eXp vs Keller Williams vs Real (2026): The Split Math on 12, 24 and 36 Deals
Sep 11, 2026
At twelve deals a year on a $12,000 average commission, a Keller Williams agent in Boise pays $13,125 to their brokerage, a Real agent pays $14,925, an eXp agent pays $18,040, and a Keller Williams agent in Peoria pays $23,380. Two of those four are the same brand.
That is the finding this page exists to deliver. The brokerage you pick matters less than most recruiters admit, and for Keller Williams the office you walk into matters more than the brand on the door. Below is the arithmetic at three production levels, built only on figures the three companies publish themselves, with the read dates attached. If you are weighing a move while also weighing whether you need real estate coaching, the arithmetic below is the part to settle first, because it is the only part with a right answer.
- eXp: 80/20 to a $16,000 cap, $85 a month, $85 per transaction, $149 to join. Caps at $80,000 of gross commission income.
- Real: 85/15 to a cap its signed fee schedule addendum says is most commonly $4,000, $6,000 or $12,000, but could be another amount. At the $12,000 solo cap used here, that is $80,000 of gross. No monthly fee, $50 per transaction, a $900 annual fee from the first three closings, $249 to join.
- Keller Williams: there is no national cap and no national split. The company dollar cap is a blank line each market centre fills in. Published caps run from $9,000 to $19,000 for an individual agent, and $5,000 to $30,000 once team plans count.
- The 6 percent KWRI royalty caps at $3,000 at every market centre I checked, on a separate meter from the company dollar cap, with its own anniversary date. KW's own documentation makes that amount a franchise agreement term rather than a national constant.
- At five of the six production levels I tested, a KW Boise agent pays less than eXp or Real, and a KW Peoria agent pays more at all six. The exception is twelve deals at $6,000, where Real beats Boise by $575. Same brand, same year, different office.
- eXp and Real cap at exactly the same gross, $80,000, by different routes. Above that the difference is fee structure, not split.
- All three changed identity recently, and most comparisons missed it
- What each one actually charges
- The Keller Williams problem: there is no KW column
- The split math at 12, 24 and 36 deals
- Run it on your own numbers
- What the tables leave out
- What happens when you leave
- Revenue share, profit share, and what they are really worth
- Who each one actually suits
- Frequently asked questions
All three changed identity recently, and most comparisons missed it
Before any numbers, three facts that date almost every competing article on this subject. Two of them happened in the last five months, and the third has been building since early 2025.
eXp World Holdings is now AGNT, Inc.
The ticker changed from EXPI to AGNT on the Nasdaq on 8 May 2026, and the legal name change completed on 11 June 2026. The company also redomesticated from Delaware to Texas and acquired NextHome. The brokerage is still called eXp Realty. If you hold agent equity, those shares now trade under AGNT.
The Real Brokerage bought RE/MAX
Real completed its acquisition of RE/MAX Holdings on 24 August 2026. The listed entity is now Real REMAX Group Inc., trading on Nasdaq as REAX since 25 August, with a combined 180,000 plus agents, more than 100,000 of them in the United States and Canada. Chief executive Tamir Poleg told RE/MAX agents that nothing about their business changed when they woke up that morning, and Real's agent facing fee model is unchanged. Worth knowing: no Real fee page has been updated to address the merged entity.
Keller Williams sold a stake to private equity, and has been shrinking
Keller Williams announced a partnership with Stone Point Capital on 3 March 2025 and named Christopher Czarnecki chief executive in the same announcement. KW has been privately held since 1983 and did not go private here. It sold an equity stake. Neither party published the size of that stake or who holds control. On agent count, KW reported 191,877 agents worldwide across more than 1,100 offices on 14 March 2023, and 161,000 affiliated agents across more than 1,000 market centre offices on 2 October 2025. That is roughly 31,000 fewer agents, by my arithmetic, and KW no longer puts a count in its press boilerplate at all.
Sources: AGNT press release 7 May 2026 and SEC filings; Real investor relations, 24 August 2026; KWRI press releases 14 March 2023, 3 March 2025 and 2 October 2025. All read 11 September 2026.
None of this changes what an agent pays this year. It changes how much weight you put on the equity and revenue share pitch, which is the part of all three offers that depends on the company still being what it was when the recruiter learned the script.
