Key Takeaways
- Based on our industry research, Cars.com is the best place to buy or sell a car because of its range of shopping and research features.
- Our research shows Cars.com gives good instant offer values compared to other options on the market.
- Overall, the vast majority of customers have a positive experience with Cars.com.
Cars.com has been around since 1998, offering a convenient way for consumers to buy and sell cars. The company advertises vehicles from nearly 20,000 car dealerships along with private sellers on its platform, with a selection of more than 2 million new and used cars to choose from. Customers contact dealers directly to test drive and buy vehicles, and Cars.com doesn’t charge any fees to customers.
In this Cars.com review, we at the MarketWatch Guides team will cover everything you need to know about how to buy or sell a car with the company. We’ve reviewed the best websites to sell a car online and rank Cars.com as our top choice.
After comparing many options on the market, we rank Cars.com as the best place to sell a car and one of the top companies to buy or trade a car. We gave the company a 9 out of 10 in our study of the best websites to sell your car online.
Cars.com’s private sale marketplace makes finding a high-paying buyer all the more easy. Image: Casimiro PT/Shutterstock
*We reached out to Cars.com for comment on the hidden dealership fees but received no response.
Cars.com Ratings
There were several factors we considered when scoring Cars.com, including the company’s industry standing, platform, cost, support and customer experience. The table below shows how Cars.com scored in each of these categories.
| Our Rating | Score |
|---|---|
| Industry Standing | 9.8 |
| Platform | 9 |
| Cost | 9.3 |
| Support | 8.6 |
| Customer Experience | 8.8 |
| Overall Rating | 9 |
Is Cars.com Legit?
Cars.com is a reliable tool for buying and selling a car. The site lists over 2 million new cars and used vehicles from dealers across the country. If you want to sell or trade in your car, you can get an online offer in just a few minutes or list it for sale on the Cars.com automotive marketplace.
In addition, Cars.com has an A+ rating with accreditation from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), which shows it has good communication with customers and works to resolve complaints.
Is Cars.com a Good Place To Sell a Car?
Cars.com can be an excellent option if you’re looking to sell your vehicle due to its private sale marketplace and instant offer features. The private sale marketplace lets you sell your vehicle privately to the next owner, giving you what may be the best value for your vehicle. In addition, the company’s instant offer tool lets you get an offer for your car immediately.
Where Cars.com Falls Short With Selling a Car
There’s one area we identified where Cars.com falls short with the selling process. First, the company’s instant offer is only good for three days, which is several days shorter than companies such as Carvana and TrueCar that provide offers that last a week.
Is Cars.com a Good Place To Buy a Car?
Overall, we found that Cars.com is one of the best websites online to purchase a new vehicle. The company stands out because of its advanced search filters. You don’t have to know the name of your perfect car. You can search by price, body style, or just based on specific car features, like the drivetrain type or the number of cylinders. You can filter results to cars with sunroofs and 20-inch rims or trucks with extended cabs and power liftgates.
You can also calculate your search based on the people offering cars. Do you want online sellers or dealers? Do you want dealers that offer home deliveries or virtual appointments? There are many ways Cars.com makes it easy for you to find your ideal car.
Where Cars.com Falls Short With Car Buying
Since Cars.com simply advertises dealership listings, it doesn’t offer any sort of warranty like CarMax. You can reach out to the selling dealership with the contact information on any listing to verify whether the car comes with a warranty.
Sell on Cars.com
You can sell your car in a couple of ways on Cars.com. You can sell your car on the Cars.com private sale marketplace or get an instant offer to sell it to a dealer. However, your car’s instant offer is contingent upon an inspection at the dealership that you sell it to.
How Much Does Cars.com Pay for Cars?
Our team received offers for a 2015 Ford F-150 SuperCab and a 2015 Toyota Camry. In both cases, the Cars.com value ranged both below and above the Kelley Blue Book (KBB) value. For example, the 2015 Toyota Camry ranged from $9,925 to $12,025, which is $1,843 less than the KBB average or $257 more, depending on the price given.
