Are CarGurus, Cars.com, Autotrader and TrueCar Worth It? How to Measure Cost per Car Sold

Every month the invoices show up. CarGurus, Cars.com, Autotrader, maybe TrueCar, maybe all four. Together they’re often the largest line in a used car store’s marketing budget, and most dealers can’t say with confidence which of them actually sells cars. The reps send reports full of views, leads, and “connections.” The sales team says the phones are fine. Nobody can tell you what a sold car cost from each site.

You’re not the only one asking. On DealerRefresh, dealers keep asking each other for real numbers on these lead sources: cost per lead, cost per appointment, cost per car sold. Someone in r/carsales recently posted that a research firm was paying US dealer principals, GMs, and marketing directors $60 for a 15-minute survey about these same platforms (r/carsales). When researchers are paying to hear what dealers think of third-party listing sites, it’s clear the question hasn’t been answered.

This article won’t tell you to cancel anything. It shows you how to measure each site properly so the decision makes itself. We’ll cover how these sites charge, why cost per lead misleads you, a step-by-step audit you can run with 90 days of data, a worked example, and where cheaper channels like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace fit next to the big sites.

A note on who’s writing. We’re a small team in Raleigh that has posted more than 250,000 Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace ads for local businesses over five years. We don’t sell subscriptions to any of the big listing sites and we don’t earn commission from them. We do post vehicle listings, so we have an interest in the lower-cost channels, and we’ll be upfront about where they’re strong and where they aren’t.

The short answer

Here’s how the main channels generally compare. Exact prices are negotiated and change often, so treat this as a map, not a quote.

The honest summary: any of these sites can be worth it for one store and a waste for the store across town. The only way to know is to measure cost per car sold for each one, using your own numbers, over at least 90 days.

What the lead cost numbers say, and why they’re not enough

You’ll see plenty of published lead cost figures. One agency blog puts Cars.com at roughly $175 to $225 per lead and CarGurus at roughly $80 to $120 per lead (TXC Auto Agency). That’s a single source with its own methods, and an agency selling marketing services has its own reasons for publishing it. But it does show why dealers want to audit these subscriptions. If a lead costs anything close to that, a small difference in close rate decides whether the site makes or loses money.

Here’s the problem with judging any site by cost per lead. A lead is not a sale. It’s not even an appointment. A cheap lead from a shopper who wanted a price and disappeared costs you more than an expensive lead from a buyer who came in with a down payment.

Cost per lead also hides two things that matter more:

1. How many leads turn into appointments that show up. Some sources produce shoppers who are ready to visit. Others produce shoppers collecting quotes from six stores.
2. How much gross each sale carries. A site that sends price shoppers may sell cars at thin margins. A site that sends local buyers who already like your store may sell at healthier ones.

So the number you want is not cost per lead. It’s cost per car sold, and ideally gross per car sold from each source next to it.

How each site charges, in general terms

None of the big sites publish one simple price list for dealers. Packages depend on your inventory size, your market, how much placement you buy, and what your rep negotiates. What follows is how the pricing generally works, so you know what you’re comparing. Always confirm current terms with your own rep and your own invoices.

CarGurus

CarGurus ranks listings using its own deal ratings, which compare your price against what it thinks the car is worth in your market. Shoppers can sort and filter by those ratings. Dealers pay a monthly subscription, and higher tiers generally buy better placement and more features.

What that means in practice: CarGurus rewards competitive pricing. A car priced above market gets a weaker rating and fewer eyes, no matter what tier you pay for. Stores that price aggressively often like CarGurus. Stores that hold price for gross often feel it under-delivers.

Cars.com

Cars.com sells monthly packages, with add-ons for placement, video, and data products. It also owns other dealer services, so reps sometimes bundle listings with websites or other tools. Bundles make it harder to see what the listings alone are worth.

Autotrader

Autotrader also uses monthly packages, with upgrades for placement and visibility. Like Cars.com, it’s often part of a bigger relationship, and the rep may present it alongside other tools from the same parent company.