What each one actually charges
eXp and Real publish national fee schedules. Keller Williams does not, and that is not an oversight, it is the structure. Here is what each publishes.
| eXp Realty | The Real Brokerage | Keller Williams | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Split | 80/20 | 85/15 | No national split published |
| Cap | $16,000 | $12,000 solo, $12,000 team leader, $6,000 team member, and the signed addendum says it could be another amount | No national cap. Set per market centre |
| Caps at gross of | $80,000 | $80,000 at the $12,000 solo cap, $40,000 at the $6,000 team member cap | Depends entirely on the office |
| Joining fee | $149 | $249 | Set per market centre |
| Monthly | $85 | None | Set per market centre |
| Per transaction | $25 broker review plus $60 risk management | $50 compliance and broker review, plus the $900 annual brokerage fee taken as $300 from each of the first three | Set per market centre |
| After you cap | 100 percent, subject to standard transaction fees, amount not published | $285 a sale or 15 percent less team split, whichever is less, up to $6,000 a year | Set per market centre |
| Franchise or royalty | None | None published | 6 percent of gross, capped at $3,000, separate meter |
| Errors and omissions | Not a term eXp uses | Not included, no Real fee, amount not published | Method set nationally, rate set locally |
eXp from exprealty.com/income, read 9 September 2026. Real from its own support pages, read 11 September 2026. Keller Williams from the KWRI Policies and Guidelines Manual revision 2/1/2024 and named market centre sites, read 11 September 2026.
eXp and Real cap at exactly the same number. 20 percent of $80,000 is $16,000. 15 percent of $80,000 is $12,000. Two different splits and two different caps land on an identical break point. Above $80,000 of gross the choice between them is entirely about fee structure, not about the split, and any recruiter comparing the headline split alone is comparing the one thing that stops mattering first.
eXp publishes no post cap fee. Its page says capped agents keep 100 percent subject to standard transaction fees and never quantifies it. Real does publish its post cap number. That asymmetry is invisible in every comparison table I have seen, including the ones on this site before I corrected them.
The Keller Williams problem: there is no KW column
Every comparison article gives Keller Williams a cap figure. They are all guessing, and the reason is in KW's own rulebook.
The KWRI Policies and Guidelines Manual, revision 2/1/2024, states the cap in section 4.9.1.9 as a literal fill in the blank: the associate is paid a blank commission split until the market centre's portion reaches blank, the Company Dollar Cap, subject to approval by the Region and KWRI. The split is a blank too. There is no national number to quote because KW has not written one down.
What market centres do publish, on their own websites:
| Market centre | City | Company dollar cap | Other published figures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keller Williams Realty Boise | Boise, ID | $9,000 | $0 office fee, $275 E&O, $125 post cap |
| KW Arizona Realty | Scottsdale, AZ | $10,000 | Not published |
| KW Northeast Realty | Phoenix, AZ | $10,000 individual, $5,000 team agent, $30,000 aggregate for teams of 10 or more licensed agents | $150 post cap |
| Keller Williams Homewood | Birmingham, AL | $14,000 plus $3,000 to KWRI | 80/20 split, $120 a month |
| Keller Williams Realty Erie | Erie, PA | $18,000 stated inclusive of the $3,000 royalty | Not published |
| Keller Williams Premier Realty | Peoria, IL | $19,000 individual, $9,500 team member | $115 a month including E&O and Command |
Each figure from that market centre's own website, read 11 September 2026.
Erie publishes an $18,000 cap and says so inclusive of the $3,000 royalty, so the company dollar portion is $15,000. Peoria publishes $19,000 and caps the royalty separately, so the true cap is $22,000 by my arithmetic. Those two offices are $4,000 apart in real money and only $1,000 apart on the number they advertise. When a market centre quotes you a cap, the first question is whether the royalty is inside it or on top of it. Most recruiters will not volunteer that, and several will not know.
The split varies too. The common KW template reads 64/30/6, meaning 64 percent to the agent, 30 percent company dollar and 6 percent royalty. Boise and Peoria both publish it as 70/30 with the 6 percent stated separately. Homewood publishes a straight 80/20, and Boise offers an 80/20 franchise option alongside its 70/30 plan. KW corporate does not adjudicate between these framings anywhere I could find.
The royalty itself is the most consistent number in the structure. Every market centre I checked publishes 6 percent of gross commission income capped at $3,000 a year. But KW's own market centre administration documentation describes it as running on the first $50,000 of gross, or whatever amount is stated in that market centre's franchise documents. Every market centre I checked lands on $3,000, so treat it as effectively universal but set franchise agreement by franchise agreement, not nationally fixed. It runs on its own meter with its own anniversary date, confirmed by a KW support article dated 29 April 2026. If you are specifically weighing a KW office, the Keller Williams commission split in detail goes further into this.
