AutoKnowMus gives one neutral fair price for a used car — the same number for the buyer and the seller. It is anchored to real transactions that people report and we confirm, and computed from how the market depreciates where confirmed deals are still thin. AutoKnowMus does not buy, sell, or list cars, does not take a cut of any deal, and the verdict — the price itself — is never for sale.
In a used-car deal the seller is afraid of being lowballed and the buyer is afraid of overpaying, because neither one trusts the price the other quotes. AutoKnowMus answers that with a single fair value and shows the buyer and the seller the exact same number.
Think of the umpire at a cricket match: one call, the same for both teams, and no one on either side can pay to change it. That neutrality is the entire point — a price you can both stand on precisely because it isn't working for either of you.
Two sources, and we always tell you which one you're looking at.
Confirmed real deals. People report what a car actually sold for, and we check each report with the person who made it before it counts for anything. These real transactions anchor the fair value. When your car's number rests on them, the page marks it Verified and shows how many real deals sit behind it.
A market model, for the gaps. Where we don't yet have confirmed deals for an exact car, we work the value out from how the used market depreciates — age, kilometres, owners, fuel, condition and city. The page marks that an Estimate.
It works the way a careful property valuer does: real comparable sales are the ground you stand on, and a model fills the space between them. We never blur the two — you always see whether the number in front of you is Verified or an Estimate.
Online asking prices are everywhere, so it's tempting to treat them as the market. We don't. An asking price is what a seller hopes to get, not what a car actually sold for — a shop window, not a receipt.
We read listings only for direction — whether asking prices for a model are drifting up or down over time — never to set the fair value. The verdict is built from confirmed deals and the market model; listings never touch it.
A dealer's trade-in offer usually sits below the fair value, and that is normal, not a trick. The dealer takes on the risk, the reconditioning and the wait before the car sells again, and the gap is the price of handing all of that off. We keep dealer figures in their own lane — they never move the fair value shown to a private buyer or seller. A small gap below fair value is expected; a large one is worth asking about out loud.
Kilometres, number of owners, service history, overall condition, paperwork, fuel and city. Lower kilometres, a single owner and a clean record push toward the top of the range; higher kilometres, more owners or missing paperwork pull toward the bottom. The fair value assumes good condition with clean service history — and whatever the number says, an independent inspection before you close any deal is always money well spent.
This is the part that keeps the number honest.
Every car's fair value shows the date its prices were last confirmed, so you can see for yourself how fresh it is. We refresh as new confirmed deals come in and as the market moves — the more real deals people report, the sharper and more current every number becomes.