Transparency
How we make money
A recommendation is only worth something if you can see what sits behind it. So here is the whole picture: what KAR earns today, what it plans to earn, and the lines it will not cross.
The promise
No one can pay to appear in a car recommendation, and no one can pay to change where they rank in one. There is no paid placement, there are no sponsored listings, and there is no dealer commission on a car.
No dealer, importer, manufacturer or leasing company has ever paid KAR to influence a recommendation. Recommendations are built from your answers, live listings and published data, and nothing else.
How KAR is funded today
KAR earns no revenue at all. Not from dealers, not from affiliate links, not from subscriptions, not from advertising. KAR is not yet an incorporated company, and the product is free while it is in early access.
Everything on the site today — car recommendations, the accessories finder, the comparison and running-cost tools — costs you nothing and earns us nothing. That will not stay true forever, and when it changes, this page changes with it.
Accessories and parts
The accessories and parts finder links out to ordinary shopping search results. Those links earn KAR nothing today.
If we add affiliate links, where a retailer pays a small commission on a sale, two things will always be true. The commission is disclosed right where the link appears, not buried in a footer. And it never costs you more than going to the retailer directly.
Most importantly: accessory affiliate relationships have no influence on car recommendations. Cars and accessories are handled by separate processes, and the one that picks your car has no knowledge of which retailers we do or do not earn from.
What we plan to do
These are plans, not products. None of them exists today. Each one is listed here so you can see where KAR is heading before it gets there.
- A paid tier — deeper research features for the people who want them. Paying would never move a car up your shortlist.
- Licensing the matching engine — selling the underlying technology to dealers and leasing companies as a tool they run for their own customers. Licensees buy software; they do not buy placement on karautoresearch.com.
- Anonymised demand data — aggregated, anonymised insight into what drivers are looking for, sold to insurers and importers. No personal information, no individual profiles, nothing that identifies you.
What KAR will never do
- Sell placement in a car recommendation, in any form, at any price.
- Sell your personal data.
- Hold a commercial relationship we have not disclosed to you.
Still have a question?
If anything here is unclear, or you think we have fallen short of it, we would rather hear it than not. Get in touch.