How it works
One rule: nothing is estimated.
A record of what happens to cars advertised on Australian dealer sites. Every figure is counted from it, and carries its count.
The four steps
Read
Every dealer site we can reach, politely. One crawler that names itself, honours robots.txt and gets around nothing. A site that says no is left alone.
1,052 dealer sites today
Read again
The same listings, every day. Every sighting is logged, every change recorded, and nothing is edited afterwards.
since 10 Aug 2026
What changed
Between two reads: the ask, each cut with the dealer’s own date, and the day the car goes.
349,239 price changes
What it means
A range with every comparable behind it, days to sell and a buy price. Too few comparables, and it refuses with the count.
The four steps, on one real car
A 2012 Toyota Camry Altise in WA: advertised 16 days by the seller’s own date and read every day, cut twice (2 Oct, 8 Oct), then gone on 11 Oct with the seller’s own SOLD notice.
Sold means proved.
Two kinds of proof count: the seller’s own SOLD notice, or the page gone. A car that simply vanishes is recorded, and never added to a sold figure. And a car has left the market only once no listing of it is live anywhere we watch.
Cars that left, since 10 Aug
- The seller’s own SOLD notice64,775
- The page gone: a 404 or 4104,925
- Left without proof20,357 · not counted
77% of 90,057 exits are proved. Cars, not listings: a car on three sites leaves once.
The rules it keeps
- Every figure carries its evidence. A count, a date, and what it is over.
- Coverage is stated, never implied. Which sites are in, which refuse us, and why.
- Asking prices, never invented sale prices. A final ask is the ceiling of a deal we can’t see.
- Corrections are dated. An issued report is never rewritten; a correction is added beside it.
Questions
Why is a listing not a car?
One car is often advertised on several sites at once. Spotlot ties each listing to the car behind it, by its VIN where the seller shows one (60% of cars), otherwise by make, model, badge, year, odometer and colour at one seller, so the car is counted once. Right now 236,321 live listings stand for 158,819 cars.
Are these sale prices?
No. Nobody in Australia publishes what a used car sold for, and a site that claims to is inferring. Every price here is an asking price, read on a day we looked, and a cut is the difference between two readings of the same advertisement.
Is every price drive-away?
No. A dealer quotes drive-away or excluding government charges, and many prices do not say which. Of 236,981 live prices, 99,142 are drive-away, 46,184 exclude charges and 91,655 do not say. On the 46 cars quoted both ways at once, the middle difference is $0. A median across them mixes the two, so the mix is stated beside it.
Why does a chart sometimes not appear?
A chart is drawn only when there is enough evidence behind it. Each of the 7 chart types states the cars, spread and days it needs, and below that the page says what is missing, with the count, instead of drawing an empty axis.
What don’t you cover?
Sites that block an honest crawler are left alone and never worked around. Coverage lists every site we read, when we last read it, and the ones that refused, with the reason. Private sales are not in the record.
How do I cite Spotlot?
Name Spotlot, the date of the figure and its count. The daily market series is open to read with no key; see API access. If a figure looks wrong, write to taj@spotlot.io.