The FTC Just Drew a Line on Car Prices. Here's What Our Listings Show.

7 min read

By Marcus Bell, Editor

Figures on this page are queried live from active inventory and refresh daily.

If you've shopped for a new car online, you know the move: the price in the search result is one number, and the price the dealer actually quotes you is another — after “dealer prep,” “market adjustment,” nitrogen-filled tires, and a few fees you didn't ask for.

In March, the FTC told 97 dealer groups to knock it off (a warning letter, not a finding of wrongdoing). The message was simple: the price you advertise has to be the total price a customer will actually pay — every mandatory dealer fee included, only government taxes excluded. And in May, the agency made clear this isn't just about a dealer's own website — dealers are responsible for the prices on the third-party listing sites you actually browse, too. The big listing platforms have already started reworking how they show price to comply.

Here's the rule in plain English, and then what we see across the cars we track.

What the FTC says is off-limits

The FTC flagged six advertised-price practices as deceptive:

1. A price that doesn't include all required fees
2. A price built on rebates or discounts not available to everyone
3. A price that ignores a required down payment
4. A price that's only real if you finance with the dealer
5. Requiring add-ons that aren't in the advertised price
6. Advertising cars that aren't actually available

If you've bought a car in the last few years, you've probably met at least three of these.

What our listings actually show

We track 2,217,352 new vehicles across 13,827 dealers and 18 brands, refreshed daily. Here's the honest picture.

Most listings are at or below MSRP. Across the brands whose feeds carry a comparable dealer asking price, about 75% are priced at or below sticker. The “every dealer is gouging” narrative isn't what the data says.

But “at or below sticker” hides a distinction that matters, so the table below splits it three ways. A car listed at exactly MSRP is not a discount, and for several brands that is where most of the inventory sits.

Brands are included here only when their feed carries a dealer asking price that is comparable across brands. Three groups are excluded, for different reasons: Acura carries no dealer asking price in our data at all, and Honda and Hyundai carry one only on the listings whose price we read off the selling dealer's own website, so a brand average built on them would describe the dealers we happen to have read rather than the brand; Ford, Kia, Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler publish a price that is MSRP less national incentives, so it is structurally never above sticker; and Lincoln and Genesis show the mirror artifact. Averaging those together with a genuine asking price produces a discount figure that isn't real.

The spread is wide, and it is per-brand and per-model rather than universal. But the averages stay modest precisely because most cars list fairly — it's the tail that stings. The largest markup in our data right now is a Cadillac Escalade 1SA listed +$81,190 over its $93,710 sticker in Florida. That is exactly why a per-car number you can trust matters. You can see the spread yourself in our per-model markup-by-state breakdowns.

And then there's availability — the FTC's sixth practice, advertising a car you can't actually buy. We see about 27,616 listings flagged as sold or spoken-for yet still showing, plus a much larger set of Toyota and Lexus listings carrying a “DealerHold” status (the car is reserved or allocated, not free to walk in and buy). To be fair, those holds are disclosed in the data — so this isn't automatically deceptive. But it's exactly why the smart move is to confirm a specific car is actually available before you drive an hour to see it.

How to protect yourself

• Ask for the out-the-door price in writing. Under the FTC's standard, the advertised number should already include every mandatory fee. If the quote jumps, ask what changed and whether it's actually required.
• Watch the asterisks. “Price requires dealer financing” or “with all available rebates” means the number isn't yours unless you qualify.
• Confirm the car exists and is available before you drive over. If it's been listed for weeks or flagged as held, push on it.
• Bring comps. Knowing how this trim is actually listed across states is the single best thing you can say at the table.

One promise from us

We're a listing site too, so we hold ourselves to the same line. A few things to know about our numbers:

• The price we show is the dealer's advertised / window-sticker price — not a guaranteed out-the-door total. Always get the all-in number in writing.
• When we have no dealer asking price for a car, we don't invent one. We show MSRP only and say so, rather than dress it up as a deal. That covers every Acura, and any Honda or Hyundai we have not yet found an advertised price for. Where we do have a real price, we show it.
• When a brand's feed publishes a post-incentive price rather than an asking price (Ford, Kia and the Stellantis brands), we don't blend it into cross-brand averages, because it would read as a discount that no buyer negotiated.
• We flag held and spoken-for cars so you're not chasing a unit that's already gone.

That's the whole point of the site: the number you see should be the number that's real. The FTC just made that the law for the people selling the cars. We think it should be the standard for the people listing them, too.

Sources: FTC press release (March 2026) and its May 2026 third-party-listings follow-up; industry total-price display changes (spring 2026). Our figures are queried live from active inventory and shift daily — see the live model pages and best deals for current numbers.