AutoTempest is a used car search engine that runs one query across Cars.com, eBay Motors, Carvana, TrueCar, Hemmings, Cars & Bids and several other marketplaces, then shows the results on a single page. It does not sell cars, hold inventory or take payment. The site, sometimes searched as Auto Tempest, has been online since 2008 and is free to use. This AutoTempest review covers what it actually searches, what it only links to, which features are worth your time, where it falls short, and the question every cross-market shopper ends up asking: what it costs to bring home a car that is cheaper three states away. That last part is where we can add something the other reviews cannot. SAKAEM Logistics is an auto transport broker registered with the FMCSA under MC 16237, and about 43 percent of the orders we book are vehicle purchases, per our 2026 dispatch data. We move the cars that searches like this one find.
Key Takeaways
- AutoTempest searches around ten partner sites directly for a US query and only links out to Autotrader, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. It does not search CarGurus at all.
- It is legitimate and free. The company earns affiliate commissions when you click through to a listing or a partner, which is disclosed on the results page.
- The Price Trends search, added in June 2025, shows historical asking prices for a model, which no single marketplace offers.
- The site’s biggest strength, finding a cheaper car far from home, only pays off when the saving clears the transport cost. On SAKAEM’s delivered orders that number runs from about $800 on Arizona to California up to $1,550 on California to Florida.
What Is AutoTempest and How Does It Work?
AutoTempest is a meta-search engine for used cars. You enter a make, model and location once, and it pulls matching listings from each of its partner marketplaces into one results page, grouped by source or merged into a single list. The listing still lives on the original site. When you click a car, you leave AutoTempest and deal with the dealer or private seller there.
The company was founded in 2008 by Nathan Stretch, who also runs SearchTempest, the equivalent tool for Craigslist. The team is small and based in Canada, which explains a few things covered later in this review, including the Kijiji source and the “Include International” toggle. It is still run by its founder and is not part of Cox Automotive, CarGurus or any dealer group, which matters because it has no inventory of its own to push.
How AutoTempest makes money is simple and disclosed on every results page: clicking through to a listing, contacting a seller or using a partner tool can earn the site a commission. There is no premium tier, no paid placement for shoppers to worry about, and no fee to search. That model is the same one Autolist and most comparison sites use, and it is the reason the search stays free.
Which Sites Does AutoTempest Search?
For a US search in September 2026, AutoTempest reports ten sources and shows most of them as tabs across the top of the results. The distinction that matters is between sites it searches directly and sites it only links to.
| Source | How AutoTempest handles it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Cars.com | Searched directly | Dealer and private listings appear in the AutoTempest results |
| eBay Motors | Searched directly | Auction and Buy It Now listings, including eBay Secure Purchase cars |
| Carvana | Searched directly | Carvana’s national inventory with its delivery pricing |
| TrueCar | Searched directly, also powers the New Cars tab | Dealer used inventory and new-car pricing |
| Hemmings | Searched directly | Classic and collector listings, auctions and classifieds |
| Cars & Bids | Searched directly | Enthusiast auctions, 1980s and newer |
| CarSoup | Searched directly | Regional dealer inventory |
| PrivateAuto | Searched directly | Private-party listings with verified buyers and sellers |
| Kijiji | Link only, Canada | Appears with Include International or a Canadian location |
| Autotrader | Link only | AutoTempest builds a pre-filled Autotrader search and opens it in a new tab |
| Craigslist | Link only | Same, one link per nearby Craigslist region |
| Facebook Marketplace | Link only | Same, a set of Marketplace search links |
| CarGurus | Not searched, not linked | You have to search CarGurus yourself |
Source: autotempest.com results page and How AutoTempest Works page, read September 2026. The site’s own disclaimer states it is not affiliated with Craigslist, Autotrader, CarGurus, Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace.
The link-only group is the part most reviews get wrong. Autotrader and Facebook Marketplace listings never appear inside AutoTempest. Clicking those tabs opens the other site with your filters carried over, which saves typing but not the trip. Since Autotrader carries one of the largest dealer inventories in the country, an AutoTempest search that looks complete is missing a large slice of the market until you click through. The same applies to CarGurus, which has no tab at all. If you rely on CarGurus deal ratings, read our CarGurus review and run that search separately.
