Compass, Inc. provides residential real estate brokerage and related services in the United States. Including its franchised businesses, it has approximately 340,000 agents and associates, who are generally independent contractors, on its platform. It operates under many brand names including Compass, @properties, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21 Real Estate, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran Group, ERA Real Estate, Sotheby's International Realty, and Christie's International Real Estate.

Compass was founded by Ori Allon, Robert Reffkin, and Avi Dorfman as Urban Compass, Inc. in New York City in October 2012. Allon was a Director of Engineering at Twitter, and previously founded companies acquired by Twitter and Google. Reffkin had previously served as the chief of staff to the president of Goldman Sachs and worked in the White House. Avi Dorfman had previously worked at McKinsey & Company and Lehman Brothers, and founded a startup.

The company raised $8 million of seed funding. The initial business model employed full-time, salaried brokers and was focused only on rentals. The service was launched in May 2013.

In January 2014, Compass announced it would change its overall business model by contracting independent real estate agents, receiving a portion of the broker commission.

In July 2014, Compass signed a lease on 25,000 square feet of office space at 90 5th Avenue, which became its global headquarters.

In June 2014, Leonard Steinberg, previously with Douglas Elliman, was named president of the company. At that time, the company had 125 agents and 70 staff members.

In July 2016, the company launched a mobile app.

The company expanded into several markets, both organically and via acquisitions. By January 2017, the company operated in 9 U.S. markets: New York, Boston, San Francisco, Miami, Washington, the Hamptons, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Aspen. At that time, it had 1,300 agents.