Questions, answered.
Everything you’d ask before trusting a report to walk into the finance office with.
The eight questions buyers ask first.
Carlarity shows you the real cost of a car before you sign. Every report scores the deal across four questions: Is this deal fair? What will this car really cost over time? What should you do right now? What should you watch after you buy it? One verdict, traceable to source data, with confidence and freshness visible.
One report is $39.99. A three-pack — useful when you're comparing multiple vehicles — is $69.99. Active Shopper is $129.99: seven full Carlarity Reports, and reports never expire. Carlarity Garage tracking is included free with any Carlarity Report — at every tier, not only this one. All one-time purchases — no subscription, no auto-renew, no trial traps. Counter Check — re-read every dealer counter against your report — is included with every report and never expires.
Carfax tells you about the car's past — accidents, ownership, service records. Carlarity tells you whether the deal in front of you is fair right now: pricing vs market, financing terms, fees, depreciation outlook. They're complementary, not replacing — most buyers run both.
No. Carlarity does not take referral fees, lead-sale revenue, or marketing dollars from Carvana, CarMax, Carfax, dealerships, lenders, or any other commercial party in the car-buying chain. We name those companies because they're part of how real people buy cars — not because they pay us. Our only revenue is the price the buyer pays for a report. Verdicts are never paid for: no dealer, lender or advertiser money. Creators who share Carlarity may earn a fee per report sold, and must disclose it.
You enter a VIN and the details of the deal you're looking at. Carlarity pulls current market data, decomposes the price, fees, and financing, scores each piece against fair-market benchmarks for that specific configuration, and returns a plain-English verdict plus negotiation playbook. Typically ready within minutes — and if a report is held by our quality review, we email you when it's released.
A fair-market analysis for the exact VIN, a fee breakdown with each line labeled standard, negotiable, or padding, a financing-quality check, market-position tracking against current asking medians, an overall verdict (Buy / Negotiate / Walk — or Verify First when the evidence doesn't support a confident call), and a negotiation brief with specific asks you can take to the desk.
No. Carlarity is decision support — an informational product that helps you understand the math and market around a vehicle. It is not financial, legal, or tax advice. Final purchase decisions remain entirely yours. The full disclaimer is on the Trust & Methodology page and in the Terms of Service.
30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. If your report doesn't help you, email [email protected] within 30 days and we'll refund it. This is in the Terms of Service — it's not a marketing promise.
How Carlarity relates to the tools you already know.
No. Run a vehicle history report for past damage, ownership, and service records. Run Carlarity for present deal quality — pricing vs market, financing terms, fees, depreciation outlook. Both, before you sign.
Tell us. Email [email protected] with the report URL and what you saw. Every verdict in a Carlarity report traces back to its evidence — the methodology, the source, the confidence band. If our reasoning doesn't match what you see at the dealer, we want to know. We'd rather catch a mistake than ship a confident wrong answer.
Today: download the PDF, share it however you want. We've heard from early users that some dealers respect the analysis when buyers bring it up. Coming post-launch: a "Carlarity Reviewed Deal" badge for dealers who want to compete on transparency.
What Carlarity is, what it isn’t, and what ships in a report.
Yes. Carlarity works for online fixed-price platforms — the valuation, depreciation, financing analysis, and ownership forecast are math, not negotiation tactics. Whether you're on Carvana, CarMax, Vroom, or a traditional dealer, the report grades the deal against fair-market benchmarks. Warranty add-ons like CarvanaCare, MaxCare, Vroom Protection, and Tesla's Extended Service Agreement are correctly categorized — not flagged as 'unrecognized.' For online fixed-price purchases, the verdict can be Keep Looking when a better-priced equivalent exists elsewhere. The negotiation playbook is less actionable on fixed-price platforms, but the trust check — 'is this deal actually fair?' — is exactly what these platforms make hardest to verify on your own.
The VIN gives us the exact trim, options, and build so the report is specific to this car rather than a generic average. You can start a report without one — year/make/model/trim will get you a directional report — but we strongly recommend grabbing the VIN from the window sticker, the driver-side door jamb, or the dealer's listing. It takes ten seconds and makes the report substantially more accurate.
Usually within minutes for most vehicles. Rare or unusual configurations occasionally take longer because comparable data is thinner. Occasionally a report is held for a human quality review before we deliver it — if that happens, your dashboard shows its status and we email you when it's released.
Both. Before you buy is where Carlarity does its best work — you can walk into the finance office knowing where the price sits against comparable listings. If you've already bought, a report will still tell you whether you overpaid, where the fees were padded, and whether your financing has a markup you can refinance away. It's information either way.
