Key Takeaways
- In our research, we found that CarGurus tends to offer slightly below the Kelley Blue Book (KBB) value for vehicles.
- For a small fee, CarGurus offers an instant market value tool on its website that quickly lets you see the price you could likely get from listing on CarGurus or selling to a private buyer.
- Overall, you’re likely to get more money from a private sale or other car buying or selling websites such as Carvana than CarGurus.
CarGurus is an online marketplace where people and dealers alike can sell their vehicles. The company doesn’t own any of the cars listed on the site. Instead, it connects customers with local dealers, sellers or buyers in their area. In addition, CarGurus serves as a financial tool you can use to research and compare used car pricing or get pre-qualified when looking for a new car.
In this CarGurus review, we at the MarketWatch Guides team will walk you through how the company works and the process to sell your car on its website. We’ll also recommend a couple of the best websites to sell a car online to compare with CarGurus.
Great Choice for Older Vehicles
4.4/5
Offers convenient at-home pickup and delivery servicesEasy-to-use online platformPays by ACH transfer or certified check
833-672-0583
Get an Offer On Peddle’s Website
Featured Partner
3.9/5
Offers free pickupInspector comes to you for the saleWill pay off your outstanding loan
321-340-6624
Get an Offer On Wheelzy’s Website
Good for Damaged Vehicles
4.3/5
Free towing with all offersGuaranteed offer for 7 daysRecycles end-of-life vehicles
844-596-7477
Get an Offer On Carbrain’s Website
CarGurus Overview
Our team spent hundreds of hours combing through the best places to buy and sell a car. Overall, we gave CarGurus a rating of 8.5 out of 10 when it came to its performance as a car selling and buying option for drivers.
Pros and Cons of CarGurus
Pros
Instant Market Value toolOffers good for seven days or 250 milesPrequalification available
Cons
Offers often lower than Kelley Blue Book (KBB) valueInstant offers not available in all statesNo physical inventory
CarGurus Ratings
When rating CarGurus, we looked at industry standing, platform, pricing and financing, support and customer experience. The table below shows how the company performed in each of these areas.
| Rating Category | Our Score* |
| Industry standing | 9.4 |
| Platform | 9.3 |
| Pricing and financing | 7.8 |
| Support | 8.7 |
| Customer experience | 8.2 |
| Overall rating | 8.5 |
Is CarGurus a Good Option?
In our research, we found that CarGurus was a legitimate place where people can go to buy or sell their car. The company claims it’s the most visited auto shopping website in the U.S. and has more listings than similar online vehicle marketplaces like Autotrader, TrueCar and Cars.com.
In addition, the company has a somewhat solid online reputation. It has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), though scores from customers are low. Customers who were happy with their experience cited ease of use as the biggest reason why they used the company.
Is CarGurus a Good Place To Sell Your Car?
CarGurus can be a great option when it comes to selling your car as you have the option to get an instant offer from the company or list it on the site for 30 days. The company also gives you the option to consider the offer. Your offer is good for at least seven days or 250 miles.
Where CarGurus Falls Short With Selling a Car
There are two different areas where CarGurus fall short with selling a car – its listing fee and instant offer availability. If you decide to list your car on the CarGuru’s website privately, you have to pay a fee of $4.95. While this may not seem like a lot, it’s still an additional expense to consider when selling your car.
In addition, CarGurus doesn’t offer instant offers in several states. These include:
| Alaska | Hawaii | Idaho | Kansas |
| Kentucky | Maine | Mississippi | Montana |
| New Hampshire | North Dakota | South Dakota | Vermont |
| West Virginia | Wyoming |
Is CarGurus a Good Place To Buy a Car?
Overall, the buying process at CarGurus can be worth it if you’re looking to buy a new, used or CPO vehicle. For used cars, the company offers three ways to browse vehicle listings, making it as easy to shop as possible. On the other hand, if you’re looking to buy a new vehicle, there’s a landing page that lets you browse by make and model or by body style.
Where CarGurus Falls Short With Buying a Car
If you’re looking to buy a car through CarGurus, there’s a few things you should look out for. CarGurus connects customers with local dealerships, sellers and buyers in their area. In some instances, communication with dealerships can be hit or miss. There are reviews online that show that some people entered their information online to be contacted by a dealer for a vehicle and never heard back or received a late response.
*We reached out to CarGurus for comment on its negative reviews but received no response.