The table below shows how Cars.com compares to the KBB offer.
| Vehicle | Cars.com Value | Kelley Blue Book Value |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 Ford F-150 | $14,075 to $16,175 | $15,120 |
| 2015 Toyota Camry | $9,925 to $12,025 | $11,768 |
Cars.com Private Sellers
Selling your car privately may bring you the best value because you’re selling to the next owner rather than a middleman like a dealership. You can reach car buyers in your area and across the country on Cars.com. The website can help you create a detailed vehicle listing to attract buyers. It can also help you set the right price, taking the market value of your car and its condition into consideration.
Can You Negotiate With Cars.com?
You have the ability to negotiate your price with the dealership after receiving a Cars.com offer. This isn’t the case with other car selling companies like Carvana or CarMax, which give no-haggle offers. So, if you can convince the dealer your car is worth more, you may be able to get a higher offer.
Cars.com Instant Offer
Besides private sales on the website, the other way to sell your car is to get an instant offer at Cars.com. You can start with your license plate number, the vehicle identification number (VIN) or your car’s make and model. You’ll provide information about the car’s condition, features and accident and owner history.
Starting with a license plate number or VIN gives Cars.com more information about your vehicle, so you can get an instant cash offer. However, if you just select your car’s make and model, you’ll get a trade-in estimate instead.
A Cars.com instant offer is good for three days, so you have to act fast. If you choose to accept your offer, you’ll respond to the email you received to start the sale process. A salesperson from a local dealership will then contact you to set up an appointment and inspect your car.
Your Cars.com offer is contingent upon an inspection at the dealership, so it might change if the online form didn’t account for everything about your car’s condition (or you didn’t answer the questions accurately).
Does Cars.com Pick Up Your Car?
Since Cars.com works with a network of dealerships, it doesn’t provide car pickup service online. However, there’s a chance a local dealer may offer home appointments or pickup services. On the car buying side, you can filter results for dealerships that offer these services. But when you sell a car, the situation depends on which dealer wants to buy your vehicle. You can call the dealer and see if it offers home pickup, but there’s no guarantee.
CarMax Lease Buyout
If you’re selling a car and not buying a new or used car from the dealership, the difference between your Instant Offer and the payoff will be given to the customer. However, if the payoff is more than the cash offer, the consumer will have to pay the difference.
On the other hand, if the consumer is buying a car while using an Instant Offer, the positive or negative equity of the vehicle will be factored into the deal.
Buy a Car at Cars.com
Cars.com is one of the best places to purchase a new vehicle. It has over 2 million car listings from dealers across the country, so there’s a good chance you’ll find something in your area. To get started, you can either type a specific model into the search bar or start filtering listings by make and model.
Cars.com has thorough and elaborate search filters to help you find the best car for you. Keep in mind that most of your business after picking a car will be done with the dealership. Image: mimagephotography/Shutterstock
Once you find a car you like, you can reach out to the dealership by phone or email for more information. At that point, you’ll interact with the dealer to take the car for a test drive and finalize the transaction. Note that Cars.com doesn’t provide financing. You can get financing from the dealer or another lender.
Cars.com Buying Process
Cars.com offers one of the most in-depth and easy buying processes we’ve seen. The company has advanced search filters that let you choose the type of car you want, from basic search results for make and model to car features.
Cars.com Advanced Search Filters
Beyond the basics of distance, year, make, model and mileage, you can filter the search results in the following ways:
- Price and payment: Set minimum and maximum prices or select your maximum monthly budget. Cars.com estimates payments based on average interest rates but you can put your details into a car payment calculator for more accurate results.
- Deal rating: Cars.com includes cost ratings of Great Deal, Good Deal or Fair Deal comparing the listing price to the market price for the vehicle.
- Vehicle history: You can filter for a clean title, no accident, personal use only (no fleet) and single-owner vehicles.
- Style: Dial in your ideal car by filtering body style, cab type and interior and exterior colors.