The split math at 12, 24 and 36 deals
Here is the comparison done properly. The assumption is a $12,000 average commission per side, which on a 2.5 percent listing side fee is roughly a $480,000 sale. Change that and the ranking changes, which is the point of the calculator in the next section.
The Keller Williams column is shown twice, because there is no single KW answer. Boise and Peoria are both real offices publishing real numbers.
| Deals a year | eXp Realty | The Real Brokerage | KW Boise | KW Peoria |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 deals, $144,000 gross | $18,040 | $14,925 | $13,125 | $23,380 |
| 24 deals, $288,000 gross | $19,060 | $18,945 | $14,625 | $23,380 |
| 36 deals, $432,000 gross | $20,080 | $20,700 | $16,125 | $23,380 |
My arithmetic on each company's published figures. Excludes joining fees, year one only: $149 at eXp, $249 at Real, set locally at KW. Excludes errors and omissions throughout, because Real publishes no amount, eXp does not use the term, and Boise publishes $275 without a billing period. Peoria bundles it into its monthly fee, which is included. Assumes eXp's $25 and $60 transaction fees continue after capping, since those are the only ones eXp names, and models Real at the standard $285 post cap fee rather than the $100 Elite rate.
What the table actually says
The Keller Williams spread is wider than the gap between brands. At 36 deals Boise costs $16,125 and Peoria costs $23,380. That is a $7,255 difference inside one franchise, against a $620 difference between eXp and Real at the same volume. If you are choosing between KW offices you are making a bigger financial decision than if you are choosing between the three brands.
Real is cheaper than eXp up to 24 deals, and dearer from 25. Real's post cap fee of $285 a sale accumulates to its own $6,000 ceiling at 29 deals here, while eXp's $85 a deal never ceilings. The amounts either side are trivial: $115 at 24 deals, $135 at 25. The crossover moves with commission, to 33 deals at $6,000 a side, and it reverses at volume. Once Real's ceiling binds, Real grows at $50 a deal against eXp's $85, so from about 54 deals Real is cheaper again.
Peoria is flat because it publishes no post cap transaction fee. Once that agent clears $63,333 of gross, which is a little over five deals here, the variable meter stops entirely and only the $115 a month keeps running. It is the most expensive column at twelve deals and the only one that does not grow. It does not become the cheapest of the four until about 95 deals, and even at 100 it wins by only $520.
Where each one caps
- eXp: $80,000 of gross, which at $12,000 a deal is partway through the seventh.
- Real: $80,000 of gross, the same point, reached by a different route.
- KW Boise: $30,000 of gross for company dollar, partway through the third deal, then $125 a transaction after that.
- KW Peoria: $63,333 of gross for company dollar, partway through the sixth.
- The KWRI royalty at any KW office: $50,000 of gross, partway through the fifth deal here, on its own separate meter.
That last point is the one agents get wrong most often. Capping at Keller Williams is two events, not one, and they happen at different times on different anniversary dates.
The same three brokerages at half the commission
Average commission per deal changes the ranking, so here is the identical comparison at $6,000 a side, which on a 2.5 percent fee is roughly a $240,000 sale. Same offices, same published figures, same arithmetic.
| Deals a year | eXp Realty | The Real Brokerage | KW Boise | KW Peoria |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 deals, $72,000 gross | $16,440 | $12,300 | $12,875 | $23,380 |
| 24 deals, $144,000 gross | $19,060 | $16,950 | $14,375 | $23,380 |
| 36 deals, $216,000 gross | $20,080 | $20,700 | $15,875 | $23,380 |
My arithmetic on the same published figures. Joining fees and errors and omissions excluded, on the same basis as the table above.
Two things flip. At twelve deals Real is now the cheapest of the four rather than the second cheapest, because at $72,000 of gross it has not capped and is still paying 15 percent on a smaller number. And eXp does not cap at all at twelve deals here, because $72,000 is below the $80,000 it needs, so that agent pays the full 20 percent all year and never touches the 100 percent everyone was sold.
That is the single most useful thing on this page for a mid volume agent in a modest price market. The eXp and Real caps are not a feature you have unless your gross clears $80,000. Below it, the split is the whole story and the headline 100 percent is marketing. Keller Williams cuts the other way: Boise's company dollar caps at $30,000 of gross and Peoria's at $63,333, so a KW agent can cap in a year where a cloud brokerage agent never gets close.
