One of the first stops on the path to buying a used vehicle is typically to acquire a history report of some sort. There are two major options when it comes to reports and those are Carfax or AutoCheck.

What is a vehicle history report?

While they both do generally the same thing, Carfax has a bit of a headstart on Autocheck and is often considered the defacto standard. They tend to charge higher prices though, especially to dealers, which has created a slow shift towards Autocheck. Who will win out in the end? Who knows!

Either way you should make sure to get a good look at one of them whenever you get involved in buying a used car. The reports will cover things like the title status which is very important down south where lots of cars get salvaged and rebuilt due to flooding and hurricanes.

In general it's often better to just only consider Clean titled vehicles unless you know what you are getting into. Anything but a clean title will get killed on resale value and so they are very hard to appropriately value when you buy them. You may save a few thousand now, but when you sell you may lose more than that.

How do I get a Carfax Free?

After exploring the private used car market we noticed that a lot of buyers and sellers weren't using vehicle history reports and we thought that was a bit worrisome. As a new marketplace focused heavily on building trust and transparency into this market we think it's imperative everyone have access to the history of their car.

So we decided to publicize a loophole in our vehicle submission page. Every vehicle submission comes with a FREE Carfax report to evaluate the state of the vehicle, but right now there is no submission fee. So for anyone actively selling their vehicle they can just fill out basic car info (VIN + image of the car + contact info) and get a completely free Carfax emailed right to them.

No need to signup for a year long contract or hand over your first born. Just note we are limiting it those selling their personal cars (no dealers please) located in the US. There is no committment to use Topmarq or any of its services. It's our way of giving back to the private marketplace and hope that we can help make it a little easier to buy a car privately, no matter where you are shopping.

Like things in video form? Check out our quick video guide on how to get your free Carfax today below!