TRUE COST

Know the real cost of any car before you buy.

What it does

TRUE COST 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? Everything runs on the phone or in the browser. There is no account, no server holding anyone's data, and it works offline.

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 TRUE COST reads real ads rather than asking people to type specs from memory. Three routes, all of them starting from a listing the person is already looking at:

📱 Share from the Carsales app Android. Tap share on any listing; it opens inside TRUE COST, which reads the price, odometer and specs, then closes.
💻 Chrome extension Desktop. One click on an open listing captures the whole thing.
✏️ 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.

Partnership and press: smcnichol@outlook.com
App: truecost.banksiaspringsfarm.com — installable, works offline
Android: Download the current build
Source: github.com/banksiasprings/truecost