From VIN to verdict in minutes. Create an account, get your report, keep it forever.
4 min readRevised August 2026
The flow
VIN in. Verdict out.
Each step adds detail. Skip what you don’t have — we’ll tell you what we lost and how confident the report can still be.
Step oneVehicle anchor
Paste your VIN
Your VIN resolves to year, make, model, trim, options, factory configuration, and recall history. We pull all of that automatically — it takes about three seconds. From there, every piece of the report is scored against this exact vehicle, not a generic average.
AsideNo VIN?
You don’t have the full 17-character VIN? Enter year, make, model, and trim, and we’ll generate a directional report using market data for that configuration. Without the VIN, we lose factory-specific options and trim-level nuance, so confidence drops a tier. The verdict will still be useful — but if the deal looks close, grab the full VIN from the window sticker or dealer listing for a more precise answer. Still beats walking into the dealership blind.
Step twoDeal context
Add the deal details
Four fields unlock the financing picture. Price is required to score fairness. The other three sharpen the math; skip them and we’ll infer what we can, then flag where confidence drops.
Price
The asking price or the deal you’re negotiating. Required to score fairness.
Required
Cash down
What you’re putting down. We assume $0 if you skip it ($0 default = highest monthly payment scenario).
Optional
Trade-in
If you’re trading a car in, the credit the dealer is offering. Skip it and we calculate standalone, not trade-adjusted.
Optional
Term length
Loan duration in months. Skip it and we model standard terms (typically 60–72 months for used).
Optional
Why we need them
Price alone doesn’t tell the story. The deal gets decomposed — fees, financing costs, trade credit, add-ons — each scored independently. A complete picture beats a guessed-at one.
The same out-the-door engine runs, free and without an account, in the Carlarity calculators — tax, title, registration and the doc fee your state allows, before you have a report.
Step threeThe receipt
Read the receipt
Your report answers four questions, in order. Each maps to a section of the full dossier you can forward to a spouse, lender, or dealer.
Q1 · Fairness
Is this deal fair?
Price, trade-in credit, and fees scored against current market for this exact vehicle.
Q2 · Cost over time
What will this car really cost me over time?
Financing costs, insurance estimates, depreciation, and maintenance projections.
Q3 · Right now
What should I do right now?
A plain-English verdict — Buy, Negotiate, Walk, or Insufficient Evidence — backed by the numbers above.
Q4 · After the buy
What should I watch after I buy it?
Equity, payoff timeline, and early-warning signs like open safety recalls.
Four verdict families
One per report
Every report ends with one of eight verdict forms, modulated by data confidence — these are the four families they collapse to. Twelve display variants exist across buying modes and confidence tiers; these eight are the ones you'll see most often. See all eight on the Verdicts page →
Buy
The data supports it. Price is at or below our estimate, fees clean, financing reasonable.
Negotiate
There’s room. Price, fees, or rate has slack — we’ll show you the script.
Walk
The gap is wide. Negotiation probably won’t bridge it; better deals exist.
Insufficient evidence
We couldn’t get there. We’ll tell you what’s missing and what would unblock it.
Your full report is organized into four chapters, one per question — Is this deal fair?, What will this car really cost me over time?, What should I do right now?, and What should I watch after I buy it?. Each chapter is a standalone deep-dive: reference-grade detail you can forward to a spouse, lender, or dealer.
Behind the scenes
Where the numbers come from
Every figure in your report names its source. No black boxes, no proprietary indexes you can’t audit. Here’s the data layer powering Carlarity.
Carlarity Fair Price — our own algorithm
Aggregated MarketCheck listings, with asking prices corrected to estimated transaction prices, plus statistical outlier removal. We built our own algorithm because industry benchmarks are influenced by dealer pricing practices. Carlarity Fair Price confidence is capped at MEDIUM.
VehicleDatabases
Primary pricing & history
Multi-endpoint vehicle data — Market Value, Sales History, Title Check. An input to our Fair Price algorithm, weighted as an external benchmark.
Per-VIN · multi-endpoint
MarketCheck
Live-listings cross-check
Asking prices, days-on-market, and supply density across the nationwide listing universe. Cross-checks pricing against active inventory on rolling 30-day windows.
Rolling 30-day · nationwide
NHTSA vPIC
Safety & compliance
VIN decode to the factory build, paired with the federal open-recall registry so any open safety-recall campaign on the vehicle surfaces in your report. Government-authoritative data, refreshed daily.
Daily · government registry
Regional fee baselines
Compiled internally
State and dealer fee patterns built from public filings and observed dealer disclosures. Lets us flag fees that exceed regional norms rather than treating every line item as legitimate.
State-level · refreshed quarterly
Confidence
●High●Medium●Low●Insufficient
Every number carries one of four confidence tiers reflecting how much data supports it. The verdict respects that tier. A Low-evidence pricing call does not drive a Buy recommendation on its own — confidence cascades into the final call.
Usually within minutes. Your report generates in real time. Rare or unusual configurations occasionally take longer because comparable data is thinner, and 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.
Account
Do I need an account?
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. Sign-up takes about thirty seconds — first name, email, password.
Sharing
Can I share the report?
Yes. Reports are built to travel. Download the PDF and share it with a spouse for a joint decision, a lender when you’re lining up financing, or the dealer as your negotiation brief. Everyone sees the same evidence — the same verdict, sources, and confidence — so the conversation starts from shared facts.
Re-runs
Can I re-run the same VIN later?
Yes. If you run the same VIN six months from now, you get a fresh report with refreshed data — current market pricing, recall status, and equity math as of that day — so you can see how the market has moved. Reports stay in your account forever.
Rule 1Position, not prediction.
Rule 2Asking, not value.
Rule 3Derived, not asserted.
Rule 4Measured, not modeled.
“
Carlarity reads market data the way an editor reads a draft. Independent. Unbiased. Verdicts are never paid for.
House voice · Editorial discipline
Ready when you are
Ready to see your deal, clearly?
Three steps. One verdict. Five minutes from start to receipt.
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