Commission Splits and Cap Models: How Agents Keep More (2026)

Ask most agents what their split is and they will give you a number. Ask what they actually keep and the room goes quiet. The commission split is the most discussed and least understood number in a real estate career, because the headline percentage is only the first line of a longer equation that includes caps, desk fees, franchise fees, and per-transaction charges. Two agents on identical splits can take home wildly different amounts, and an agent who chooses a brokerage on the split alone is choosing on incomplete information. Understanding the full model, and matching it to your real volume, is one of the highest-leverage financial decisions in the business.

How Traditional Splits Work and Climb

At a traditional brokerage, you and the firm divide each commission by an agreed percentage. New and developing agents commonly start near a 50/50 or 60/40 split in the brokerage favor, in exchange for training, brand, leads, and support. As production rises, the split improves on a tier schedule toward 70/30, 80/20, or 90/10. The logic is that a productive agent needs less hand-holding and brings the brokerage more total dollars even at a smaller percentage, so the firm trades a bigger cut of each deal for a bigger pile of deals.

The trap is treating the split as the whole cost. A generous split paired with a heavy fee stack can net less than a modest split with none. This is why the split conversation belongs next to your GCI and pipeline planning: your split only matters in proportion to the gross commission income flowing through it, and the right split at 12 deals a year is frequently the wrong one at 40. Model the percentage against your real annual volume, not against the version of your business you hope to have someday.

The Cap Model: Why High Producers Love It

A cap is the maximum total the brokerage will collect from your splits in an anniversary year. Keller Williams popularized the capped model, and eXp Realty uses a widely published $16,000 cap. The mechanics are simple and powerful: you pay your normal split on each deal until the brokerage portion reaches the cap, and from that point you keep 100% of your commission for the rest of the year, minus small per-transaction fees. For a high producer, the back half of the year is dramatically more profitable than the front half.

The cap reframes the whole season. An agent on a $16,000 cap who closes enough early deals to cap by midyear keeps nearly everything from July forward, which makes the marginal value of a late-year closing far higher than an early-year one. This is exactly why capped models reward volume and punish inconsistency: an agent who never caps pays the split on every single deal and captures none of the upside. Before choosing a capped brokerage, benchmark your production honestly. A realtor performance benchmark against transaction-volume norms tells you whether you will realistically cap, which is the entire question the model turns on.

100 Percent and Flat-Fee Models

At the far end sit 100% commission and flat-fee brokerages, which charge a monthly desk fee or a fixed per-transaction fee instead of taking a percentage split. A high producer keeps almost everything; the brokerage makes its money on predictable fees rather than a slice of each deal. The trade is that these models typically provide little to no lead generation, marketing, or support, so you fund your own pipeline. That makes them ideal for established agents who already have a strong sphere and referral system and a website generating owned leads, and poor for new agents who still need the brokerage to feed them.

The 100% model is essentially a bet on yourself. You exchange the brokerage split for a fixed cost and take full responsibility for generating business. For an agent with a proven, self-sufficient pipeline, that bet pays off enormously; for an agent still dependent on brokerage leads, the fixed fees become overhead with nothing behind them. The deciding factor is not ambition but current self-sufficiency: can you reliably produce business without the brokerage handing it to you? If you are funding your own lead generation, embedding tools like a mortgage calculator on your own site turns that marketing spend into an exclusive, owned pipeline that justifies the flat-fee structure.

The Fee Stack That Erases Your Split

The reason split-shopping fails is the fee stack hiding beneath the percentage. Beyond the split itself, brokerages may charge a monthly desk fee, a franchise fee (often a percentage of commission off the top before the split, common at franchised brands), a per-transaction fee, technology fees, errors-and-omissions insurance fees, and more. A 90/10 split with a $1,000 monthly desk fee and a $300 per-deal fee can cost more than a 70/30 split with none, depending entirely on your volume. The percentage is marketing; the fee stack is the price.

The only honest method is to build the total-cost comparison. For each brokerage you are considering, take your real trailing-twelve-month production and compute total annual brokerage cost: split dollars plus every fee, accounting for the cap if there is one. Then compare net take-home across models on identical volume. This is the same net-after-everything discipline that separates listing-side and buyer-side economics, where the headline commission and the take-home are very different numbers. Do the full math and the right model is usually obvious, and frequently not the one with the most attractive split on the recruiting flyer.

Match the Model to Your Real Volume

There is no universally best commission model; there is only the model that fits your current production. At low and inconsistent volume, a higher split with no fees and real brokerage support frequently nets the most, because you benefit from the leads and training and never reach a cap anyway. At high and steady volume, a capped or 100% model wins decisively, because you capture the upside the split would have taken. The break-even moves as your business grows, so the right answer at one stage becomes the wrong answer at the next, which is why this is a decision to revisit annually rather than once.

Treat your commission model as a number you manage, not a default you inherited. Run your real production against each option once a year, the way you would re-underwrite any major cost. The agents who keep the most are rarely the ones who found the most generous split; they are the ones who matched the model to their actual volume and revisited the fit as that volume changed. The owned-lead systems that make the high-self-sufficiency models viable are laid out on the lead generation tools for real estate agents page, because the more of your own pipeline you build, the more freedom you have to choose the model that keeps the most.