- Performance: Looking for a specific build? You can filter for transmission type, drivetrain type, number of cylinders, fuel type, EV range and EV charging time.
- Contactless services: Filter for dealers that offer home delivery or virtual appointments.
- Seller type: Select dealer, online seller or private seller. The vast majority of listings are dealership listings.
- Keyword: Add your own keyword like “sunroof” to filter for something specific.
Filtering for Car Features
There’s one thing missing from the list above: the features filter. Cars.com really shines in the vast array of features you can select when looking for a car. Say your kids have trouble with long car trips and you just need a vehicle with back seat entertainment. You can filter for that. Or, if you really love listening to your favorite albums pumped up loud, you can filter for that too.
We’ll go over all the features you can filter for below.
- Convenience: Adaptive cruise control, cooled seats, heated seats, heated steering wheel, keyless start, navigation system, power liftgate or remote start
- Entertainment: Apple CarPlay®/Android Auto®, Bluetooth®, HomeLink, premium sound system, rear seat entertainment or USB port
- Exterior: Alloy wheels, sunroof/moonroof, tow hitch or tow hooks
- Safety: Automatic emergency braking, backup camera, blind spot monitor, brake assist, LED headlights, lane departure warning, rear cross-traffic alert or stability control
- Seating: Leather seats, memory seats or third-row seating
- Door count: Two, three, four or five doors
Car Research
If you aren’t 100% sure which model to get, you can use Cars.com to research different vehicles and compare them. Cars.com’s editorial team reviews a wide range of cars in detail. Many models also have expert review videos for you to get a better sense of how a car looks and drives.
The Cars.com team ranks their favorite vehicles in the 2023 Best Of awards list that includes Best of the Year, Best Pickup Truck, Best Electric Vehicle, Best SUV, Best Luxury Car and Best Family Car.
Dealer Research
Going to a new dealership sight unseen can be a bit intimidating. That’s why Cars.com collects consumer reviews of its partner dealerships and publishes an average rating for each one. Each dealer has a seller page that displays the rating along with all customer reviews.
Cars.com Trade-In Process
After getting an instant offer, you also have the option to trade in your car to a dealership. The trade offer and cash offer values are one and the same. You’ll take your car to a dealer to have it inspected and confirm the offer amount when trading it in.
Another way is to find the vehicle you want to buy on Cars.com. Then, when you contact the dealer, let them know you have a car to trade.
Overall, we found that Cars.com has one of the best reputations in the car buying and selling industry – which makes it worth considering if you’re looking to buy or sell your vehicle.
Cars.Com Customer Reviews: BBB and Trustpilot
Cars.com has an A+ rating with accreditation from the BBB. On the other hand, it has a customer review score of 1.9 out of 5 on the website. It also scores 2.1 out of 5 on Trustpilot. However, there are only 15 customer reviews on the BBB and 21 on Trustpilot.
Considering Cars.com has a market of 27 million monthly car shoppers, less than 40 customer reviews is a small sample size. We’ll go over a few positive and negative reviews below.
Positive Cars.com Customer Reviews
One reviewer of Cars.com on Trustpilot said the site helped them compare cars, research dealers and purchase a vehicle confidently. Other reviewers said the dealerships they worked with provided great service and everything they expected.
Negative Cars.com Customer Reviews
Some negative Cars.com reviews come from customers while others come from dealerships using its services. In particular, customers had issues with dealerships adding extra fees that weren’t disclosed online. Some also said the vehicles they inquired about were no longer available and the dealership tried to sell an equivalent but more expensive model.
Interestingly, some dealerships wrote reviews saying they had trouble removing sold vehicles from the Cars.com platform, which upset some customers.
Our team reached out to Cars.com about its customer review score and negative reviews but did not receive a response.
Cars.com App Reviews
The Cars.com app has excellent reviews on average. It scores 4.8 out of 5 on the App Store and 4.7 out of 5 on Google Play. The app is quick and responsive. You can do anything you can with the Cars.com site, including using all the advanced search filters, viewing Carfax reports and calculating payments. If you make a profile, you can track your favorite vehicles across devices.