AutoTempest USA vs Canada
AutoTempest USA is the same site with a US location entered. The search defaults to the country of the ZIP or postal code you provide and hides the other country’s listings unless you tick Include International. For a US shopper that toggle mostly adds Kijiji results from Ontario and British Columbia, which are rarely worth pursuing once import paperwork and cross-border transport are counted. For a Canadian shopper it opens the far larger US market, which is a genuine use case for enthusiast cars.
The practical point for US buyers is that the “usa” in the search query changes nothing. There is no separate US edition, no US-only feature set and no reason to look for one. Enter a US ZIP and the results are American.
AutoTempest Features Worth Using
AutoTempest offers a handful of tools beyond the basic search. Three of them justify the visit; the rest are links to partner services.
Filters and the nationwide radius
The filter panel covers make, model and trim, price, year, mileage, fuel type, transmission, body style, sale type (classified or auction) and interior and exterior color. The setting that separates AutoTempest from a local dealer search is distance, which accepts any radius up to nationwide. Set it to the whole country, sort by price, and the first screen tells you whether your local market is expensive for the car you want. That single view is the reason cross-market shoppers use the site.
A newer search-by-description box accepts plain phrases such as “2019-2021 RAV4 hybrid” and translates them into filters. It works well for year ranges and trims and less well for anything the source sites do not tag consistently, such as options packages.
Saved searches and email alerts
Any search can be saved and turned into an email alert for new listings matching it. Alerts fire from all partner sources at once, which beats setting up separate alerts on five sites. The link-only sources are not covered, so an Autotrader or Marketplace listing will never trigger one.
Price Trends
Price Trends, launched in June 2025, is a search mode next to Used Cars and New Cars. You enter a make and model, optionally with year, transmission or body style, and AutoTempest shows both current listings and every historical listing it has indexed, plotted over time. It is an asking-price history, not a sold-price history, so it cannot tell you what cars actually transacted for. AutoTempest positions it as a depreciation tool and quotes a 20 to 30 percent first-year drop followed by roughly 15 percent a year, figures from its own June 2025 announcement rather than from transaction data. Used for its real purpose, judging whether a listing is high or low against the last twelve months of asking prices for that model, it is the most useful feature the site has added in years.
The app
The AutoTempest app is available for iOS and Android and mirrors the website, including saved searches, alerts and, since February 2025, price history and dark mode. It is a convenience rather than a separate product.
Motorcycles, trucks and classics
AutoTempest is a car search engine first. Pickup trucks and SUVs are covered as body styles, and classic cars come through Hemmings, Cars & Bids and eBay Motors, which makes the site a reasonable starting point for a collector search. Motorcycles are not a supported category on the US search, so a bike search returns little beyond a few eBay listings. Cycle Trader and eBay Motors directly are the tools for that job, and if the bike is out of state, motorcycle shipping runs on a different truck type and price basis than a car, so budget for it separately.
Is AutoTempest Legit?
AutoTempest is legitimate. It has operated under the same ownership since 2008, discloses its affiliate model, charges nothing, and never asks for payment, identification or a deposit because it never sells you anything. The risk is not the site. The risk is the listings it surfaces, and those carry the same scam patterns they carry on the source marketplaces.
Three checks cover most of it:
- Verify the listing on the source site before contacting anyone. Because listings originate on third-party marketplaces, a car that sold or was pulled can stay visible until the source data refreshes. Click through and confirm it is still live and the price matches.
- Run the VIN through a history report and, on a private sale, confirm the title is in the seller’s name. eBay Secure Purchase, PrivateAuto and Cars.com Secure Checkout all add identity verification and escrow-style payment, which is worth using on any private sale over a few thousand dollars.
- Treat a price far below the Price Trends history as a flag, not a find. Cloned listings copied from a legitimate ad are a common marketplace scam, usually paired with an unusually low price and a story about relocation, deployment or urgency.
The ConsumerAffairs profile for AutoTempest is unclaimed and carries no rating as of August 2026, which is normal for a search tool that never takes your money. Reddit discussion, including a long r/cars thread, is consistently positive about the search and consistently reminds people that the deal is only as good as the seller behind it.
Where AutoTempest Falls Short
AutoTempest is a first pass, not a complete search, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions. Its real limits:
- Coverage gaps. Autotrader, Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are links, not results, and CarGurus is absent. A serious search still means opening at least two of those separately.