Run it on your own numbers
The table above uses one commission assumption and two Keller Williams offices. Yours will differ. Put in your own deal count, your own average commission, and the cap and fees your local KW market centre actually publishes, and this returns what each brokerage would cost you for a year.
Published figures only. Excludes joining fees and errors and omissions at every brokerage. Assumes eXp's $25 broker review and $60 risk management continue after capping, since those are the only transaction fees eXp names; if there is a separate post cap amount, eXp does not publish it. Real is modelled at the common $12,000 solo cap. The KWRI royalty is 6 percent capped at $3,000, added on top of your cap unless you tick the box. Arithmetic, not advice.
The Keller Williams fields default to Boise, because Boise publishes all four numbers and many market centres publish none. If yours does not publish a post cap transaction fee, put zero in that box and see what happens at high volume. That field is worth more than the split at every level I tested. Tick the royalty box only if your office quotes its cap inclusive, the way Erie does.
What the tables leave out
Four things that do not fit in a comparison table and change the answer more than the split does.
Errors and omissions insurance
Real does not include it. Real states plainly that its compliance and broker review fee is not an errors and omissions premium, charges no such fee of its own, and leaves agents to carry their own policy, with some states mandating minimum coverage. Real publishes no amount. Keller Williams sets the method nationally, per side or monthly, and says the premium is determined by the provider, so the rate is local: Boise publishes $275 while Peoria bundles it into its $115 monthly fee. eXp does not use the term at all.
So two of the three hand you a cost they do not quantify. Real leaves the amount entirely to you and your state. Keller Williams sets the method nationally and leaves the rate to a provider and a market centre, and most market centres publish nothing. Most split comparisons leave the row out altogether.
Real's own paperwork disagrees with Real's own help pages
The contractual fee schedule addendum, the document an agent actually signs, is undated and still shows a $750 annual brokerage fee and a $30 per transaction processing fee. Real's dated help pages, last updated 31 August 2026, show $900 and $50. That is $150 a year on the annual fee plus $20 on every transaction, so $390 apart at twelve deals and $630 at twenty four. Read the addendum you are signing rather than the help centre, and ask which governs.
A live Real page still shows a superseded fee
Real's Elite post cap fee is now $100. Real's cost page, updated 31 August 2026, says it applies to transactions created on or after 1 September 2026. Other live Real pages, including the undated fee schedule addendum, still publish the superseded $129. Both numbers are on Real's own site today. The current one is $100.
The Keller Williams monthly fee is invisible until you ask
Boise publishes a $0 office fee. Homewood publishes $120. Peoria publishes $115 including E and O, Command and a website. Over a year that is a $1,440 spread between two KW offices before a single deal closes, and none of it appears in a cap comparison. There is also no published standalone price for Command anywhere. KWRI says only that Command access is included in a KW agent's technology fee, and that fee is set market centre by market centre.
What happens when you leave
Every recruiter explains how the income stream builds. None of them opens with what happens when you walk, and it is the part that differs most between these three.
Keller Williams: seven years, and a precedent worth knowing
KW profit share vests at seven years. A vested associate keeps receiving distributions after leaving, and KW has historically allowed those to be passed to beneficiaries. What is worth knowing is that in August 2023 Keller Williams announced that vested former agents who had joined before 1 April 2020 and left for a competitor would have their distributions cut from 100 percent to 5 percent, effective on or before 1 July 2024. It drew more than a dozen class action lawsuits, and KW rescinded it on 17 May 2024, before it ever took effect, so no distribution was actually reduced. The suits settled, with plaintiffs' counsel telling the US District Court in Nevada on 2 October 2024 that terms were finalised.
Announcement reported by Sarah Marx, HousingWire, 25 August 2023. Rescission and settlement reported by Brooklee Han, HousingWire, 17 May 2024 and 16 October 2024.
None of that is a reason to avoid Keller Williams. It is a reason to treat post departure income as a policy rather than a contract, at all three companies, because a policy is something the company can change and a contract is not.
eXp: vested agents may continue, on terms you cannot read
eXp's knowledge base says vested agents in the revenue share plan may continue to receive benefits after terminating their independent contractor agreement. Both qualifiers do work there, vested and may, and eXp points to a policies and procedures document it does not publish to define vesting. So residual income after you stop selling is possible, on terms you cannot read before you join.
