How the Vehicle Intelligence Report Works

Most "deal score" tools don't explain their math. This one does — because a number you can't verify isn't worth trusting.

What the $49 report actually contains

For a specific vehicle you give us, the report includes:

• A Deal Score out of 100, plus a plain-language tier: Great Deal, Fair Deal, or Tough Deal
• A fair price target — the number we'd actually aim for in a negotiation
• A recommended opening offer and a walk-away price — the point past which the deal stops making sense
• Live comparable listings the numbers above are built from
• A human review before it's sent to you — the engine below produces a starting point, not the final answer

How the Deal Score is calculated

Two inputs, weighted differently:

• Price gap (up to 70 of 100 points): how far the asking price sits below the market average price for comparable vehicles. A bigger gap below market average earns more points; a price at or above market average earns none of these points.
• Time on lot (up to 30 of 100 points): how many days the vehicle has been listed, capped at 60 days. Longer-listed vehicles typically mean a dealer under more pressure to move it.

Those combine into a single 0–100 score. The tier label attached to it isn't a simple cutoff on that same number, though — Great Deal specifically requires the price itself to be at or below market average, not just a high score. That guard exists on purpose: without it, a car that's merely been sitting a long time — even if it's priced at or above what similar vehicles are going for — could technically earn enough points from time-on-lot alone to get labeled a "great deal," which isn't an honest read of the price. Fair Deal only requires a score of 5 or higher. Below that, it's labeled Tough Deal.

How the fair price target and walk-away number are calculated

These come from two separate market-pressure signals, not the Deal Score itself:

• Inventory pressure: how many comparable vehicles are currently listed nearby. More competing inventory means more pressure on any single dealer to be flexible.
• Aging pressure: how long comparable vehicles typically take to sell in that market. Slower-moving comps mean more room to negotiate.

Whichever of those two signals shows more pressure sets a discount range — a smaller discount (around 5%) when there's little real leverage, up building toward roughly 10% off asking when both signals point to a dealer under real pressure to sell. The walk-away price is never set below the fair price target, so the two numbers never contradict each other in the report you receive.

What happens when there isn't enough data

If there's no reliable market average for a vehicle — a rare trim, a thin local market — the report says so rather than guessing. This is the same honesty built into the free Deal Checker: an unscored result is labeled "not enough market data," not silently defaulted to a number that looks confident but isn't backed by anything real.

Want to check a deal yourself first, for free? The Deal Checker runs on the same engine — see how it works and where it differs from the paid report.