Yes. The verdict format adapts — run a report on a car you already own and it reads as a position check (where you stand today) rather than a pre-signature negotiation brief. Garage is built for the post-purchase window: it tracks your purchase price against current asking medians over time. You can also re-run the same VIN later to see how the market has moved.
Target Deal packages the report into a specific set of asks you can bring to the dealer — price, fees, rate, and trade credit that Carlarity considers fair for this vehicle. Deal Simulator lets you model what changing any piece of the deal does to the bottom line. Carlarity Garage (Beta) tracks your ownership position over time — your purchase price against the canonical valuation from your original report, plus your loan equity as you pay down the balance. All three are included with any Carlarity Report; Carlarity Garage carries you into the post-purchase window.
When our title check reports a salvage record, we stop short of pricing the car. The report shows no target price, no walk-away ceiling and no Carlarity estimate range — branded-title values swing widely by buyer, geography and condition in ways our market data can't reliably capture, and a number there would be worse than none. Our title check covers salvage records only: it does not detect rebuilt, flood, or lemon-law buyback titles, its state coverage is incomplete, and a clean result from us is not a clean-title guarantee. Where we have measured the feed missing known salvage records for a state, the report says the title was not checked rather than reporting it clear. In those states (today Texas and Florida) the report form asks what you know about the title: if you confirm it is clean we price the car and still show the title as not checked, and if you report a branded title or don't know yet we hold back the price figures the same way. The vehicle history report (Carfax or AutoCheck) is the authoritative source for branded titles — pair it with an independent mechanical inspection before deciding. You still get everything else the report covers: recall data, identity confirmation, and ownership cost projections.
Trade-in value is treated as a credit against the out-the-door cost and shown as a separate line. Down Payment (cash you put down) and Trade-In Credit (your trade equity) appear as distinct 'Less:' adjustments in the OTD breakdown — never collapsed into a single number. If you're upside-down on your trade (owe more than the dealer is offering), the trade-in payoff appears as a separate financed amount. The math is transparent so you can see exactly how every adjustment affects what you'll pay or finance — no hidden roll-ups.
Two different things can stop a report, and they aren't equally likely. The common one: the vehicle isn't on our covered list yet. Beta covers specific models we've tested end to end — not every model from a covered make — so a vehicle outside that list is held before checkout, every time, by design. That's not a failure; the full list is on our Coverage page. The rare one: a covered vehicle hits a temporary data-provider hiccup. In both cases your credit is not consumed and you aren't charged. For a covered vehicle you can re-run the same VIN later, or email [email protected] and we'll look into the specific case. We'd rather decline than ship a confident guess.
Dealer-charged fees and add-on products — extended warranty, paint protection, GAP insurance, tire-and-wheel protection, and similar — the negotiable portion of your closing costs. Government-imposed fees (title, registration, doc fees in some states) appear separately in the OTD breakdown because they're non-negotiable. Total Fee Load is the figure that matters for negotiation — what the dealer is asking you to fund beyond the vehicle price.
Who Carlarity works for, and how we grade evidence.
Every Carlarity figure carries a confidence tier — High, Medium, Low, or Insufficient — derived from how many sources agree, how current the data is, and how tightly it clusters. When the evidence is strong, the verdict is decisive. When it's thin, we label it as thin and recommend independent verification rather than dressing up a guess. The Methodology page documents the grading rules.
VehicleDatabases supplies multi-endpoint vehicle data covering Market Value, Sales History, and Title Check — an input to our Carlarity Fair Price algorithm, weighted as an external benchmark. MarketCheck cross-checks pricing against live listings (asking prices, days-on-market, supply density). NHTSA vPIC supplies VIN decode and recall data, and regional fee baselines are compiled internally; on thin vehicle classes we corroborate with search-augmented open-web comps. A report names the source of each figure so you can verify it yourself. The full disclosure is on the methodology section of the about page.
It means we looked for the data needed to answer a specific question about your deal, didn't find enough of it to support a confident answer, and chose not to invent one. The report will always tell you what was missing and what would unblock it. An Insufficient Evidence result is a feature, not a failure — it exists to protect you from guesses.
Some vehicle classes — very low-volume models, unusual configurations, vehicles with thin comparable-listing pools — can't produce a deep enough evidence base for a confident call. Agreement on a thin comp pool isn't proof, so we cap confidence at Low for those classes no matter how good a single source looks. Better to tell you the data is limited than to hand you a confident wrong number. The Methodology page documents the class rules.
Your VIN, deal details, and email are used to generate your report — and nothing else. We don't sell, rent, or share them with third parties. Reports stay in your account, and you can delete your account at any time. The Privacy Policy has the full data-handling detail.
