Can You Put a CoStar Export Into Claude or ChatGPT? Read the July 2026 Clause First

Not without CoStar’s express written permission, if your firm’s CoStar License Agreement was signed on or after July 6, 2026. Section 4(b)(viii) of CoStar’s License Agreement Terms and Conditions, effective that day, and the matching section of its website Terms of Use, last revised the same day, bar a licensee from exposing the licensed product to “artificial intelligence tools outside of the CoStar Product” unless CoStar agrees in writing. Uploading an Excel export to Claude, pasting a comp set into a ChatGPT window and pointing an AI connector at a folder of CoStar files all send CoStar data to an AI tool outside CoStar. A Subscription Form signed since July 6, for extra seats, products or markets, likely brings the new terms with it, because the terms define the License Agreement to include a Subscription Form. Firms that signed earlier are bound by older versions, mapped below, which say less about AI but are not a free pass. This is PSV’s reading of CoStar’s published text as of September 24, 2026, not legal advice; your signed agreement controls.

Exports are caught because of a definition. The License Terms and Conditions define the CoStar Product to include “any information derived therefrom,” so a file that left the portal through CoStar’s own export button is still the product for the purposes of the clause, and on PSV’s reading so is a figure retyped from the screen. The text carves out nothing for enterprise plans, zero data retention or model training switched off: the question it asks is whether the data reaches an AI tool outside CoStar, not what that tool does with it afterwards. The one exception it offers is CoStar’s express written permission, which is the route for a firm that wants AI working over CoStar data. The clause’s second half, a ban on training, fine-tuning or improving AI systems with CoStar data, matters for anyone building models, but the answer on uploads rests on the first half alone.

The AI clause sits in a list of things a licensee may not do “without the express written permission from CoStar,” and it has two prongs. The first bars exposing the licensed product to artificial intelligence tools outside CoStar’s own product. The second bars using any portion of the product, or data generated from it, to train, fine-tune or improve any artificial intelligence or machine learning system, and it names input to generative AI and retrieval-augmented generation as covered uses. The first prong decides the everyday questions: an upload, a paste, a connector, a shared AI workspace. The second reaches anyone training or fine-tuning a model, or loading a knowledge base that an AI searches to answer questions. The same words appear as §4(b)(viii) in both the Terms of Use and the License Terms and Conditions.

Three more changes arrived in the same revision. A new passcode sentence, in §11(a) of the Terms of Use and §9(a) of the License Terms and Conditions, says passcodes may not be shared with any third-party AI service, including AI agents, and on a breach CoStar reserves the right to raise fees to account for any additional users it detects, on top of its other remedies. A new §4(b)(iv) bars circumventing access controls, use limits or security features, or putting an unreasonable load on CoStar’s systems. And §3(d)(iii) of the License Terms, the condition on exports into productivity software, still bars exposing information to an environment third parties can access but drops the example of open artificial intelligence tools that the February 2025 version named. PSV reads that deletion as tidying up after the explicit clause rather than a loosening, since §4(b)(viii) now reaches AI tools of every kind.

That changes the test this article originally applied. The version published on August 16 leaned on the “automatic device or manual process” wording in §4(b)(iii) and drew the line between a bot copying the portal and a person using the export button. Under the July 2026 terms that line no longer settles AI questions. The test is where the data goes, not whether a script or a person moved it: an analyst who exports a file by hand and drags it into a chat window exposes the product to an AI tool as surely as an agent would. Section 4(b)(iii) still bars scrapers, robots and browser automation, and §4(b)(viii) now bars the destination.

CoStar’s License Terms and Conditions define the Agreement as the terms in effect when the License Agreement was fully executed, and the current page sends anyone who signed before July 6, 2026 to an archive that maps signing windows to versions. Agreements executed from February 6, 2025 through July 5, 2026 run on the February 6, 2025 terms; from July 28, 2023 through February 5, 2025 on the July 28, 2023 terms; and from June 1, 2022 through July 27, 2023 on the June 1, 2022 terms. Older windows go back to June 2015, and a firm whose date falls outside the table is told to contact its account executive. Two questions stay open. The website Terms of Use now carry the AI ban and say a signed License Agreement controls where the two conflict, while the 2025 License Terms contain an entire-agreement clause and a rule that they may be amended only in writing by all parties (§19(b) and (c), with the same text in 2023), and neither version mentions the Terms of Use; whether the website ban reaches an older subscriber is a question for counsel. And the agreements renew automatically for one-year periods, but the public documents do not say whether a renewal brings in the terms current at the time. Confirm your execution date, and the terms your renewals run on, with your CoStar account executive.

Not officially, as far as the public record shows. Anthropic’s connector directory at claude.com/connectors, which now redirects to claude.com/marketplace/connectors-plugins, listed more than 800 entries on September 24, 2026, and none of them came from CoStar, LoopNet or Crexi. The connectors PSV found there from real estate software and data vendors were Yardi Virtuoso, Yardi Matrix, AppFolio Realm-X and MSCI. That check covers Claude only; PSV did not check ChatGPT’s app directory. PSV also found no self-serve CoStar developer documentation, so access beyond the logged-in portal appears to be a commercial conversation with CoStar, and whether any data feed or API is available under contract is a question only CoStar can answer.

That makes any “CoStar MCP server” a third-party build. The Model Context Protocol is the open standard Claude connectors use to hand data from another system to a model, so an MCP server built around CoStar data, by a firm or by a vendor, exists to expose CoStar data to an AI tool outside CoStar. Under the July 6, 2026 terms it needs CoStar’s express written permission before it runs, even if all it reads is a folder of exports on the firm’s own drive. If a vendor’s server holds a user’s passcode, it breaks the passcode rules, §9(a) in the 2023, 2025 and 2026 License Terms, which limit passcodes to Authorized Users and forbid sharing them, and the July 2026 text names AI agents outright. A self-built server that logs in automatically runs into the §4(b)(iii) ban on any automatic device that monitors or copies the product. MCP servers over a firm’s own systems of record are a separate question, and a legitimate one.

