Craigslist isn't even full of fee-free listings if you can get past all the scams. Plenty of listings on there still have brokers fees--in fact most of the legitimate listings for a whole apartment do, at least for places in the city proper and Cambridge/Somerville. The no fee options that arent scams are mostly people renting out single rooms in shared apartments. Since some other sites don't allow that type of listing, it can seem like Craigslist has more no fee options, but that's not the case if you're looking at only whole apartments.

I've found great places on Craigslist and I think it's a fine site to use, but it's absolutely not the fee-free haven I see some people on here make it out to be. If you know the area and the market imo it's pretty easy to weed out the scams, but then what you're left with still have brokers fees as much as any other site.