Valuation API
Building a lightweight vehicle valuation API over a weekend that cut costs from £3 to £0.0025 per lookup, boosting margins by 74,900%. Now used by dealers, it delivers instant, accurate valuations for cars and bikes, without relying on expensive providers.
Highlights
Simple & Valuable
An easy way for dealers to test my product and get valuations fast and free.
The Problem
Valuation providers like Experian, Cap HPI, and Brego charge up to £3 per valuation, with even higher rates for motorcycles. These valuations were essential to the Motorcart experience, yet were being handed out to users for free, these costs are unsustainable.
Discovery
To understand how valuation companies operated, I dove into research, reverse engineering, and competitor analysis. I broke down the essential components of a valuation engine and explored how data was being sourced, cleaned, and interpreted.
Strategy
The strategy was simple: build fast, validate fast. The goal was not to build the perfect system but to prove that accurate valuations could be delivered at near-zero cost.
The MVP
The first version was ultra-lean. Users entered year, make, model and mileage, and the api returned an average valuation assuming the vehicle was in excellent condition. It worked well enough to validate the core idea but exposed some key issues.
Features
Problems
The Solution
The final solution is a fast, scalable valuation API that delivers near-instant results at negligible cost. It now supports granular parameters with optional condition, service history, and feature inputs that adjust the valuation in real time.
Features
Outcomes
The valuation API has shifted from a weekend hack to a core platform asset, enabling dealers to offer high-volume, low-cost valuations that rival industry leaders, without the dependency or overhead.