Real: nothing published
Real publishes tier percentages, per sponsee maxima, a participation fee and a producing agent policy requiring $450 of revenue to Real in a rolling six month period to receive payments at all. On what happens to revenue share if you leave, its support pages are silent. Its equity awards do carry stated vesting, three years on the Elite award.
Ask it in writing and keep the answer: if I leave in three years, what happens to my share income, who decides, and can that be changed without my agreement? Keller Williams is the only one of the three with a published vesting period on share income, which is a point in its favour, and it is also the only one that has tried to reduce distributions to agents who had already vested. It is not the only one that has changed terms: eXp restructured its revenue share with REVenue Share 2.0, announced by press release on 1 May 2024. Real says nothing about what happens when you leave, so there is nothing there to compare.
Revenue share, profit share, and what they are really worth
All three sell an income stream beyond commission. They are not the same mechanism and they are not worth the same.
| eXp Realty | The Real Brokerage | Keller Williams | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Revenue share | Revenue share | Profit share |
| Paid from | Company revenue | Company revenue | Market centre profit |
| Levels | 7 | 5 | 7 |
| Published rates | Tier 1 only, 3.5 percent of adjusted gross | 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 percent of sponsee gross | Sponsor gets 50 percent of attributed profit, never below 5 percent |
| Cost to participate | None published | $175 a year plus 1.2 percent of each payment | None published |
| Vesting | Vested agents may continue, criteria not published | Not published | Seven years |
| Published totals | Over $160 million to US residential agents in 2025 | $60.5 million company expense in 2025 | More than $2.0 billion lifetime to 30 June 2024 |
eXp from its income page and knowledge base, read 9 September 2026. Real from its support pages, read 11 September 2026. Keller Williams from thrive.kw.com and a KWRI release dated 23 July 2024.
The difference that matters
Keller Williams pays out of profit. If your market centre does not make money, profit share pays nothing, and that is a real risk in a shrinking office. eXp and Real pay out of revenue, so they pay whether or not the company is profitable. That is more generous to agents and it is a real operating cost, $60.5 million at Real in 2025 alone. Both companies have also posted recent GAAP losses, though eXp names other drivers and Real names none. eXp's parent lost money in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025, attributing the 2024 figure largely to a litigation accrual and a goodwill impairment. Real lost $8.0 million in the second quarter of 2026, in a quarter that carried about $11.6 million of RE/MAX acquisition costs, more than the loss itself.
eXp figures from eXp World Holdings full year results releases. Real figures from its second quarter 2026 results release. Both read 11 September 2026.
eXp publishes a US income disclosure stating that the median revenue share for a typical Tier 1 agent is $0. That is eXp's own figure about eXp's own programme. Real publishes no median or typical figure at all, only tier percentages and per sponsee maxima. Keller Williams publishes lifetime totals and milestone counts but no median either. So of the three, only one tells you what a normal participant earns, and the answer is nothing. Join for the split and the platform. Treat the share as an option you may never exercise.
Real adds a wrinkle worth knowing: participating in revenue share costs $175 a year plus a 1.2 percent processing fee on every payment, and sponsors must meet a producing agent policy requiring $450 of revenue to Real in a rolling six month period to receive anything. It is the only one of the three that charges you to take part.
Who each one actually suits
eXp Realty
Suits a producing agent who wants a predictable national number and works across state lines. The fee structure is flat and predictable up to the cap: $85 a month, $85 a deal, $16,000 and done. The gap is that eXp will not tell you what the post cap transaction fees actually are, which is the one thing it should publish and does not, so the flatness is only proven for the part of the year before you cap. For the rest, read the full eXp Realty review.
The Real Brokerage
Suits an agent doing up to about 24 deals a year at this commission level, and anyone who values no monthly fee in a slow year, since Real charges nothing when nothing closes. Between 25 and 53 deals it is the dearer of the two cloud brokerages, then cheaper again. The RE/MAX acquisition closed on 24 August 2026 and it is too early to know what it means for the agent experience. For the detail, read the Real Brokerage review.
Keller Williams
Suits an agent who has found a good office, and punishes an agent who has not. That is not a cop out, it is the structure: the difference between two KW market centres is larger than the difference between the three brands. Get the cap, the monthly fee, the post cap transaction fee and whether the royalty is inside or outside the cap, all four in writing, before you compare KW to anything.