TrueCar

TrueCar positions itself around price transparency and sends shoppers who have seen a price through its network. Its dealer terms have changed over the years and vary by program, so ask your rep exactly what you pay and when. The key point is that TrueCar shoppers usually arrive having already seen a price, which helps them buy and squeezes your gross.

What all four have in common

Every one of these sites charges you whether a car sells or not, at least on the subscription side. They all report activity, such as views, saves, leads, and calls, rather than sales, because they can’t see your deal file. That isn’t dishonest. It’s just that the number that matters lives in your DMS, not in their dashboard.

The real question: cost per car sold

Here’s the formula. It’s simple, and that’s the point.

If you paid a site $4,500 in a month and it produced 9 sold cars, your cost per car sold from that site was $500. If you paid $4,500 and it produced 3 sold cars, it was $1,500.

Then put it next to gross:

If cars from that site average $2,200 in front and back gross and cost $500 each to acquire, the site is pulling its weight. If they average $900 and cost $1,500 each, you’re paying to sell cars at a loss.

This is the number to bring into a meeting with your rep. Views, saves, and lead counts are fine as context. Cost per car sold and gross per car sold are the decision.

The 90-day listing site audit

You don’t need special software to run this. You need your DMS or CRM, your invoices, and an afternoon. Ninety days is the minimum. A single month is too noisy, especially for smaller stores.

Step 1: Pull what you paid

Add up every dollar paid to each site over the last 90 days: base subscription, placement upgrades, video, add-ons, and any bundled charges you can split out. If a bundle includes your website or other tools, ask the rep for a line-item breakdown. If they won’t provide one, make a reasonable estimate and write down how you made it.

Step 2: Count leads by source

From your CRM, count leads by source for the same period. Check that the sources are clean. Many stores have leads tagged “Internet,” “Website,” or “Unknown” that actually came from a listing site. If more than a small share of your leads are unattributed, fix that first or your audit will be guesswork.

Step 3: Count appointments set and shown

For each source, count appointments set and appointments that actually showed up. This is where sources usually start to look different. One site may produce lots of leads and few shows. Another may produce fewer leads that turn up at a much higher rate.

Step 4: Count sold units and gross

Count sold units from each source, and pull the front and back gross for those deals. Total gross is better than front-end alone, because some sources send buyers who finance and buy products while others send cash buyers who negotiate hard.

Step 5: Do the math

For each site, work out:

• Cost per lead
• Lead to appointment rate
• Appointment show rate
• Close rate on shown appointments
• Cost per car sold
• Average gross per car sold
• Net contribution per car

Lay it out in one table, one row per site. It’s usually obvious within a few minutes which site is earning its keep.

Step 6: Adjust for what the CRM can’t see

This step is where most audits go wrong, so don’t skip it.

A lot of buyers see your car on a listing site, then call your main number, drive to the lot, or search your store name on Google. Your CRM credits that sale to “phone,” “walk-in,” or “Google,” not to the site that introduced the car. If you cut a site based only on CRM-tagged leads, you might cut something that’s quietly feeding your walk-ins.

Ways to close the gap:

• Unique tracking numbers. Use a separate call tracking number on each site so calls are tagged automatically.
• Ask every buyer. Add “Where did you first see this car?” to the deal jacket or the delivery checklist. Ask it at delivery, when people are relaxed, not at the first greet when they’re guarded.
• Watch what happens when you change spend. If you drop a placement tier and walk-ins on that inventory fall over the next six weeks, the site was doing more than the CRM showed.

You’ll never get perfect attribution. You can get close enough to make a sound decision.

A worked example (illustrative)

Here’s what an audit might look like for a used car store selling around 60 cars a month. This is a composite built to show the method, not a real client and not real platform data. Your numbers will look different.

A few things jump out.

• Site B has the cheapest leads among the big sites but the worst cost per car sold. Its shoppers don’t show up as often. If you judged by cost per lead, it would look like the winner.
• Site A sells the most cars but at the lowest gross. It’s probably sending price shoppers. It’s still clearly profitable, but it’s worth checking whether the cars it sells are your sharpest-priced units.
• Site C costs the most per lead but performs well per sale. Fewer leads, better buyers.
• Craigslist sends fewer sales but at a very low cost. In this example it’s the cheapest per car by a wide margin. It can’t replace the big sites’ volume on its own, but it’s earning its place.

