Privacy
Last updated October 30, 2026
The short version: UsedCarWise has no accounts, no cookies, no analytics and no ads. We don't keep the VINs you look up. The only personal information we store is your email, and only if you ask us to email you a report.
What you enter
The cars, years of ownership, miles and fuel price you choose are kept in the page address so you can bookmark or share a comparison. They're sent to our server to compute the forecast and aren't stored.
If you paste a VIN, our server sends it to NHTSA's public VIN decoder (vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov) to find the make, model and year, then discards it. We don't write VINs to disk or to our logs.
If you ask for a PDF report
If you enter your email to get a comparison as a PDF, we store your email address, the comparison you asked for, the date, and whether you ticked the box to get occasional buying tips. We use it to send you that report and, only if you ticked the box, occasional tips. We don't sell it or share it with partners or advertisers.
It's stored on our server (hosted by Fly.io in the US). Emails are sent through our email provider, Resend, which handles your address only to deliver them. We keep it until you remove it: every email we send has a link that deletes your address and all your report requests straight away. You can also ask us to delete it, or to tell you what we hold, by writing to [email protected].
Downloading the PDF without entering an email stores nothing.
Finding cars near you
If you enter a ZIP code to find dealers, it's sent to our server to look up listings near you (using MarketCheck's dealer inventory data, when that's switched on) or to build search links. We don't store or log it, and it's forgotten when you leave the page. Listing links open the dealer's or listing site's own page, which has its own privacy policy.
Partner links
Links to vehicle history reports, insurance quotes and loan rates go through our server first, so we can count how often each is used. We count the link, where on the site it was clicked and which car was being viewed. We don't record your IP address, your VIN or anything else about you. If you follow the history-report link after looking up a VIN, that VIN is passed to the report site so it can find the car. Partner sites have their own privacy policies.
Technical information
To stop abuse of the VIN lookup, our server holds your IP address in memory for up to one minute while counting lookups. It isn't written anywhere and is gone when the minute passes.
The site is hosted by Fly.io and delivered through Cloudflare, which handle the network traffic to deliver it and protect it from attacks. Fonts and everything else on the page come from usedcarwise.com itself, so no other company sees your visit.
Cookies and tracking
We don't set cookies, use local storage, run analytics or embed trackers, and our emails don't contain tracking pixels.
Links to other sites
Recall links go to nhtsa.gov, and partner and listing links go to other companies' sites. Each has its own privacy policy.
Children
UsedCarWise is meant for adults shopping for a car and isn't directed at children under 13.
Contact
Questions about privacy or your data: [email protected].
Changes
If this changes, for example if we add analytics, we'll update this page and the date at the top before it takes effect.