He narrated from: Ziyād ibn ʿIlāqah, ʿĀṣim ibn Abī al-Najūd, Simāk ibn Ḥarb, Abū Isḥāq al-Sabīʿī, Shabīb ibn Gharqadah, Abū Ṭuwālah, Abū al-Zinād, Manṣūr ibn al-Muʿtamir, Ḥuṣayn, Bayān ibn Bishr, Ismāʿīl al-Suddī, Sulaymān al-Taymī, ʿĀṣim ibn Kulayb, al-Mukhtār ibn Fulful, Mūsā ibn Abī ʿĀʾishah, ʿAtāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAqīl, and many others.
Among those who transmitted from him were: Ibn al-Mubārak, Abū Usāmah, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī, Abū Dāwūd, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Bukayr, Muṣʿab ibn al-Miqdām, Muʿāwiyah ibn ʿAmr al-Azdī, Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Juʿfī, Abū Nuʿaym, Muḥammad ibn Sābiq, Khalaf ibn Tamīm, Ṭalq ibn Ghannām, Abū al-Walīd al-Ṭayālisī, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūnus, and many others besides them.
ʿUthmān ibn Zāʾidah al-Rāzī said, “I once came to Kūfah and asked Sufyān, ‘From whom do you advise me to take ḥadith?’ He answered, ‘You must listen to Zāʾidah ibn Qudāmah and Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah.’”
Abū Usāmah said, “Zāʾidah narrated to us, and he was among the most truthful and upright of people.”
Abū Dāwūd said, “Zāʾidah narrated to us, and he would never transmit to a qadarī (adherent of the Qadari doctrine) nor to anyone he knew to be an innovator.”
Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAlī al-Hāshimī reported from Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal: “Those who are the most exacting in ḥadith are four: Sufyān (1), Shuʿbah (2), Zuhayr, and Zāʾidah.”
Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Tirmidhī also related from Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal that he said, “If you hear a ḥadith from Zāʾidah and Zuhayr, you need not be concerned about receiving it from anyone else, except—”