The decision this store might make: keep Site A, keep Site C, renegotiate or drop a tier on Site B, and expand Craigslist and Marketplace posting to cover more inventory. That’s a decision based on sold cars, not on a rep’s dashboard.

What counts as a “good” cost per car sold?

There’s no universal number, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your gross is guessing. A good cost per car sold is one that leaves healthy net contribution after your average gross from that source.

A few ways to set your own target:

Start from your total marketing cost per car

Add up your total marketing spend for the month and divide by total cars sold. That’s your blended cost per car sold. Every individual source can be compared against it. Sources well above your blended number need a reason to stay. Sources well below it may deserve more inventory or budget.

Compare against gross, not against other dealers

A store that averages $3,000 gross per car can afford to pay more per sale than a store averaging $1,200. Benchmarks from other dealers are interesting, but your gross is what pays the bill.

Watch the trend, not just the snapshot

Run the audit every quarter. A site that’s slowly getting more expensive per car sold is telling you something, even if it’s still profitable today. Q4 is often more expensive across advertising channels as retail advertisers crowd in, so compare Q4 with last Q4 rather than with Q3.

Why some stores love a site and others hate it

If you ask ten dealers about CarGurus or Cars.com, you’ll get ten opinions, and most of them will be sincere. A site’s performance depends heavily on things that differ from store to store.

Pricing strategy. Sites that rank by price or deal rating reward stores that price at or below market. A store that holds price for gross will see weaker placement and fewer leads.

Inventory mix. A store full of late-model, popular vehicles competes with everyone. A store with older, cheaper, or unusual inventory may find that specific buyers come through particular channels.

Market. In a metro with dozens of competing stores, every listing site is crowded. In a smaller market, one site may dominate shopper traffic.

Follow-up. The biggest factor of all. A site’s leads look terrible if nobody calls them back for three hours. They look great if the BDC calls within five minutes, every time. Before you blame a site, check your response times by source.

Listing quality. Photos, descriptions, and price accuracy matter on every platform. A listing with three blurry photos and no description underperforms anywhere.

Fix your follow-up before you cut a site

This is worth its own section because it changes the audit results so much.

Pull a sample of 30 leads from each site and check:

• How long did it take for the first response?
• Was the first response a real answer, or a template asking them to come in?
• Did the response include the price they asked about?
• How many follow-up attempts were made before the lead was marked dead?

If response times are slow or the first reply dodges the question, you’re not measuring the site. You’re measuring your process. Fix the process for 60 days, then run the audit again.

The shopper side of this is real, too. In a popular r/askcarsales thread about dealers requiring a credit application before a test drive, one reply with 154 upvotes said the commenter had “never understood why dealers do this unless it’s a specialty vehicle” (r/askcarsales). Shoppers coming in from listing sites have usually compared several stores. Friction at the first response sends them to the next listing on the page. We wrote more on this in our guide to advertising car prices without losing trust.

Where Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace fit

The big listing sites are built for shoppers who are actively comparing cars across many dealers. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace reach a different slice of buyers: local, often budget-focused, and used to browsing for cars the same way they browse for furniture.

Craigslist for dealers

In the US, Craigslist charges $5 per listing in the cars and trucks by-dealer section (Craigslist posting fees). There’s no subscription, no tier, and no contract. You pay per car you list.

That makes Craigslist easy to measure. If you list 40 cars at $5 each, you’ve spent $200, and every sale from Craigslist is easy to compare against that. Craigslist tends to work best for:

• Vehicles under roughly $15,000, where budget buyers do most of their shopping
• Work trucks, older SUVs, and practical vehicles
• Stores in markets where Craigslist still has an active local audience
• Inventory that needs extra exposure because it’s aging

It works less well for late-model, high-end inventory, where buyers expect the big sites’ tools and history reports.

