Autotrader Reviews 

The ad ran for about two weeks. In that time I received no messages, calls, or inquiries through Autotrader or KBB.com, where the ad was promised to appear. The vehicle was priced in line with KBB and Cars.com estimates, with complete photos and a full description, so I don't believe the listing was the problem. The same truck drew serious interest on other platforms.

Easy transition between listing and selling. Last stress than selling with like marketplace etc..

I didn't receive any legitimate inquiries on my vehicle through Autotrader. I did receive multiple inquiries via other platforms. I used the same ad and same selling price. So it seems the audience on Autotrader is not as good as other platforms.

Also, the direct offers I received for Autotrader were way, way below a fair value.

So it definitely does not seem worth it to pay to list a vehicle on Autotrader

Autotrader is needs improvement. They need to improve listing categories, they mainly care about making the big dealerships money and not private buyers.

My experience listing my vehicle on Autotrader was extremely poor. Instead of connecting with legitimate private buyers, I was inundated with scam messages and automated lowball offers from dealerships. Given the lack of quality leads and real buyers, this was a total waste of time and money, and I definitely won't recommend Autotrader to other private sellers.

Terrible service unless you pay for their top-tier Premier service. At the lower tier, your Jeep CJ-7 doesn't show up under the category of "CJ-7." They only show the "featured" Jeeps there, which are the people who paid for the full $150 Premier listing package. Therefore, nobody just going to their website and pulling up CJ-7 Jeeps will see your Jeep. Site visitors must use the filters to see ALL of the CJ-7s. This was a huge ripoff, and I feel like the company virtually stole $100 of my money. I'll never use them again, and I don't ever recommend to anyone to list with them unless you pay for their top-tier Premier listing level at $150.

I used the AutoTrader Private Seller exchange to sell my mom's car recently. I also used the full option of using them for all communications, payment and paperwork handling. When the listing first posted I got a LOT of fraudsters asking me to text them on the side, etc... but AutoTrader warns about this and gave me the tools to sniff those out (like ID Verified status) so that's less a critique and more an FYI. Everything worked as described, with my only critique and reason I didn't give 5 stars is the app and website are kinda clunky and I had a hard getting them to work consistently. I was told but a customer service I called that it doesn't work well with Apple Safari, which is bizarre being that Apple literally have a more than 50% mobile market share in the US so they might want to consider making it more compatible with that! Otherwise, everything went great!

Strength: Intuitive and easy place to make listing, suggested price feature is convenient.
Weaknesses: Unfortunately many. You have to pay up front for the Ad even if you don't sell through this platform. There is a low volume of buyers on this platform compared to facebook marketplace. I put the same listing, same price, on both platforms and received dozens of inquiries on FB marketplace but not a single message here. Would recommend they only charge a fee if it actually sells on this platform. Also should increase number of photos and videos you can post with each ad.

This was my first time using AutoTrader.com for anything, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the experience. I listed my used car through the Private Exchange, hoping to generate some interest. Within just a couple of days, a potential local buyer reached out and wanted to test-drive the car.

AutoTrader provided clear communication and straightforward instructions throughout the process, including how to connect with the buyer. After the test drive, the buyer submitted a formal offer. Once I accepted it, the buyer securely transferred the payment to AutoTrader.

AutoTrader then provided clear, easy-to-follow instructions for completing the sale, including transferring the vehicle, title, and bill of sale. The process went smoothly, and I was able to complete the transfer with the buyer without any issues. Once both the buyer and I confirmed that the transaction was complete, AutoTrader promptly released the funds to my bank account.

The entire process of listing and selling my car was surprisingly simple, transparent, and hassle-free. I am very pleased with the experience and truly appreciate AutoTrader’s role in facilitating the transaction from beginning to end.

I would highly recommend AutoTrader to anyone looking to buy or sell a vehicle. The process was clear, secure, and remarkably smooth from start to finish.

Excellent experience listing and selling car with Autotrader. They made the selling process easy and seamless. Will absolutely use them again.

Sold my 2024 Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro through AutoTrader's Private Seller Exchange — couldn't be happier with the process. The platform delivered a final sale price significantly higher than any trade-in or dealer cash offer I received, making the private sale route clearly worth it.

The platform handled everything from secure messaging to payment and title transfer cleanly and professionally. As a private seller with a financed vehicle, I was skeptical the process would be this smooth, but it was straightforward for both me and the buyer.

One strong piece of advice for other private sellers: keep all correspondence with prospective buyers on the AT platform. The built-in fraud protections are real — I encountered several suspicious contacts during the listing period and the platform's structure made it easy to identify and ignore them.

Would not hesitate to use AT PSX again for a high-value private sale.

