The agent favourite, owned by the company that sells you the leads
6Degrees vs Follow Up Boss
Follow Up Boss is the product agents actually like, and the reason is simple: it does one job, speed to lead, better than anything else in the category. It is also owned by Zillow, which sells you the leads it then helps you work. Whether that matters is a judgment about the next five years, not about the software.
The short answer
Pick Follow Up Boss if paid leads are your business and speed to first contact is the number you are judged on. It is the better product for that and it is not close. Pick 6Degrees if the half of your business that arrives through people is the half you cannot account for. Running both is reasonable, and the export exists so you can.
Eight points, side by side
Checked 13 August 2026 against followupboss.com/pricing. These are the eight things 6Degrees is built to win, which is the honest way to read any vendor’s table: it is our axis, and you are allowed to decide it is the wrong one.
| What it does | 6Degrees | Follow Up Boss |
|---|---|---|
| Whose ledger it is | YesYours. It spans every agent and brokerage you refer to. | PartlyYour account, on Zillow’s platform. Read the pricing page and then read who owns it. |
| Timestamped lead registration | YesYes. The server sets the date. The client cannot. | NoNo referral object. A deal’s create date is a field anyone on the team can edit. |
| Claim validity window | YesYes, where you want one. A booked showing extends it 30 days. | NoNo. Automations can imitate one until somebody edits the stage. |
| Published tie-break rule | YesYes. First verified tag, and the buyer’s own confirmation outranks it. | NoLead routing rules assign work. They do not resolve two claims on one buyer. |
| One ledger across every brokerage you work with | YesYes. Every referral you have sent or received, in one ledger. | NoNothing models an outside agent, a referral fee or what is owed to you. |
| Server-dated interaction trail | YesYes. Create-only. Nobody can backdate or delete a call. | PartlyThe timeline is excellent and an admin can edit it. An editable date is not evidence. |
| Evidence pack you can put in front of a broker | YesYes. One dated pack: terms, timestamp, confirmation, site visit, timeline. | NoNo. You would export a report and assemble the story yourself. |
| Self-serve export and cancel | YesYes. CSV and JSON, any day, no ticket. | YesYes. $69 a seat, 14-day trial, no contract, and it cancels without a fight. |
What Follow Up Boss does better
- 1/Speed to lead. Call, text and email in one inbox, and the mobile app is the best in the category.
- 2/Published pricing in a market where five of the products we checked publish none: $69 a seat, Pro $499 for ten, Platform $1,000 for thirty.
- 3/A 14-day trial and no contract, which is rarer here than it should be.
- 4/The deepest integration list in US residential, and it parses Zillow leads better than anyone, for obvious reasons.
What 6Degrees does that Follow Up Boss does not
- 1/A referral is an object with a server-set date, a validity window and a stated rule for who wins when two people claim the same buyer.
- 2/One ledger of every referral you have sent and received, with the fee, the counterparty and what is still owed.
- 3/The activity trail is create-only at the database level, so a call logged in March cannot be edited in September.
- 4/We do not sell you leads, so we have no reason to be interested in where yours came from.
The thing both products are arguing about
A referral has a fee, a counterparty, a deadline and a rival. That makes it an object with a state machine, not a note on a contact. Once you accept that, the only remaining question is whose database the object lives in, and the answer decides who can still read it after you stop working with that brokerage.