The main cost isn’t the fee. It’s the time. Each listing needs good photos, an honest title, a real description, a correct price, and a renewal or repost schedule. That’s exactly the kind of work that falls off a busy sales manager’s list. For help with that, see our guide on what Craigslist charges and how to budget for it.

Facebook Marketplace for dealers

Marketplace is huge, but dealers can’t use it the way they used to. Facebook stopped allowing Business Pages to create vehicle listings in January 2023. Today dealers reach Marketplace mainly through two routes: paid Automotive Inventory Ads, which can appear in Marketplace and the Facebook feed, and organic listings posted by individual staff from personal profiles. We cover the details, rules, and risks in our guide to whether Facebook Marketplace is still worth it for car dealers.

For the audit, treat Marketplace the same as any other source. Track leads, shows, sales, and gross. Because organic posting has no listing fee, the main cost is staff time or the cost of a posting service.

Why lower-cost channels help the big-site negotiation

Here’s a practical benefit people miss. When you have a cheaper, measurable channel producing sales, you negotiate with your listing site reps from a stronger position. You know what a sale costs elsewhere. You can test dropping a placement tier without fearing your lot goes quiet.

Signs a listing site is clearly worth keeping

Audits aren’t only for cutting. Sometimes the numbers show a site is doing better than anyone thought, and the right move is to lean in. Signs a site deserves to stay, or even get more budget:

• Its cost per car sold is at or below your blended marketing cost per car.
• Gross on its deals is close to or above your store average.
• Its leads show up for appointments at a higher rate than your other internet sources.
• Buyers mention it by name at delivery, even when the CRM credits another source.
• Your aging inventory moves faster when it gets placement there.

If a site checks most of those boxes, the question changes from “should we keep it?” to “are we giving it our best listings?” Make sure your strongest photos, most accurate prices, and fastest responses go to the channels that convert.

How to test cutting or reducing a site safely

If the audit says a site isn’t earning its keep, don’t cancel everything on a Friday afternoon. Cut carefully so you can see what really happens.

1. Check the contract. Many agreements have notice periods or minimum terms. Know your exit date before you plan anything.
2. Reduce before you cancel. Drop a placement tier or an add-on first. Watch leads, walk-ins, and sales for six to eight weeks.
3. Replace the exposure. If you’re pulling back on one site, increase coverage somewhere measurable, such as more Craigslist listings or more Marketplace posts, so you’re not just shrinking your reach.
4. Watch the whole lot, not just the source. Track total sales and walk-ins, not just leads tagged to the site you cut. If total sales hold, the site wasn’t adding as much as it claimed.
5. Keep notes. Write down what you changed, when, and what happened. Next year you’ll be glad you did.

Questions to ask your listing site rep

Your rep wants to keep your business, which means they’re usually willing to dig into data with you if you ask the right questions.

• Can you give me a line-item breakdown of everything I’m paying for?
• Which of my vehicles got the most views and leads, and which got almost none?
• How does my average price compare with the market on your site?
• What’s my response time to leads, according to your data?
• How many calls came through your tracking number, and how many were answered?
• If I drop to a lower tier, what changes in placement, specifically?
• What’s the notice period on my agreement?
• Can you match leads to my sold list if I send it to you?

That last one is the most useful. Some sites will match your sold list against their shopper data to estimate influenced sales. Take their numbers with a pinch of salt, because they have an incentive to count generously, but compare them with your own records.

Reading a listing site dashboard without being misled

Every site gives you a dashboard, and every dashboard is designed to make the site look useful. That doesn’t make the numbers false. It means you need to know what each number really measures.

Views or impressions. These count how many times your listings appeared or were opened. They tell you whether shoppers are seeing your inventory. They don’t tell you whether anyone wanted to buy. A car with lots of views and no leads is usually a pricing or photo problem.

Saves and favorites. Useful as a sign of interest, especially on aging units. If a car has many saves but no leads, a small price move often shakes buyers loose.

Connections or engagements. Some sites bundle many actions into one big number: clicks to your website, map views, phone number reveals, and leads. These totals look impressive, but they mix serious actions with casual ones. Ask the rep to split them out.