- Stale and duplicate listings. The same car can appear from Cars.com and a dealer’s TrueCar feed, and sold cars can persist until the next refresh. Sorting by price surfaces stale bargains first.
- Shallow filters on some sources. Filters are only as good as the tags the source site supplies. Trim, options and one-owner flags are inconsistent, and the site warns you when a link-only source does not support a filter you set.
- No selling and no transaction. You cannot list a car on AutoTempest. Its Sell page routes you to PrivateAuto, Cars.com, Carvana, Hemmings, Cars & Bids or eBay, each with its own fees. Cars & Bids, for example, is free to list, and AutoTempest’s sell page still quotes the old 4.5 percent buyer fee; the platform moved to 5 percent capped at $7,500 in February 2025, as covered in our Cars & Bids review.
- Asking prices only. Price Trends shows what sellers wanted, not what buyers paid. Pair it with a transaction-based tool such as Edmunds or KBB before negotiating.
Who should skip it: anyone buying within 50 miles who plans to test drive and negotiate in person. A direct search on Autotrader and CarGurus with a tight radius will show more local inventory with better dealer data. AutoTempest earns its keep when the search radius is wide.
Sites Like AutoTempest
The two closest alternatives are Autolist, another aggregator with a strong app and price-drop history, and CarGurus, which is a marketplace rather than an aggregator but is the site most people are really comparing against.
| AutoTempest | Autolist | CarGurus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Aggregator, searches partner sites | Aggregator, searches partner sites | Marketplace with its own dealer listings |
| Covers Autotrader or CarGurus inventory | No, links only | Varies by partner feed | CarGurus only |
| Price tools | Price Trends, asking-price history by model | Price-drop alerts and days-on-market per listing | Deal rating against IMV, price history per listing |
| Alerts | Email, all partner sources | App push and email | Email and app |
| Sell your car | No, partner links only | No, partner links only | Yes, listing and instant offer |
| Best for | Nationwide searches and enthusiast cars | Phone-first shoppers | Local dealer searches and deal ratings |
For a broader look at where each marketplace fits, see our ranking of the best used car websites, where AutoTempest holds the aggregator slot.
Bringing an AutoTempest Find Home
The whole point of a nationwide search is that the same car can be priced very differently in different markets. The question that decides whether the search paid off is whether the saving covers moving the car. Below are median customer prices on eight lanes from SAKAEM’s delivered orders between September 2025 and September 2026, open transport, standard sedan or SUV. Enclosed transport runs higher. The last column is the price gap that covers transport alone. The true break-even is higher once inspection, dealer fees, taxes and your time are added.
| Lane | Orders in sample | Median price | Middle 50 percent | Minimum price gap to cover median shipping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona to California | 15 | $800 | $650 to $950 | $800 |
| California to Washington | 14 | $1,050 | $950 to $1,350 | $1,050 |
| Texas to California | 30 | $1,100 | $900 to $1,370 | $1,100 |
| New York to Florida | 18 | $1,100 | $1,025 to $1,200 | $1,100 |
| North Carolina to Texas | 17 | $1,200 | $1,100 to $1,400 | $1,200 |
| Florida to New York | 14 | $1,375 | $1,000 to $1,500 | $1,375 |
| California to Texas | 42 | $1,400 | $1,250 to $1,600 | $1,400 |
| California to Florida | 31 | $1,550 | $1,300 to $2,150 | $1,550 |
Source: SAKAEM Logistics dispatch data, delivered orders created September 2025 through September 2026. Prices are what the customer paid, including our fee. Individual quotes vary with vehicle size, season and pickup flexibility, so run your own lane through the car shipping cost calculator before you commit to a purchase.
Two things the table does not capture. First, sales tax follows your home state, not the seller’s, so a low-tax state on the map does not change your bill. Second, the dealer’s fees and your home state’s title deadline can eat a chunk of the gap. Both are covered in detail in our guide to buying a car out of state, and the paperwork side of a remote purchase, including paying before you have seen the car, is in our how to buy a car guide.
