TrueCost

Know the real cost of any car before you buy.

What it does

TrueCost takes a car listing and works out what that car will actually cost to own in Australia — fuel or charging, registration, insurance, servicing, tyres, depreciation and the interest given up on the purchase price — over the years and kilometres you actually drive, in the state you actually live in. It answers the question a sticker price can't: of two cars you can afford, which one is cheaper by the time you sell it? Your cars stay on your phone and it works offline. There's no account to make: switch on cloud sync only if you want them on another device too (what that stores).

What it looks like

A list of cars, each showing its total five-year cost, cost per year and cost per kilometre, with a breakdown by category. — Every car, costed the same way

Four cars compared side by side, with a chart of cumulative cost over five years. — Side by side, over five years

How a car gets in

The numbers are only as good as the listing behind them, so TrueCost reads real ads rather than asking people to type specs from memory:

Browse with the price bar In the Android app, browse Carsales as normal: every car you open shows what it costs to own, and one tap adds it.
Import a saved list Any phone or computer. One bookmark sends every car on a Carsales page into TrueCost at once.
By hand No install needed. Type in what you know and the rest is estimated from Australian averages.

Every captured car keeps a link back to the ad it came from, so the listing stays the source of truth — and the trip back to it is one tap.

Where the numbers come from

Fuel prices, charging rates and state registration and stamp-duty tables are refreshed weekly and published with the app, so a calculation done today uses today's rates rather than whatever was true when the code was written. Registration is banded by cylinder count or tare weight depending on the state; stamp duty follows each state's own schedule; insurance is adjusted for state and driver age. Sole traders can set a business-use percentage and see the after-tax cost. Resale values come from curves fitted to more than 40,000 real Australian listings, refreshed as the market moves.

Partnership and press: smcnichol@outlook.com
App: truecost.banksiaspringsfarm.com — installable, works offline