Auto Trader Cars for Sale

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457,000 cars. 83.3 million visits a month. Over 75% of all time spent on UK automotive marketplaces. Auto Trader is the only provider in this comparison that is a listed public company, which means its claims are audited rather than asserted — and the figures above come from its H1 FY2026 results, covering the six months to 30 September 2025 and announced on 6 November 2025.

For a buyer, that scale settles the question of where to start a search. No other UK site puts that many cars in front of you, and the gap over the second-placed pool is roughly 150,000 vehicles.

For a dealer, the same results contain the sharpest criticism anyone makes of the business: average revenue per retailer reached £2,994 a month, up £142 or 5%, while visits grew 1% and total minutes on site were flat. Cost per forecourt is climbing considerably faster than the audience being delivered — and that is Auto Trader's own arithmetic, not a rival's.

The numbers behind the market position

H1 FY2026, six months to 30 September 2025:

• Live car stock: 457,000 average, up 2%
• Retailer forecourts: 14,080 average, up 1%
• Cross-platform visits: 83.3m a month, up 1%
• Cross-platform minutes: 559m a month, flat
• Share of time on UK auto marketplaces: over 75%
• Group revenue: £317.7m, up 5% — of which the Auto Trader segment is £296.3m, up 5%
• Group operating profit: £200.1m, up 6%
• Basic EPS: 17.26p, up 11%

The 75% share-of-time figure is the one that matters most to a buyer. It means that for every four minutes British car shoppers spend on a marketplace, three of them are on Auto Trader — which is why almost every dealer with stock to shift advertises here, whatever they think of the price.

£2,994 a month, and who ends up paying it

Auto Trader charges dealers, not buyers. Searching, saving and enquiring cost you nothing. The £2,994 monthly ARPR is what the average forecourt pays for the privilege of being seen, across 14,080 forecourts.

That cost is not invisible to you. Advertising is a fixed overhead a dealer has to recover across the cars it sells, and a site that takes just under £3,000 a month from a small independent shifting fifteen cars is taking roughly £200 out of each of them. Pricing on any marketplace reflects the cost of being on it.

The direction of travel is what dealers object to. ARPR rose 5% year on year; visits rose 1%; minutes did not move. More money for the same eyeballs is a defensible complaint, and it is the single most credible negative anyone can raise about the business because it comes straight out of the interim results.

Individual dealer package pricing is negotiated and not published as a rate card — dealers should get current pricing direct from Auto Trader rather than relying on the sector average.

Deal Builder and Co-Driver: tools nobody else in this list has

Two products separate Auto Trader from every other provider here.

Deal Builder handles part-exchange valuation and vehicle reservation online, so a buyer can lock a car and settle the outline of the deal before travelling. It is live with 4,000+ retailers — a meaningful share of the 14,080 forecourts, but not all of them, so check whether the specific dealer supports it before assuming you can reserve.

Co-Driver is a set of AI listing tools used by 10,000+ customers, credited with creating 1 million improved listings. From the buyer's side this shows up as more complete, more consistently written adverts with fewer of the three-line descriptions that make comparison impossible.

Neither Cazoo, Parkers nor Carwow offers an equivalent to either product.

What the flat audience means for you

An audience that is not growing is not the same as an audience that is shrinking, and 83.3m visits a month against 559m minutes still represents dominance no rival is close to. What it does mean is that Auto Trader's growth now comes from charging its existing dealers more rather than from bringing more buyers in.

Auto Trader has said that two of every three of its customers' used car sales are generated through its marketplace — though that claim dates from a 2022 press release and should be treated as historical rather than current.

The practical risk to a buyer is limited. The practical risk to a small independent dealer is real: an advertising cost rising at 5% a year against flat delivered traffic squeezes margin, and squeezed margin tends to reappear as tighter part-exchange offers and less room on price.

Where Auto Trader still leaves gaps

Scale does not solve everything:

• Selling privately is not free here. If your priority is disposing of a car at no cost, Carwow charges the seller nothing and puts 6,000+ dealers into competition for it.
• Research depth is not the strength. Parkers' valuations, running-cost tables and long-form reviews remain the better tool for deciding which model to buy.
• No consumer redress from the platform. As with every classified site here, your Consumer Rights Act protections run against the selling dealer, not Auto Trader. Pay deposits by credit card so Section 75 may apply.
• Volume cuts both ways. 457,000 cars is a lot to filter, and the sheer number of near-identical results can make a decision harder rather than easier.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 15 August 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.