From the dispatch side, dealer pickups are the smoothest orders we run. Our dispatch team estimates they go as planned roughly 99 percent of the time, because there is always someone at the lot, the car is where it is supposed to be, and dealers handle transport releases every week. Two things our dispatchers confirm before the truck is assigned: that the buyer has told the dealer the car is paid for and released for pickup, and that the carrier has the lot’s exact hours, because a driver arriving at a closed dealership on a Sunday is the one way these orders go wrong. Private-seller pickups need one more step, a named contact with a working phone who can meet the driver, which is why we ask for it on the order. If you are buying from a dealer’s online listing, our online car buyer shipping page covers how the handoff works.
One more note. AutoTempest’s own footer link for shipping quotes goes to a guide that points to bidding marketplaces and a short list of brokers. Competitive bidding can produce attractive initial prices, but service quality then depends heavily on the carrier ultimately assigned. Whatever route you take, verify the broker or carrier’s FMCSA authority and insurance before you pay a deposit.
AutoTempest Review FAQ
What is AutoTempest?
AutoTempest is a free used car search engine that queries several marketplaces at once, including Cars.com, eBay Motors, Carvana, TrueCar, Hemmings and Cars & Bids, and shows the results on one page. It has operated since 2008 and does not sell cars itself.
How does AutoTempest work?
You enter a make, model and location once. AutoTempest sends that search to each partner site, collects the matching listings, and displays them grouped by source or as one list. For sites it does not partner with, such as Autotrader and Craigslist, it builds a pre-filled search link instead.
Is AutoTempest legit?
Yes. AutoTempest has run under the same founder since 2008, is free, and earns commissions only when you click through to a partner. It never takes payment or personal information. The listings themselves carry the normal marketplace risks, so verify every car on the source site before paying anything.
Is AutoTempest good for finding a car?
It is the fastest way to see one model’s asking prices across the whole country. It is weaker for local searches, where Autotrader and CarGurus show more inventory and better dealer data, and it misses both of those sites entirely.
How does AutoTempest make money?
Through affiliate commissions. When you click a listing, contact a seller or use a partner tool such as an insurance or trade-in quote, AutoTempest can earn a referral fee, which it discloses on the results page. Searching is free.
Who owns AutoTempest?
AutoTempest was founded in 2008 by Nathan Stretch, who remains its CEO and also founded SearchTempest, a Craigslist search tool. It is an independent company based in Canada, not part of any automaker, dealer group or marketplace.
Does AutoTempest search CarGurus?
No. As of September 2026, AutoTempest neither searches CarGurus nor links to it, and its own disclaimer states it is not affiliated with CarGurus. If you rely on CarGurus inventory or deal ratings, run a separate CarGurus search alongside AutoTempest.
Does AutoTempest search Facebook Marketplace?
No. Facebook Marketplace listings do not appear in AutoTempest results. The site generates a set of Marketplace search links for your area that open in a new tab, which saves typing but still means checking Marketplace separately.
Does AutoTempest work in Canada?
Yes. Canadian searches include Kijiji, and the Include International toggle lets shoppers on either side of the border see the other country’s listings. US shoppers rarely benefit, since importing a car adds paperwork and cross-border transport that erase most price gaps.
Does AutoTempest have an app?
Yes, for iOS and Android. The app mirrors the website, including saved searches, new-listing alerts, price history and dark mode.
Can you sell a car on AutoTempest?
Not directly. AutoTempest has no listings of its own. Its Sell page routes you to PrivateAuto, Cars.com, Carvana, Hemmings, Cars & Bids or eBay, and a car listed with any partner appears in AutoTempest searches automatically.
Can I use AutoTempest for motorcycles?
Not usefully. Motorcycles are not a supported category on the US search, so results are limited to a few eBay listings. Cycle Trader and eBay Motors are the right tools for a bike search.
The Bottom Line
AutoTempest is an excellent first search for a used car when distance is not a constraint, and a poor last search for one when it is. Use it to find out whether the car you want is priced better far from home, then finish the search on Autotrader and CarGurus, verify the listing on the source site, and price the transport before you negotiate. On the lanes above, the gap has to clear $800 to $1,550 before the distant car wins. Since 2017 SAKAEM Logistics has brokered transport for exactly these purchases, vetting every carrier’s FMCSA authority and insurance before dispatch, and our customers have left 580+ Google reviews averaging 4.6 stars. When the AutoTempest search finds the right car in the wrong state, get a car shipping quote and put the real number next to the saving.