Selling to CarGurus
Selling a used car with CarGurus is a relatively simple process. You can get an instant offer or choose to list your car on the CarGurus site for 30 days. If you list the car, you’ll have to pay a fee of $4.95.
How Much Does CarGurus Pay for Cars?
In our research, we found that CarGurus tends to offer below the KBB value for vehicles sold to them. For a 2017 Honda Civic, the company offered $3,614 less than the KBB value for the car. The table below shows the offer from CarGurus and compared to the KBB value.
| Vehicle | CarGurus Offer | KBB Trade Value |
| 2016 Chevy Equinox with 80,000 miles | $11,123 | $11,119 |
| 2017 Honda Civic with 70,000 miles | $11,965 | $15,579 |
Because CarGurus is a marketplace, it’s best to sell your vehicle with the site only if it’s in good condition. If you’re trying to sell a damaged car, you may want to consider companies that specialize in older and junk cars, like Peddle, instead.
CarGurus Instant Market Value
CarGurus offers a helpful tool called Instant Market Value (IMV) in the selling section of its website. On the IMV page, you input certain details about your vehicle into a car value calculator and instantly see the price you could likely get from listing on CarGurus or selling to a private buyer. The IMV tool also calculates your car’s trade-in value. According to the company, the IMV uses a complex algorithm that uses millions of data points to determine these prices.
The IMV tool also provides deal ratings for your listing. It ranks the deal in terms of quality: Great, Good, Fair, High or Overpriced. Better deals will be seen by more prospective buyers. If you offer a Great Deal, you’re more likely to sell your car quickly.
CarGurus vs. Private-Party Sale
You can probably get more money for your vehicle from a private buyer than from CarGurus. Sites including Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace help cut out the middleman. Keep in mind, however, that private sellers must take care of all paperwork themselves. You may also be more likely to run into scams when browsing private sales. CarGurus helps cut down on the hassle, allowing you to sell your car much more quickly.
CarGurus Requirements
Like any online car sale, you’ll first need to confirm some basic information about your vehicle. CarGurus.com has a tool to enter your license plate number or vehicle identification number (VIN), which allows the company to access some details about your car. You’ll still need to confirm your ZIP code and the following vehicle info:
- Trim
- Transmission
- Engine
- Current mileage
- Color of the car
- Options
- Condition and history
Once you’ve confirmed all of this information, you’ll enter your email address and begin to receive offers. The CarGurus site will highlight the best offer. You can choose to continue with the process then or think on it, as offers are good for seven days or an additional 250 miles, whichever comes first.
CarGurus Lease Deals
If you’re trying to sell a financed vehicle, you’ll need to settle the outstanding balance with the lienholder before you can sell it with CarGurus. If the offer is greater than the balance of your loan, CarGurus will pay off the loan and send you the difference.
Buying a Car From CarGurus
The car buying process at CarGurus is very straightforward. For used cars, the company offers three ways to browse vehicle listings, making the car shopping experience as easy as possible. If you’re looking to purchase a new vehicle, there’s a landing page that lets you browse by make and model or by body style.
CarGurus Buying Process
With CarGurus, you can browse vehicles on its website that you can buy at dealerships or from private sellers. If you know the exact kind of car you want, you can enter the make, model and price range that interests you into a tool to search car listings on CarGurus. You’ll also provide your ZIP code and desired travel radius. From there, you can browse listings or use filters to fine tune the results and find the right vehicle for you.
In addition, browsing by body style can be helpful if you know the style of vehicle you want but not the exact make and model. Clicking a body style will take you to a page with all the listings for that particular type of vehicle, and then you can filter the results once you get an idea of what makes sense for your needs.
Certified Pre-Owned Vehicles
Certified pre-owned cars are used vehicles that have been thoroughly inspected, repaired and backed by the manufacturer. CarGurus also has a section to browse certified pre-owned vehicles for sale by manufacturer. Once you choose an automaker, you can see every CPO vehicle available through the website and filter results accordingly.
If you find a good deal and are ready to purchase, you’ll fill out a short interest form with your contact information. The dealer will contact you directly and from there you can set up a time to take a test drive.
CarGurus Financing
You can also use the CarGurus site to get prequalified. This is a helpful way to get a good picture of your financial situation and learn how much car you can afford. Plus, prequalification doesn’t hurt your credit score.
CarGurus Customer Reviews
CarGurus has a decent reputation in the auto industry. So, while you can be fairly confident in using its services and trust it’s a good company, it’s important to look into what customers say and consider other buying or selling options as well before you make a decision.