Since there are so many reviews for the app, these scores may be a better representation of Cars.com’s reputation. Customers not only review how the app works but their overall experience with buying or selling a car.
| Platform | Average Rating | Number of Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Apple App Store | 4.8 out of 5.0 | 519,000+ |
| Google Play | 4.7 out of 5.0 | 140,000+ |
Overall, Cars.com is easy to use and offers powerful tools for researching, buying and selling vehicles. You can find available vehicles in your area within minutes or get an instant offer for your car online. Since dealers are responsible for providing accurate information, we recommend calling the dealership to verify any fees as you shop around.
Sites Like Cars.com
Other than Cars.com, our top picks for selling your car include CarMax, Carvana and Peddle.
CarMax: Great Value
CarMax is a hybrid online/in-person dealership. You can shop from its nationwide inventory on the website and have a car shipped to your local store. Then, you’ll go to CarMax in person to finalize the deal in most cases (CarMax offers home appointments in limited markets).
CarMax is one of the best places to sell your car because it offers excellent value in our experience. Our team received cash offers from CarMax that were above the KBB trade value.
Keep reading: CarMax review
Carvana: Most Seamless Process
Carvana is the place to go if you want to buy or sell a car from the comfort of your home. Carvana offers home appointments in most areas of the country, though you might pay a fee depending on how far the car has to travel.
You can do nearly every part of the car buying or selling process from your couch. You only have to get up to meet the Carvana representative and sign the paperwork. If you’re selling or trading your car, the representative will do a quick inspection at that time.
Keep reading: Carvana review
Peddle: Good Choice for Older Vehicles
Peddle is the best option if your car is ready for the scrap heap. You can scrap your car with Peddle and walk away with a little bit of cash. Peddle provides online offers with a quick form and sends a tow truck to pick up your car for free.
Keep reading: Peddle review
Cars.com Review: FAQ
Below are some frequently asked questions about Cars.com:
Yes, Cars.com is a reliable site and is our top choice for buying and selling cars online. The company is one of the only ones we’ve seen that offers advanced filtering for vehicles, which allows buyers to browse cars based on characteristics and features. In addition, Cars.com has solid ratings from consumer websites like the BBB.
Actually, it depends on the selling dealership. Cars.com does provide a handy deal rating so you can see how the price compares to the market value. You can filter for good or great deals and leave out the fair ones. This setup is different from online dealers like Carvana or CarMax that own and sell their inventory.
You can find professional reviews of many different vehicles from sites like Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book, Cars.com, TrueCar and CarGurus. These companies review vehicles in person and rate them on a variety of factors.
Cars.com is our top choice for buying a car. You can view over two million new and used cars from dealerships and research different models in-depth. The site has detailed filters that help you pick out your perfect ride.
Kelley Blue Book (KBB) is the gold standard when it comes to finding the value of a car. You can see private sale, trade-in and dealership pricing from the site. Edmunds, NADAguides and TrueCar are also reputable options.
Our Methodology
Because consumers rely on us to provide objective and accurate information, we created a comprehensive rating system to formulate our rankings of the best platforms to sell your car. We collected data on several providers to grade each company in five key areas. The end result was an overall rating for each provider, with the car selling platforms that scored the most points topping the list.
Here are the factors our ratings take into account:
- Industry Standing: Our research team considers ratings from industry experts and years in business when determining this score.
- Platform: Platforms that offer a variety of features, including instant offers and multiple sales options, are more likely to meet consumers’ needs.
- Cost: To compare providers’ average offer prices, our team conducted a secret shopper analysis for a variety of vehicle types. We also considered the fees companies charge to use their platforms.
- Support: Car selling companies that offer strong transaction support received the highest scores in this category. This includes offerings like free pickup service as well as how quickly you receive your payment.
- Customer Experience: This score is based on customer satisfaction ratings on the BBB and Trustpilot as well as our team’s experience reaching out to each platform.
*Data accurate at time of publication.
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