The table below replaces the four-path comparison this article carried in August, which recommended in-license exports analyzed by AI downstream of the portal. That pattern is the one the July 2026 clause reaches. Each row names a use, the answer for agreements signed on or after July 6, 2026, the answer for firms on earlier terms, and PSV’s read. “Signed earlier” covers three different documents, so check the version table above before relying on a cell.

Not under the July 2026 text, which governs agreements signed on or after July 6, 2026. An enterprise workspace with model training disabled and zero data retention is still an artificial intelligence tool outside the CoStar Product, and §4(b)(viii) contains no exception for it. Those settings govern what the AI provider may do with a firm’s data once it arrives; the CoStar clause governs whether CoStar data may arrive at all. The plan type matters only when reading the February 6, 2025 terms, which name “open artificial intelligence tools” in §3(d)(iii) without defining the phrase. A firm could argue that a contractually closed enterprise workspace is not open, but it would also have to show that the workspace counts as the productivity software §3(d) permits, and that it is not an environment third parties can access. PSV reads that as unresolved and leaning restrictive, and CoStar has not published a view. Either way, the fix is written permission from CoStar, not a setting in an admin console.

One open question deserves its own line. Every version’s permission to move data into other software names word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and general-purpose productivity software, and much of that software now has AI built in: Microsoft 365 Copilot inside Excel, Gemini inside Google Sheets. PSV reads running that built-in AI over a CoStar export as exposing the data to an AI tool outside CoStar under the July 2026 terms, even though the spreadsheet itself is a permitted destination. That is PSV’s reading of the text, not a CoStar statement, and it is probably the most common version of this problem in practice, because the analyst never opens a chatbot at all. Ask CoStar how it treats AI features inside permitted productivity software before assuming either answer.

A good deal remains open. AI inside CoStar’s own product is outside the clause, which targets tools outside it; PSV has not reviewed what AI features CoStar offers there. A firm’s own data is its own: rent rolls, T-12s, the deal pipeline, and the lease information the firm itself submitted to CoStar’s Lease Analysis or Comps, which §9(a) of the Terms of Use says the firm owns. That ownership covers what the firm submitted, not the CoStar-sourced fields that can sit beside it in the same export. Public records pulled directly from the county or city, such as assessor rolls, recorded deeds and permits, sit outside CoStar’s terms; the same records exported from CoStar’s Public Record product do not. Vendor-published Claude connectors, such as the Yardi Matrix connector Yardi announced on June 17, 2026 and the MSCI connector in the same directory, can be used under those vendors’ own terms, which deserve the same careful read. And a firm can ask CoStar for written permission or a negotiated AI rider, the only route to AI over CoStar data itself.

The workflow PSV would run for site selection or comp support starts from those sources. Inputs: the firm’s own deal list and buy-box criteria, the T-12s and rent rolls from its own deals, the lease comps it submitted itself, public records pulled from the source, and Yardi Matrix market data through its Claude connector where the firm subscribes. The workflow normalizes those into one schema, applies the screening criteria with every calculation done in code rather than by the language model, and returns a shortlist memo in which each row is traced to its source file and date. The reviewer is the analyst who owns the territory. The approval gate is the CoStar line: any CoStar figure the decision needs is checked inside CoStar by a licensed user, and no CoStar data is pasted into the AI without CoStar’s written permission. No owner is contacted and no letter of intent moves until a person has done that check.

This article first published on August 16, 2026 with a recommendation to analyze in-license CoStar exports with AI downstream of the portal. The terms that contradicted it had been in effect for 41 days, and the article cited the Terms of Use as accessed that same day. The record below is built from CoStar’s own documents and from Internet Archive captures of its Terms of Use, oldest first.

PSV found no CoStar announcement and no trade-press story on the July 2026 AI revision as of September 24, 2026; the new passcode sentence had been quoted in at least one AI consultancy’s guide by July 30, 2026. The change arrived as a new revision date at the bottom of two long legal pages, which is worth knowing for anyone who relies on a vendor’s terms: the only reliable alert is rereading the document itself.

• February 16, 2024: the website Terms of Use, as captured by the Internet Archive on March 16, 2024, already allow printing or copying public CoStar content into productivity software only if nothing is exposed to an environment third parties can access, open artificial intelligence tools included.
• August 12, 2024: a Terms of Use revision, captured September 25, 2024, adds exporting to that permission and keeps the open AI tools condition. There is still no AI clause.
• February 6, 2025: new License Terms and Conditions for subscribers add the same condition as §3(d)(iii), naming open artificial intelligence tools, with no training or retrieval-augmented generation clause.
• May 8, 2025: a Terms of Use revision, still the current version in a May 1, 2026 capture, carries no AI clause and no AI passcode sentence.
• July 6, 2026: CoStar revises both the Terms of Use and the License Terms and Conditions. Section 4(b)(viii) adds the AI clause, the passcode sections add the AI services sentence and fee remedy, §4(b)(iv) adds the circumvention ban, and the License Terms drop the open AI example from §3(d)(iii). An August 15, 2026 capture shows the revised Terms of Use.
• August 16, 2026: PSV publishes this article, recommending in-license exports analyzed by AI downstream of the portal, a pattern the July terms already barred without written permission.
• September 24, 2026: PSV corrects the article, withdraws that recommendation, adds the version map and the use-by-use table, and records each change here.