No. We do not sell, rent, or share your VIN, email, contact details, or search history with third parties. Your deal details are used to generate your report, and nothing else. See the Privacy Policy for the specifics.
Every vehicle image we show is AI-generated — a representative rendering of the year, make, and model, not a photograph of the specific car you're considering. Carlarity has no relationships — financial, contractual, or otherwise — with automobile manufacturers, dealers, or any party who'd benefit from us showing you a specific vehicle's real photos, so the imagery carries no manufacturer affiliation. We generate our own renderings rather than licensing manufacturer photography precisely because that licensing would create the kind of dependency our independence policy rules out. The rendering reflects the correct vehicle — including its factory styling — so you can confirm the system identified the right year, make, and model. Treat it as visual confirmation of the vehicle, not as a stand-in for the actual unit you're considering.
What Garage measures, what it doesn’t, and how Carlarity’s data layer relates to the prices you see online.
Honest no. Garage (Beta) shows you where you stood at the time of your report — your purchase price against the canonical valuation from that report, plus your loan equity as you pay the balance down. It doesn't re-run the market or model a depreciation curve, so it can't tell you when to sell. Live market refresh and an empirical depreciation engine are both on the near-term roadmap. See /methodology for what we measure today.
No. The value shown in Garage is the canonical valuation from your original Carlarity Report — Carlarity's pre-purchase analysis of the trim and configuration in your region at the time you ran the report. Garage updates your equity position as you update your loan balance, but doesn't currently re-run the market valuation. A live-refresh capability is on the near-term roadmap; today, the value is your report's anchor, and equity changes as you pay down the loan.
Market position is where your trim sits against current comparable listings — a live signal that needs ongoing market re-pricing. Value is a transaction estimate — what your car would actually sell for — that needs sold-price data. Garage (Beta) shows neither live today: it anchors to the canonical valuation from your original report and tracks your loan equity against it. Live market position and a separate, distinctly-labeled value figure are both on the near-term roadmap, each with its own derivation. See /methodology for what we measure today.
What things cost, what unlocks, and what happens if you’re unhappy.
No. Every tier is a one-time purchase. Single Report is one report; Three Reports is three reports to use whenever you want; Active Shopper (7 reports) is a one-time purchase that includes seven full reports plus Carlarity Garage tracking — no recurring billing.
Easiest path: open your account settings and click 'Request a refund' — it opens a prefilled email to [email protected]. Or email us directly within 30 days of any purchase. We respond within two business days and issue approved refunds within five business days. When we issue the refund: your Carlarity credits adjust automatically to reflect it, you receive a confirmation email with the credit change, and the money lands on your card within 5-10 business days (most cards: 3-5). No forms, no questions asked — we'd rather refund than have anyone feel stuck with a tool that didn't earn its keep.
Account basics and how to reach a human.
Yes. Carlarity reports require a Carlarity account so you can save your reports, use the premium tools (Target Deal, Deal Simulator, Dealer Script), and access your dashboard. If you buy a report we create the account for you — there is no separate sign-up step. You can sign in any time with a one-time link emailed to you; setting a password is optional, and you can add one later from your account settings.
Sign in at /signin — every report you've ever generated is saved to your dashboard. You don't need a password: choose “Email me a sign-in link” and we'll send a one-time link to your email address. If you did set a password and have forgotten it, the reset flow on the same page works too. If you're still stuck, email [email protected] and a human will help you recover access.
Email [email protected] and a human will get back to you. We aim to respond within two business days. Refund requests, report questions, and access issues all route through the same address. There's also a web form at /contact if you'd rather type in-browser.
Email [email protected]. We're happy to talk to consumer-protection journalists, publishers, and aligned partners. We're not available for dealer marketing programs — see our independence policy.
Open your account settings, then the Notifications section. Transactional emails (receipts, refund confirmations, magic links, password changes) are required for account operation. Product Updates and Marketing emails are opt-in — toggle them off any time and your preference saves automatically. Right now we don't actively send marketing or product-update emails, but when we start, your preferences are honored from the first send.
We aim to reply within two business days (Monday-Friday). Refund requests are prioritized ahead of everything else in the queue. Press and legal inquiries: two business days.
Permanent deletion. Your account, every saved report, all tracked vehicles, and your payment record are erased from our active systems. You can't recover them. Some technical logs and Stripe payment records persist for legal and tax compliance, but they're disconnected from personally identifiable information. If you just want to stop receiving emails or close your account temporarily, email [email protected] first — we can deactivate without deleting.
All modern browsers — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge. Works on mobile (iOS Safari, Android Chrome) and desktop. The full report including PDF download works on phones. If something looks broken, screenshot it and email [email protected] — we'll fix it fast.
The fastest answer is seeing what a report actually contains.
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