyers automatically and run highly targeted marketing campaigns without relying on third-party portals.
An emerging agent stack is already forming, consisting of AI-powered websites with embedded chatbots, automated valuation tools and CRM systems enhanced with AI-driven lead nurturing. If agents can achieve comparable lead volume independently, resistance to high portal fees becomes inevitable.
Pricing power erosion the killer blow
Rightmove’s margins exist because agents feel they must be on the platform and because there are limited substitutes. AI introduces substitutes at multiple layers: AI aggregators, verticalized search tools, and embedded property discovery within fintech ecosystems and super apps.
Even a modest 10–15% reduction in perceived necessity can have outsized effects. Subscription downgrades follow, pricing resistance intensifies, and margins begin to compress. This is not a collapse scenario it is a gradual but meaningful erosion of pricing power.
The interface layer just got abstracted
This is the most important shift, today, Rightmove is a destination platform. In an AI-mediated future, it risks becoming a backend data provider, one of many sources feeding into a higher-level interface.
As users increasingly interact through AI assistants, super apps, or personalised property agents, then the platform itself becomes invisible. The value shifts to whoever owns the interface. Rightmove does not disappear, but it risks becoming infrastructure rather than the experience.
What about Rightmoves deep defensive moat
Rightmove presently retains a formidable defensive advantage, strong brand recognition across the UK, deeply ingrained user habits, powerful network effects with agents, and regulatory as well as technical friction around data access and scraping. So, it will not want to become suddenly displaced, but as the Blockbuster and Netflix debacle proved if the fickle general public want services delivered in diverse ways, they search out and use alternatives.
Stanton’s Analysis
The strategic opportunity is not to replicate Rightmove’s model, but to disintermediate it. Artificial Intelligence does not destroy marketplace economics overnight. It re-routes value, where traffic moves from portals to AI assistants. Listings shift from controlled inventory to widely distributed data. And agents become more independent, meaning that margins, currently at 65–70%, are likely to compress over time.
Many times, a month I am asked by those in the proptech and property verticals what company will replace Rightmove?
The answer is not a single company. Not a like-for-like portal, what replaces Rightmove is a stack. An AI aggregation layer that sits above listings, Agent-owned distribution and lead generation tools and Buyer-side AI assistants that control the search experience.
