The question new broker-owners agonize over is what split to offer, and it is usually asked as a recruiting question: what number wins the agent. The published economics of the industry suggest it is the wrong frame. A split is the price of a service bundle, and the brokerages that publish their pricing have already shown everyone the itemized version. The commission being split is itself negotiated on each side of the deal, a point the NAR settlement FAQs set out in detail.
Why it matters: a broker who sets the split first and discovers the operations bill second has committed to delivering support at a price picked before the cost was known. The agents recruited on that number then experience whatever the leftover money funds, and the recruiting promise becomes an operations promise someone has to keep.
Dig in: read the published schedules as budgets. eXp’s published income page pairs an 80/20 split and $16,000 cap with itemized per-file lines ($25 broker review, $60 risk management) and an $85 monthly fee. Real’s published schedule pairs an 85/15 split and caps in the $4,000–$12,000 range with a $750 annual brokerage fee, a $30 per-transaction processing fee, and a compliance and broker review fee moving from $40 to $50 on September 1, 2026. Fathom’s EDGE plan pairs a small split with flat per-file fees and a $9,000 cap. Three different answers, one identical logic: every service the brokerage delivers is funded by a named line. At the other end of the structure, Anywhere’s FY2024 filings show agents keeping 80.3% of commission income in aggregate, a number that has held stable for eleven quarters, with the support bundle funded from the company’s 19.7%.
The budget question underneath any split. Whatever number goes on the recruiting page, the company dollar it produces has to fund a specific list: the support the brokerage has promised its agents, the compliance review on every file (a per-hour cost against per-file revenue), the technology seats, the E&O structure, and the operations desk that delivers the brokerage’s culture dozens of times a year per agent. A 90/10 split at low volume produces a company dollar that funds almost none of it; the broker then subsidizes the gap with their own unpaid hours, which is a real cost booked nowhere. When Keith ran operations at HomeCity, a $500 million-a-year brokerage in Austin and Dallas, moving the back office off payroll took net margin from roughly 3% to over 25%, which is the same arithmetic seen from the company-dollar side.
Two more tests before the number ships. First, computability: whatever the structure (tiers, caps, lead-source distinctions), an agent should be able to compute their own paycheck from the published schedule without calling anyone. The legacy big-box pattern of splits that vary by lead source against a trailing-GCI tier table, recalculated annually, fails that test, and agents price the opacity as risk. Second, completeness: in 2026 the comparison set includes revenue share and equity. The large platforms publish tiered revenue share percentages and stock-award schedules alongside their fees, and those programs are part of the bundle the split is competing against. Whether a brokerage offers them or deliberately does not, the agreement is where the whole answer belongs in writing.
What we are not telling you: which number to pick. Empower does not design compensation plans, and this piece offers no recommended split. That decision belongs to the broker, priced against their market and their promises. What the operations side can say is only this: whichever number you pick, write down what it must fund before you publish it, because your agents will experience the funding, not the number.
The honest limits on this piece: the platform figures are read from the companies’ own published schedules and filings as of August 2026. Fee schedules change, plans vary by market and program, and none of the structures map cleanly onto each other. Anywhere’s 80.3% is an aggregate across brands and markets, not an offer any agent receives. Empower is not affiliated with any brokerage named here.
The short version: set the bundle before the split. Decide what the brokerage will actually deliver (review, coordination, payment speed, support) and what that costs in the shape it arrives, then price the split that funds it. The platforms’ published schedules are the closest thing the industry has to an open book on that arithmetic, and the one thing they agree on is that the split and the service list are a single decision. The document where both get written down is the agent agreement and its fee schedule.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a typical real estate agent commission split?
Published structures range from traditional percentage splits, through capped splits where the agent keeps everything after an annual cap, to flat-fee models where the agent keeps the commission and pays itemized per-file fees. Aggregate public-company filings show agents keeping roughly four-fifths of commission income economy-wide. The structures differ enough that the useful comparison is not the headline number but what the company’s share funds.
How should a new brokerage set its commission split?
Work backwards from the service bundle: list what the brokerage will deliver (file review, coordination, technology, E&O, support) and what each costs in the shape it arrives (per file, per agent, or fixed). The split then has to produce a company dollar that funds that list at realistic volume. Setting the number first and discovering the bill second is the common failure mode; the number is a price, and prices need costs under them.
How do 100% commission brokerages make money?
By unbundling: the agent keeps the commission and pays itemized fees (per-transaction charges for review and processing, monthly technology fees, annual dues), so each service is priced on its own line instead of being funded from a percentage split. The model works at scale because the per-file fees ride the same meter as the brokerage’s per-file costs.
Should the commission split be in the agent’s written agreement?
The split, the fees, the cap if any, and how and when commissions are disbursed all belong in the written agreement or a fee-schedule addendum it references, both because agents should be able to read their own economics, and because the written contract is the foundation of the agent’s independent contractor status for federal tax purposes. Consult counsel on the drafting; this is not legal advice.
