Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket image size requirements

Does Rightmove actually publish a minimum photo resolution?

Search for "Rightmove image size" and a number usually comes back, often 1024 by 768, sometimes 812 by 609. Neither figure appears in Rightmove's own public rulebook. The Agent and Developer Technical Guidelines of January 2026, the document that governs everything a member uploads, covers image content in detail across 30 sections and a Data Quality Requirements Table, and at no point does it state a minimum width, height, megapixel count or file size for a property photograph.

What the document does state is precise. A watermark must be white on photographs or grayscale on floorplans, translucent at 30 per cent opacity or lower, and no larger than one quarter of the overall image. Text on an image is prohibited, with a single exception for an arrow or outline marking an unclear location in a drone shot. Borders, banners and corner flashes are prohibited outright. A composite image, meaning an image inside an image, is prohibited, so each gallery slot holds exactly one photograph. None of these rules is a resolution figure. They are content and presentation rules, and a photograph can break every one of them at any pixel size, or comply with all of them at a size a phone captures without effort.

The one number that does exist sits in the accessibility section added for 2026. Every property photograph needs alternative text that describes it clearly, in line with the European Accessibility Act and similar law. An undescriptive file name such as a raw camera reference counts as a failure. That is a text requirement, not a pixel requirement, and it is worth doing regardless of any number, because a screen reader user gets nothing from a gallery of photographs with no description attached.

What does Zoopla require for photo count and quality?

Zoopla's member criteria, the document governing what an agent may upload, states that Zoopla may limit the number of photographs displayed by a member to 20 images per property. That is the only quantified image rule either major portal publishes. Beyond the count, the wording is a quality standard rather than a technical one: photograph content must be of good quality, must relate to the property or the member profile, and must not contain telephone numbers, email addresses, personal data, member promotions or advertisements for other products.

Twenty is therefore the sensible planning ceiling for a standard house shoot, not because a bigger gallery is disallowed everywhere, but because the tightest portal in the group sets the working limit. A shoot planned for 25 or 30 images produces a set that needs editing down anyway, so plan for the smaller number and choose the strongest frame for every room rather than filling slots with near duplicates of the same reception room from three angles.

What about OnTheMarket, does it publish anything at all?

Not in the same way. OnTheMarket's public terms of use, the document a website visitor can read without logging in, cover user conduct and intellectual property and say nothing about photograph specifications. The operational rules for members, the equivalent of Rightmove's technical guidelines or Zoopla's member criteria, sit behind sign in on OnTheMarket Expert, the professional portal for agents. A member agency has to check its own contract and its feed provider's documentation for whatever OnTheMarket actually enforces on upload, because there is no public page to cite.

This matters for a different reason than photo quality. OnTheMarket's most publicised differentiator has always been exclusivity rather than image specification: many of its agents list a property as Only With Us, meaning it is available on OnTheMarket for a period before it reaches Rightmove or Zoopla. That is a marketing decision about timing, not a technical rule about pixels, and it is the detail worth knowing about the third portal rather than a number that is not published anywhere a non member can read.

What format and file size should you actually shoot for?

JPEG is the format every UK portal and every agency CRM feed is built around, and there is no reason to fight that convention with a TIFF or a RAW file, which none of the three platforms is built to accept from a standard feed. Beyond format, treat the absence of a published ceiling as permission to upload the real file rather than a compressed copy your editing software produces by default. A phone or a mirrorless camera today comfortably exceeds anything a 2015 era portal spec would have demanded, so the practical constraint is your own upload tool and the patience of a buyer waiting for a slow gallery to load, not a number the portal will reject you for missing.

The one place file size does bite is video and virtual tours, which sit under a separate part of Rightmove's rulebook. Full details video must contain property specific content only, must not carry direct or third party advertising, and must not direct a viewer to your own website. None of that is a codec or resolution spec either. It is, again, a content rule dressed up as a technical section, which is the pattern across all three portals once you read the primary documents rather than the secondhand version that circulates between agencies.

How do floorplans and the EPC graphic fit into the photo count?

Zoopla's 20 image cap is worded around photographs specifically. The member criteria do not say whether a floorplan or an EPC graphic counts against that number, and the absence of a stated exclusion is not the same as a stated inclusion, so the honest position is that this is unconfirmed rather than settled either way. Treat the floorplan and the EPC as separate upload fields until Zoopla states otherwise in its own terms, and do not assume a spare slot exists in the 20 if a listing already carries close to that many photographs. The rules that actually govern a floorplan, including whether one is required at all and who is liable if it is wrong, are a longer subject covered in floorplan requirements for UK property listings.

Rightmove treats the floorplan as part of the same image carousel infrastructure as photographs for the purposes of watermarking, which is why its 30 per cent opacity rule specifically calls out grayscale for floorplans as distinct from white for photographs, but the technical guidelines do not carve out a separate numeric limit for floorplan images the way Zoopla does for photographs.

Does the number of photographs actually change how a listing performs?

Neither portal publishes an algorithmic bonus for image count, and no primary document ties gallery size to search ranking. What the primary documents do establish, repeatedly, is that the first image in the carousel is what a buyer sees on the search results card before they click through, which makes the lead photograph the single most consequential decision in the shoot regardless of how many images follow it. A tight set of 15 strong photographs, correctly ordered, outperforms a padded set of 24 where the sixth through the twelfth are variations on the same angle of the same room. The diagnosis of why a specific listing is not converting views into enquiries, which goes well beyond photo count, is covered in why a Rightmove listing is not getting views.

Portal	Published image cap	Published pixel or resolution spec	Watermark rule
Rightmove	None published	None published	White on photos or grayscale on floorplans, 30 per cent opacity or lower, one quarter of the image or smaller
Zoopla	20 images per property	None published	Not specified in the member criteria
OnTheMarket	Not published outside the Expert member portal	Not published outside the Expert member portal	Not published outside the Expert member portal

Frequently asked questions

Is there a real minimum pixel size for Rightmove photos?

Not one that Rightmove publishes. The Agent and Developer Technical Guidelines of January 2026 cover watermarks, composite images, text on images and accessibility, and none of those sections states a minimum width, height or megapixel count. A specific pixel figure circulating in an agency training document did not come from Rightmove's current public rulebook.

Does Zoopla's 20 image cap include the floorplan?

Zoopla's member criteria describe the limit as applying to photographs, and do not state whether a floorplan or EPC graphic is counted separately or folded into that number. Treat it as unconfirmed and plan for 20 property photographs plus the floorplan and EPC as their own fields, rather than assuming a spare slot exists.

Can a phone camera meet the technical bar?

Yes, on the published rules. Since neither major portal states a minimum resolution, a modern phone camera exceeds any technical threshold either has ever documented. What separates a phone shot that works from one that does not is composition, light and the content rules, such as keeping people and identifiable individuals out of frame unless the member holds the relevant membership type, rather than the sensor behind the lens.

Why does OnTheMarket publish so much less than the other two?

OnTheMarket operates as a members only portal with an agent facing professional area, OnTheMarket Expert, that sits behind sign in, rather than a public technical guidelines document the way Rightmove and Zoopla both maintain. A member has to rely on their own contract and CRM feed documentation for anything OnTheMarket enforces at upload, because the public terms of use cover general website conduct rather than photograph specifications.

Sources

• Rightmove Agent and Developer Technical Guidelines, January 2026, Rightmove
• Zoopla membership criteria, Zoopla
• Zoopla member criteria and guidelines, effective 1 December 2025, Zoopla
• OnTheMarket Expert, OnTheMarket
• OnTheMarket terms of use, OnTheMarket

Last verified: 2026-09-06