The entire process was pretty easy and straight forward. The listing was clear, the seller was friendly. Then the final process was easy and quick.

I listed a vehicle for sale, and it took 9 months to sell it, so AT and I got to know each other very well. The listing process was great, very easy. I felt that the cost was reasonable vs. a free ad on Facebook - people only come to AT if they are serious (with caveats, I will bring up below). So most of my time was spent with potential buyers. A LOT of them, probably 80% were trying to bypass the chat, and I wonder if they were just bots. I feel like AT could improve in this regard- for instance, if someone is dropping something that looks like a phone number as the first chat message, maybe you should flag and withhold the message, subject to further verification as a human. Secondly, I'm fully onboard with using the chat, but loading times are horrible. Getting a text message and/or email, clicking and waiting for the window to open is horrendous. During the workweek, when I get most of my pings, I can't be near my phone, or keep a chat window open. Additionally, I often needed to reload it to get comments; the text would come in many seconds before the chat would update. I'd tolerate an app if it ran quickly and smoothly, especially in a low-internet environment, like where my job is. Secondly, maybe the UI team can figure out something to do about the buyers that see a car online, and immediately bid on the car, sight unseen, no test drive, no communication. I got lots of those. Those people aren't going to buy your car. Maybe you can figure out a different way to address what these people are trying to do. Thirdly, I had an atypical situation but I think there's ways you can improve it. You give the buyer a list of things to do to get ready for a sale, one of which is to upload a copy of their title. I did this several months before a buyer wanted to buy. After the buyer's funds were accepted, AT did a search in the NVMTIS database and saw a problem vs. my paper title, ala, showing a different owner. As it turned out, there was never a problem with my title, but my state never updated the database when I bought the vehicle. My recommendation is that you should make sellers upload the title early in the process, and do the title verification early; so that the seller can fix any problems ahead of an interested buyer wanting to buy. I was lucky that my buyer had time to spare; I don't see many in that situation. Customer service, while I was on my own to solve the problem, were accommodating when I asked them to recheck the database (which I did several times). One way to improve there, would be to have the knowledge of how to solve NMVTIS problems by state.. it might have saved me a few days to know that a title bureau existed and was the POC for problems. But since it worked out in the end, I will stick with Autotrader, and give 4 stars.

Don’t waste your money listing your car on here. EVERY message I received on here about my car was from a SCAMMER! They all wanted me to email or text them. Every single one wanted to communicate off of the platform… total red flags 🚩 I sold my car on another platform that cost me nothing to list it… this truly was a waste of time and money.

I really had a great experience all the way around. I had one interaction with a representative that helped me button up the listing. Then it sold and everything was seamless. I think I got lucky with a great buyer but everything was better than expected and I wasn't expecting anything bad. There is still spam bot or whatever these people are but they were pretty easy to identify if you stick to the rules of keeping all communications on the platform.

Listing was super easy, great exposure (my vehicle sold in 2 weeks). Liked that Autotrader handled the money exchange. Some negatives, a lot of shady scammer reach out through the platform. You have to sort through a lot of those, as long as you know what to look out for, not a big deal. Thought Autotrader would also handle the paperwork and title switch, but it’s on the buyer to select full services when they pay for that to happen. Think it would be better to have the seller responsible for that option. I would have gladly paid for that, instead I had to handle all that on my own. When I read through the process of listing on Private seller exchange, it made it appear that the seller was in control of that option, which I think would make more sense. Other than those two thing’s, I’d list my car again on Autotrader.

Horrible customer service. Listed a car and got bombarded by scammers for days. They wont refund your money or help. Had to delete the listing. Don't waste your time. They can't control the scammers on their website in the slightest bit, put everyone at risk, and refuse to help rectify the situation.

I posted an ad to sell a high quality, used car at a reasonable price. I got nothing but scammers attempting to gather my info and my money. I wasted roughly 2 hours filtering thru these messages trying to determine who was real (none were.) Auto Trader claims that there is "nothing that they can do" when the truth is simply that they aren't willing to spend the time and effort necessary to prevent it. They also refused a refund when I asked to cancel the listing.

Sold my car in less than a week and received full listing price. Needed some initial tech support which was excellent. Only downside was the amount of unverified “buyers” wanting to deal outside of autotrader.

First of all, they advertise only $9 for listing. But it has different price range. Any decent car is listed $29 upfront.
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Then as soon as I listed my car for sale, Every 1 hour, I started getting spams. UI has option to block it but it still shows up.
In my 2 weeks of listing with Autotrader.com, i got 100s of spam messages to spam me in selling car. None (Literally none of them were real message).
Total waste of money & time.