Leads. Form fills, chats, and texts sent through the site. This is closer to real interest, but it still includes duplicates, shoppers who sent the same message to eight dealers, and people who never answer back.

Calls. If the site uses a tracking number, it can count calls. Ask how many were answered and how long they lasted. A 15-second call is often a hang-up or a wrong number.

The rule of thumb: the further a number is from a sold car, the less weight it deserves. Use dashboard numbers to find problems with individual listings. Use your own sold data to decide whether to keep paying.

The listing basics that improve every site

Before you decide a site isn’t working, make sure your listings are giving it a fair chance. These basics improve results on CarGurus, Cars.com, Autotrader, Craigslist, and Marketplace alike.

Photos

Shoppers judge a car by its first photo. Use real photos of the actual vehicle, taken in good light, with the whole car in the first frame. Aim for a full set: front three-quarter, rear three-quarter, both sides, interior from the driver’s door, dashboard with the car running, rear seats, cargo area, wheels and tires, and any damage. Hiding a scratch costs more trust than showing it.

Price accuracy

The price on the listing should be the price the shopper can actually get. If there are fees, say so clearly. If a price depends on financing with your lender or on a rebate, say that clearly too, or better, don’t advertise that number as the price. Price that doesn’t hold when the buyer calls is the fastest way to lose a lead and earn a bad review. Rules on this are getting stricter in some states, which we cover in our pricing transparency guide.

Descriptions

Skip the copy-and-paste paragraph about your dealership’s family values. Shoppers want to know about this car: trim, key features, condition, service history you know about, how many keys, and anything that makes it a good buy. Three honest sentences beat twelve generic ones.

Freshness

Remove sold cars quickly. Nothing annoys a shopper more than driving to the lot for a car that sold last week. On Craigslist and Marketplace in particular, stale listings also hurt your visibility and can get your account flagged.

Response readiness

Make sure whoever answers leads knows which cars are on the lot, what the out-the-door price is, and whether the car is available for a test drive today. A fast answer with the wrong information is almost as bad as no answer.

Common mistakes in listing site decisions

• Judging sites by cost per lead instead of cost per car sold
• Running a one-month audit and acting on noise
• Ignoring gross, so cheap sales look like good sales
• Leaving leads tagged “Internet” or “Unknown” and guessing where they came from
• Blaming a site for slow follow-up
• Cancelling everything at once, so you can’t tell what caused the change
• Signing a bundle without seeing what each part costs
• Paying for top placement on cars priced above market
• Forgetting that buyers who see a car online often walk in without filling out a lead form
• Not having a cheaper, measurable channel to compare against

A simple monthly scorecard

Once you’ve done the first audit, keep a one-page scorecard every month. It takes 20 minutes and stops the problem from building up again.

Review it at the same meeting every month. Look for trends over three months rather than reacting to one bad week.

How this fits with the rest of your marketing

Listing sites are one piece. Most dealers also run Google ads, Meta ads, and their own website. The same cost per car sold logic applies to all of them.

If you’re also running Facebook and Instagram ads and wondering whether your setup is right, our guide to Meta ads for used car dealerships walks through budgets, benchmarks, and setup. And if you’re weighing Google’s inventory ads against regular search ads, see our guide to Google Vehicle Ads versus search ads.

Frequently asked questions

Bringing it together

CarGurus, Cars.com, Autotrader, and TrueCar can all sell cars. They can also quietly cost more per sale than they return. The difference is rarely the site itself. It’s your pricing, your follow-up, your inventory, and whether you’re measuring the right number.

Stop judging sites by views and lead counts. Pull 90 days of data, work out cost per car sold and gross per car sold for each source, fix your follow-up, and adjust carefully. Keep a monthly scorecard so the question never builds up again.

Lower-cost channels make that whole process easier, because they give you something cheap and measurable to compare against. That’s where Best Ads Posting helps. Our team writes and posts every Craigslist vehicle listing by hand, with your real photos, honest titles, and accurate prices, at $5 per ad. We also post Facebook Marketplace listings at $80 a week for 10 a day. We’ll do a free sample post first so you can see the quality before you commit. Request your free sample post.