CarGurus Reviews: BBB and Trustpilot
CarGurus has an A+ rating from the BBB, but customer reviews are fairly low. The company has a 3.2-star rating on the BBB’s reviews section from 100+ former customers and 4.1 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot, out of 550+ reviews. It’s important to keep in mind that there are fewer than 100 customer reviews on both sites, which is a small fraction of CarGurus’ consumer base.
Positive CarGurus Reviews
Customers who were happy with their CarGurus experience mostly cite ease of use as the biggest positive factor. Some reviews mention getting prompt payments and higher offers than other online car dealerships.
Negative CarGurus Reviews
Negative CarGurus reviews tend to center on a confusing process that often ended up with a canceled sale. Some people report receiving a decent offer, only to have it lowered during the selling process.
Our review team reached out to CarGuru for a comment on its negative reviews and the company’s low review scores and received the following response:
“As the most visited automotive shopping site in the U.S.*, customer trust and satisfaction is a priority. CarGurus is proud to be recognized as a national leader in customer service, earning the No. 3 rank on Newsweek’s 2023 America’s Best Customer Service Awards list in the online automotive marketplace category.
“To support this commitment to customer service, we have measures to help enable an experience that is as transparent and efficient as possible. This includes steps to mitigate fraudulent private listings, policies against misleading or fraudulent dealer listings and guidelines for our Sell My Car feature, which states that offers are subject to a verification inspection and may change based on the vehicle’s condition.
“Our team also monitors all reviews and conducts a robust user outreach program to gather feedback and identify opportunities to enhance the ways we support customers along the automotive journey. Through this customer research, nine out of 10 customers who found a car through CarGurus would recommend our platform to a friend**, and those who have sold through Sell My Car provided a 4.7-out-of-5 average rating.”
*Similarweb: Traffic Insights, Q1 2023, U.S.
**CarGurus Buyers, 2023, Likelihood to recommend score 8-10, Sample size = 477
CarGurus App Reviews
CarGurus has one of the best car buying and selling apps on the market. It’s very highly reviewed by consumers. On the App Store, over 223,000 customers rated the CarGurus app 4.8 stars out of 5. Google Play has fewer reviews, but the CarGurus app still earns a very high 4.7-star rating.
Reviews of CarGurus: The Bottom Line
CarGurus is an online marketplace for car sales. Unlike other online dealerships, CarGurus doesn’t hold any physical inventory. When selling your vehicle with CarGurus, you can choose one of two options. Enter a few details about your car into the company’s online tool and instantly receive an offer. If you’d rather compare multiple offers, you can list the car for 30 days for a small fee. Once you accept an offer, you’ll designate a pickup time, at which point you’ll receive payment.
Sites Like CarGurus
Besides CarGurus, our top picks for selling a car include Cars.com and CarMax.
Cars.com: Editor’s Choice
Our top pick for online car sales is Cars.com. The company, in business since 1998, has become one of the most popular ways to sell a vehicle. It works with a wide network of dealers across the country. If you’d rather not sell your car to a dealership, Cars.com has a platform for private-party sales.
Read more: Cars.com review
CarMax: Great Value
CarMax is another excellent choice for selling your car. You can get an instant offer for your car on the company’s website and take it to one of its 244 locations nationwide to complete the sale. CarMax offers good offers as compared to Kelley Blue Book value. Customers appreciate the speed of CarMax transactions.
Read more: CarMax review
CarGurus Reviews: FAQ
Below are some frequently asked questions about selling your car to CarGurus:
Yes, CarGurus is a legitimate website where people can go to buy or sell their cars. However, it’s important to note that the company does not hold any physical inventory of cars. Instead, people can list or purchase from dealerships or private sellers.
No, Carvana and CarGurus are two different companies. Carvana is a car buying company, meaning you can sell your car to the company if you don’t want to trade it in. CarGurus, on the other hand, is an online marketplace that can connect you with local dealers and private buyers when you want to sell your vehicle.
CarGurus uses an algorithm to analyze the details and pricing of millions of cars that are either currently listed or have recently sold. You can use the Instant Market Value tool on its website to see how much you can likely get for your vehicle by selling it on CarGurus.
CarGurus was founded in 2006 in Cambridge, Mass.
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 Better Business Bureau (BBB) and Trustpilot as well as our team’s experience reaching out to each platform.
*Data accurate at time of publication
If you have feedback or questions about this article, please email the MarketWatch Guides team at editors@marketwatchguides.com.
