No — one is your provincial legal status, the other is a trademarked membership you opt into on top of it.
Short answer
No. “Registrant” (Ontario’s term) or “licensee” is your legal status under provincial law — the thing RECO, RECA or another regulator issues and can suspend. REALTOR® is different: it’s a trademark CREA controls, and its own site says so directly — “Not every licensed or registered broker or salesperson is a REALTOR®.”
Provincial registration is the legal floor: RECO’s own site describes three registration categories in Ontario alone — Real Estate Salesperson, Real Estate Broker, and Brokerage — each tied to a public registry search, mandatory insurance, and annual filing obligations. That status exists independently of any trade association. REALTOR® sits on top of it: CREA’s own page states plainly that "to be a REALTOR®, the agent must be a member of the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and adhere to its strict standards and REALTOR® Code of Ethics" — membership and a code of conduct, not a second government licence.
The sequence runs one direction only: provincial licence first, CREA membership second. As CREA’s own becoming-a-REALTOR® page puts it, "once a person is licensed through a province, they can become a member of a local board and CREA." You cannot join CREA or use the REALTOR® mark without a provincial licence behind you — but the reverse isn’t true either: a licensed registrant who never joins a board is legally entitled to trade real estate and simply isn’t entitled to call themselves a REALTOR® or advertise using the trademark.
It shows up most often in advertising compliance and in client-facing claims. Calling yourself a REALTOR® without current CREA/board membership risks a trademark and Code of Ethics problem on top of anything your provincial regulator might have to say — the two enforcement tracks are separate, and a lapse in one doesn’t automatically mean a lapse in the other. If a client asks what the difference is, the honest short version is: registration is what makes trading in real estate legal; REALTOR® is what a national association lets you say about yourself once you’ve joined it.
See also: what “registrant” means in Ontario and whether you must join a real estate board.
A quick call can clarify what you're legally entitled to claim versus what membership actually adds.
