What is my car worth in Ireland? Two honest answers, in ten seconds
Published 6 September 2026.
Ask three garages what your car is worth and you will get three numbers, none of them explained. Ask a valuation website and you will get one figure that looks precise and is a guess. We built something different, and this is what it is and where the numbers come from.
Two ways to sell, two ranges
Every car has two honest values, and they are not the same.
Trading it in — the trade will pay a certain share of what the car sells for on an Irish forecourt. We measured that share on over 2,000 real Irish trade auction sales: the same make, model and year as your car, at the same mileage and age. That gives a range, and the bottom of that range is a figure we can stand over, because roughly three cars in four make at least that.
Selling privately — you get more, because there is no dealer in the middle, but you do the work and carry the risk. We measured what comparable private ads in Ireland were priced at when they actually sold, and that is the second range. Advertise near the top and it may sit; advertise where the ones that moved were priced and it goes.
Type your reg and your mileage on our trade-in page and you see both ranges, side by side, before you have told us anything else.
Why a range and not a figure
Because no two cars sell for the same money. We checked: two 2017 Golfs, same engine, same gearbox, mileage within a few per cent of each other, went through the same trade auction and fetched over a thousand euro apart. Anyone who hands you a single number for a car they have not seen is either guessing or hoping you will not check. The range is the truth; the firm figure comes when a person has seen the car.
What happens after the range
If you want to trade it in against a UK import through us, the process is short: the spec, a set of guided photographs, and the condition questions — about five minutes, and you can save and finish later on your phone. Then a person goes through it and comes back with a firm figure, usually the same working day. That figure is credited off the price of your import on delivery day, and you keep driving your car until then. One handover, one appointment.
If you would rather sell it yourself, we have made the private sale safe. Above Board Cars puts an independent mechanical inspection, an industry-standard 12-month warranty and a protected, escrow-like payment behind your sale — the things a buyer normally only gets from a garage. Your car is advertised on ukcarimports.ie as an Irish-registered car, and you can list it on DoneDeal too. Buyers deal with us, not with you, and the price you list it at is your call, within the range. How Above Board Cars works.
The one thing we will not do
We will not make an offer on a car we have not seen. The photographs and the answers are not a formality: they are what turns a range into a figure, and they are what stops the price being cut at the door. What a buyer has already seen, he cannot use against you on the day.
See what your car is worth: ukcarimports.ie/sell-my-car