What I would actually do
Work out your own gross commission income for last year and divide it by your average commission per deal. If your gross was under about $80,000, the eXp and Real caps will never apply to you and you are choosing on support, not on split. Keller Williams is different: at Boise's numbers the company dollar caps in the third deal and the royalty in the fifth. If your deal count is over twenty, the spread across all three brands at a sensible office is a few thousand dollars a year, which is one deal, and you should choose on what actually grows your business rather than on fee arithmetic.
The agents who obsess over splits are usually the ones who have not yet solved lead generation, and no cap structure fixes that. If that is you, how to choose a brokerage as a new agent is a better starting point than this page, and what it actually costs to be a Realtor covers the costs that fall outside the brokerage entirely.
Frequently asked questions
Is eXp or Keller Williams cheaper?
It depends entirely on which Keller Williams office. At 24 deals a year on a $12,000 average commission, an eXp agent pays about $19,060 to the brokerage, a KW Boise agent pays about $14,625, and a KW Peoria agent pays about $23,380. Boise and Peoria are the same brand. Because Keller Williams publishes no national cap and no national split, the honest answer is that you cannot compare eXp to Keller Williams, only to a named market centre.
What is the Keller Williams cap?
There is no national Keller Williams cap. The KWRI Policies and Guidelines Manual, revision 2/1/2024, leaves the cap as a blank line each market centre fills in, subject to Region and KWRI approval. Published individual agent caps run from $9,000 in Boise to $19,000 in Peoria, and $5,000 to $30,000 once team plans are counted. Some offices quote the cap inclusive of the $3,000 KWRI royalty and others quote it exclusive, so always ask which.
Does eXp charge a fee after you cap?
eXp publishes no post cap amount. Its income page says only that once capped, agents keep 100 percent of their commission for the remainder of their anniversary year, subject to standard transaction fees, and it never quantifies those. The only per transaction fees eXp names anywhere are a $25 broker review fee and a $60 risk management fee. Any figure you see quoted as eXp's post cap fee is not coming from eXp.
Is Real cheaper than eXp?
Up to 24 deals a year on a $12,000 average commission, yes. From 25 deals, no, because Real's post cap fee of $285 a sale accumulates while eXp's per transaction cost stays flat at $85. At the common $12,000 solo cap, Real caps at $80,000 of gross, the same point eXp reaches its $16,000 cap. Real's signed fee schedule addendum says the agent cap is most commonly $4,000, $6,000 or $12,000 but could be another amount, so confirm yours. Brokerage costs only, excluding joining fees and errors and omissions, from figures published in September 2026.
What is the difference between revenue share and profit share?
eXp and Real pay revenue share, which comes out of company revenue on transactions closed by agents you sponsored. Keller Williams pays profit share, which comes out of a market centre's profit and pays nothing if that office is not profitable. eXp and Keller Williams both run seven level structures; Real runs five. eXp's own income disclosure states that the median revenue share for a typical Tier 1 agent is $0.
Did The Real Brokerage buy RE/MAX?
Yes. Real completed its acquisition of RE/MAX Holdings on 24 August 2026, and the listed entity is now Real REMAX Group Inc., trading on Nasdaq as REAX since 25 August 2026. The combined group reports more than 180,000 agents, over 100,000 of them in the United States and Canada. Real's agent facing fee model is unchanged and no Real fee page has been updated to address the merged entity.
Which is best for a new agent?
None of the three on cost alone. At low production the eXp and Real caps never come into play and you pay the full split percentage on everything. Keller Williams market centre caps are reached at much lower gross, so a KW cap can apply at a volume where the other two never would. What matters far more at that stage is supervision, training and whether someone answers the phone when a contract goes wrong. Ask what happens on a deal that falls apart, and get the answer from an agent who is not compensated for recruiting you.
About the author. Saad Jamil is a licensed Realtor in Virginia, DC, Maryland and West Virginia, licensed since 2007, with more than $500 million in career sales and over 900 homes closed. He is a top 1 percent producer with Samson Properties in Chantilly, Virginia, and he is still selling today. His sales record and client reviews are public on his Zillow profile.
This article is educational content, not legal, financial or career advice. All figures are as published by the named companies and read in September 2026. Brokerage splits, caps and fees change without notice, and Keller Williams figures vary by market centre. Verify anything material in writing before you sign. Saad Jamil has never been affiliated with eXp Realty, Keller Williams or The Real Brokerage, receives no compensation from any of them, and sells competing coaching and educational products, which are linked above.
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