Cars.com leads close at 2.1% across the 130 dealerships we measure. That ranks 8th of 12 providers we track: just below CARFAX (2.2%) and above OfferUp (1.3%). A dealership using it gets about 95 leads a month, which at that rate is roughly 2 sales a month and 48 leads worked per sale.
last 12 months
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How Cars.com has changed since 2022
A single close rate hides the story. Here is the same measure year by year, next to the volume each dealership received.
| Year | Leads | Dealerships | Leads/dealer/mo | Close rate | Days to sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 79,860 | 126 | 68 | 2.4% | 4.7 |
| 2023 | 115,839 | 130 | 94 | 2.0% | 5.6 |
| 2024 | 106,432 | 131 | 86 | 2.1% | 5.5 |
| 2025 | 113,671 | 132 | 91 | 2.0% | 5.9 |
| 2026 (partial) | 95,131 | 122 | 93 | 2.1% | 4.9 |
A lead counts as sold if it sold within 90 days of arriving. Partial years include leads that have not had the full 90 days yet, so their close rate is still settling. Treat the last complete year as the reference.
Between 2022 and 2025, the average dealership went from 68 to 91 Cars.com leads a month (+34%), while the close rate went from 2.4% to 2.0% (−17%).
What the average hides
The average hides a volume cliff. Split the 78 dealerships with enough Cars.com leads into thirds by how many they get: the two smaller thirds close them at 2.7–3.4%, while the top third — around 233 leads a store a month — closes at 1.5%. The likeliest reason is capacity rather than the leads themselves: past a certain volume, a team stops answering every one of them quickly. Even on the same provider, dealerships land far apart: the middle half close Cars.com leads at 1.1–3.6%.
The fairest comparison is inside the same store, where the sales team is the same on both sides. Counting the stores that run both, Cars.com trails CarGurus at 50 of 74, beats CARFAX at 35 of 58, trails Autotrader at 31 of 47, and beats TrueCar at 24 of 28.
How it compares
Close rate by source, leads from August 2025 to July 2026. Green bars are the dealership's own channels; Cars.com is in orange. All sources in this sample together close at 4.6%.
The honest framing: no paid lead provider we track closes above 6.9%, while a repeat customer closes at 34.5%. The gap between the best and worst provider is smaller than the gap between any of them and a customer who already knows you — which is why the follow-up process matters more than the vendor.
Common questions
What is the Cars.com close rate for car dealers?
Cars.com leads close at 2.1% across the 130 dealerships we measure. That ranks 8th of 12 providers we track: just below CARFAX (2.2%) and above OfferUp (1.3%). A dealership using it gets about 95 leads a month, which at that rate is roughly 2 sales a month and 48 leads worked per sale.
How many leads does Cars.com send a dealership each month?
A dealership using Cars.com received about 95 leads a month from August 2025 to July 2026, averaged across 130 independent dealerships. At a 2.1% close rate that is about 48 leads worked for every sale.
How do Cars.com leads compare to a dealership's own leads?
Cars.com leads close at 2.1%. A dealership's own channels close far higher: repeat customer 34.5%, referral 34.5%, walk-in 28.0% and phone 12.3%. No paid lead provider we track closes above 6.9%.
How is this close rate measured?
It is the share of Cars.com leads that reached a recorded sale within 90 days of arriving, counted from each lead's own CRM record with no attribution modeling. Only leads that arrived through the Cars.com integration are counted, bulk imports from previous CRMs are excluded, and dealerships that record their sales outside the CRM are left out. The figures cover leads from August 2025 to July 2026.
Methodology
Every lead in this analysis entered a live CRM at an independent dealership and was tracked to its outcome. Close rate is the share of leads from a source that reached a recorded sale within 90 days. There is no attribution modeling: a lead counts as sold only if that lead's own record shows the sale.
We count a lead as Cars.com only when it arrived through the Cars.com integration, not when a salesperson filed it under that name by hand. Leads bulk-imported from a previous CRM are excluded, because they arrive with their outcome already decided. Headline figures cover the twelve months ending July 2026, so every lead in them has had time to close.
Many dealerships work their leads in AutoRaptor but mark the deal sold in their DMS, so the CRM shows them selling almost nothing. Counting them would make every provider look worse for a reason that has nothing to do with the provider. We include a dealership only for periods in which it recorded at least 1 sale a month in the CRM across all of its sources. The test is whether sales are recorded, not how many leads close, so a dealership that closes poorly still counts.
These figures come from aggregated, anonymized activity at independent dealerships in the United States and Canada whose AutoRaptor agreements allow their data to be used this way. They benchmark lead providers; they are not a measure of AutoRaptor's performance or a close rate for AutoRaptor customers as a whole. We report only totals across many dealerships, never an individual dealership's results, and publish a provider only when at least 20 dealerships and 5,000 leads contribute to it.
We publish every major lead provider on the same basis, whichever way the numbers fall. See all provider report cards →
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