How the check works

How we check a car listing

Three steps, about three seconds, and no car knowledge needed. Here is exactly what CarBluff reads, what it compares that against, and what a score can and cannot tell you. Want the full walkthrough for your marketplace? Browse our buyer's safety guides.

Paste the link

Copy the listing link from Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, OfferUp, or anywhere else, and drop it in the box. No account, no download.

We check it for you

We read the ad and the seller's own wording and compare it against 20+ known scam patterns in the link, the price, and the story.

You get a clear answer

A 0-100 trust score, every warning sign explained in plain English, and exactly what to do next. Then you decide, with more to go on.

Check a listing

What we look at

The same substance a careful friend who knows cars would check, done in seconds.

4checks

Is the link real

Is the web address the real marketplace, or a look-alike? Masked short links, fake "dealer" sites, and phishing pages get caught right away.

11checks

What the seller says

Wire transfers, gift cards, shipping stories, deployment sob stories, "escrow protection", pressure to hurry. These are the exact lines scammers reuse, spotted in the seller's own words.

7checks

Price, mileage, and location

Price against the year, mileage against the age, your own market comparison, and whether the listed location matches where the seller says the car actually is.

Take CarBluff where you actually shop

The checker lives on the web, but the extension checks the listing you're already looking at, one click, no copy-paste. An iPhone app is next.

Chrome · Edge · Brave

CarBluff Scan for your browser

On a car listing, click once. It scores the exact listing you're viewing for scam risk, right there, with nothing sent off your device. Free.

Add to Chrome, free Works on Chrome, Edge, and Brave.
iPhone · coming soon

CarBluff for iPhone

Check a listing, save cars to your Garage, and get the verdict in your pocket, even while you're standing in the seller's driveway.

Want the iPhone app the day it lands? Leave your email.

Questions, answered

Is this listing a scam?
Paste the link into CarBluff's free checker. It checks the ad against 20+ known scam patterns (a price far under market, payment requested before you see the car, a shipping or escrow story, a hardship back-story, and more) and returns a 0-100 trust score in seconds. Scam checks are free and unlimited, no account needed.
Does CarBluff open the link itself?
Yes. Paste the link and our server pulls the listing, including Facebook Marketplace, then checks it. Marketplaces change how they serve pages, so once in a while a listing won't come through. When that happens we simply ask you to paste the ad text instead of guessing. We will never score a page we couldn't actually read, because a listing we can't see would come back falsely clean.
Does a high score guarantee the car is real?
No. No tool can promise a car is real sight-unseen, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you comfort, not safety. A high score means we found no known scam patterns in the listing, not that the car is guaranteed real. Always verify the VIN, see the car in person, and never send money before you do.
What are the strongest scam signals?
1) A price well under market. 2) Any payment before you see the car (gift cards, wire, Zelle, crypto, "deposits to hold it"). 3) A shipping or escrow story explaining why you can't meet. Any one of these on its own is a reason to walk away.
Is my data stored?
The free scam scan runs in your browser, so when you paste listing text the scam-language check happens on your device. Some features do send data out to work. Running the Deal Score sends the year, make, model, mileage and a ZIP code (which we read from the listing text) to our market-data provider, MarketCheck. Checking a VIN sends it to the government NHTSA and vPIC databases for recalls and specs. Saving a car to your Garage stores that car's details on our servers under your account so you can see it across devices. If you paste a link instead of text, our server fetches that public page once to pull out the listing text. See our Privacy Policy for the full list of what is sent and to whom.
Does CarBluff work on dealer listings?
Yes. It checks any listing link or pasted text. The checks are tuned for private-seller scam patterns (payment before viewing, shipping stories, manufactured urgency), so a real dealer listing should come back clean rather than flag anything.
Is it okay to check someone else's listing?
Yes. CarBluff only reads the ad text that's already publicly visible on the listing, the same words you'd be reading yourself. It doesn't access private messages, seller accounts, or anything non-public.
What if I only have a screenshot, not a link?
Paste the text instead. Type or copy the title, price, and description from the screenshot into the paste box, and it checks exactly the same way. You can also upload the screenshots and we'll read them on your device.
Does CarBluff work outside the US?
The scam-wording checks work anywhere. The price and location checks are set up for US states and US market data, so treat those two specifically as less reliable outside the US.
How do I check a Facebook Marketplace car listing for a scam?
Paste the listing link into CarBluff for a 0-100 trust score in seconds, reverse-search a photo with Google Lens to catch stolen images, and ask the seller for the VIN to run through NICB VINCheck. See the Facebook Marketplace red-flag guide for the exact scripts sellers use on that platform.

Now try it on the listing you're looking at

Paste the link, get the same 0 to 100 breakdown in about three seconds. Free, no account.

Check a listing