If you're comparing cars before you apply for finance, you've probably noticed that two similar-looking models can carry very different price tags. The gap isn't random, and once you know what actually drives it, spotting a fair price gets a lot easier.
We analysed almost 86,000 real UK car adverts from summer 2026 to see what actually moves the price. Every figure below comes directly from that data. You can also try our price estimator, built on the same numbers. It lands within about ±11.6% of the real market price.
Typical price (median)
£15,495
Half of all cars sit between £11,449 and £20,498. The full range: £3,700 – £41,995.
Listings
85,726
summer 2026
Electric + hybrid
16.8%
the rest is petrol/diesel
Automatic
54.3%
manual 45.7%
Estimate accuracy
±7.9%
typical gap from the price
🎛 Interactive
Before we dig in, try it yourself. Pick a car and we’ll estimate what it should ask. It updates instantly, using the same open model we use throughout, and it is right to within about ±11.6%.
Approximate, from a transparent model. The options (fuel, body, gearbox, years, mileage, engine) are limited to what actually occurs for the chosen make/model. A more accurate model is in the “What drives price” section. Price = dealer asking price, not the sale.
We started with the simplest question: what's actually for sale? Before looking at price at all, we counted the mix — fuel types, body shapes, makes, and years — to see what fills UK forecourts right now.
Top fuel
62.6%
petrol
Top body
57.8%
hatchback
Age peak
2023
14,853 cars
Top make
Ford
8.6% of listings
share of listings
share of listings
Automatics are already more than half. The market has shifted away from manual, especially in newer and electric cars.
share of listings
which makes are most on sale · about count, not price (prices are in section 02)
number of listings by year · hover a bar
The typical UK car for sale right now is a petrol hatchback from 2022 or 2023. 2023 is the single busiest year, with just under 15,000 cars. Ford is the most common make, at 8.6% of listings.
Automatics have taken over much of the market, at 54.3% of listings, while electric and hybrid cars together are still a minority at 16.8%. That share is climbing fast: among 2020-registered cars it was 11%, and among 2025 cars it's already 34%.
Next we lined the typical price up against mileage, fuel type, body, and make, one group at a time, to see what the market actually charges for different kinds of car.
miles on the clock → median price
median price
median price
typical price by make · about money, not count (shares are in section 01)
Price tracks mileage almost in a straight line down to 100,000 miles, and SUVs and premium makes sit at the top. But these are raw averages. Newer cars are more often automatic, and SUVs tend to be bigger. A new automatic SUV is dear partly for being new, not only for being an SUV. Don't judge a body shape or badge on price alone until you've seen the effects in isolation, which is exactly what the next section does.
We lined up cars that are alike apart from one detail — age, make, model, mileage, fuel, or gearbox — and measured how much that one detail moves the price on its own, with everything else held equal.
Each bar is how much of the price differences one factor explains. Taller means a bigger effect.
“Make and model” is the brand and exact model, say a BMW 3 Series versus a Ford Fiesta. Same age and mileage, very different price, just from the badge. Colour, doors and body type barely matter on their own.
Age and the make-and-model badge together explain about three-quarters of a car's price. Mileage comes next, with engine size and gearbox adding a little more. Colour, doors, and body type barely move the price at all. When you're judging or haggling over a price, age and mileage are where to spend your energy.
We turned the driver analysis above into quick numbers you can use without needing to see a chart.
We plotted the typical price against the year each car was built, to see the shape of the classic used-car depreciation curve.
Hover a point for the exact price and number of cars.
Value drops fastest in the first 2 or 3 years, then the fall levels off. That steep early loss is money the first owner has already absorbed — a car a few years old is usually the sweet spot between price and condition. One quirk worth noting: the very newest, 2026-plated stock actually lists a touch below 2025 cars. That's not an error, it's mostly basic trims and low-mileage stock arriving first.
We measured depreciation make by make, working out how much value each one sheds per year on comparable mileage, then converting that into the share of price still there after three years.
share of the price still there after 3 years · longer is better
share of the price still there after 3 years · longer is better
Hybrids hold value best. Electric is worst: the tech and battery date quickly, and new models keep getting cheaper.
Fiat, Volkswagen, Audi, and Mercedes hold on best, keeping around 80% of their price after three years — a depreciation rate of roughly 6–7.5% a year. MG, Peugeot, and Kia fall faster, losing 10–11% a year and keeping only about 71–73%. Hybrids hold on best of any fuel type; EVs fade fastest. The badge you pick today is part of the price you'll get back later.
We let the data sort itself — grouping cars by price, age, mileage, body, and fuel with no rules of our own — and named each of the six groups that fell out by what stood out about it. The names are shorthand, so a car near the edge of one group could easily belong to its neighbour.
The cheapest end of the market: older, higher-mileage hatchbacks kept simple. Good when the upfront price matters most and the age and miles don’t put you off. Mostly manual, with few extras.
Small city cars like the Fiat 500 and MINI. Compact, easy to park and cheap to run. Older, but not heavily used. A typical first car or second runaround.
The market’s core: fairly new, affordable everyday hatchbacks with modest mileage. The safe default, with the widest choice and the steadiest prices.
Bigger, pricier SUVs, mostly diesel automatics from premium makes (BMW, Audi, Land Rover). More space and badge appeal, but higher running costs. Often ex-company cars.
Young automatics, and the greenest group: about a third are hybrid or electric. Newer tech and low mileage, at a mid-to-high price.
Barely used: around a year old with ~4,000 miles. Near-new without the new-car price tag, and the priciest used group.
About 79,000 of the cars carried a written description. We checked each one for mentions of features and options, then tested whether mentioning something lined up with a higher price once we held the car's make, year, mileage, and body equal.
How to read it. Each row is a feature we looked for in the advert. The bar is how much more, on average, cars that mention it ask than a similar car. A mention is marketing, not proof it is fitted.
how often an option appears in the listing text
Genuine features do carry a signal: a panoramic roof adds about £690, leather interior around £203, sat-nav roughly £150, DAB radio £138, a reversing camera £127, and keyless entry £70.
We looked at the fastest-moving corner of the market: what electric and hybrid cars cost, how far they've run, and how well they hold their value compared with petrol and diesel.
Electric + hybrid
16.8%
4,646 electric + 9,791 hybrid
Share growth
11% → 34%
among 2020 → 2025 cars
Typical electric price
£19,869
hybrid £19,850
Dearer than petrol
+36%
petrol £14,627
Electric mileage
13,568
miles, about half that of petrol (25,909)
Electric age
3 years
the fleet is noticeably younger
electric and hybrid are clearly dearer than ICE
how much it drops each year · adjusted for mileage
The blue columns are the electrified pair. They cost about £5,000 more and are newer with far lower mileage, but they part ways on resale: hybrids keep the most value, electrics the least.
| Per typical car | Petrol | Diesel | Hybrid | Electric |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical price | £14,600 | £14,100 | £19,850 | £19,900 |
| Typical mileage | 26,000 | 58,500 | 19,400 | 13,600 |
| Typical age | 4 yrs | 7 yrs | 3 yrs | 3 yrs |
| Value kept after 3 yrs | 75% | 69% | 82% | 65% |
| Share of market | 63% | 21% | 11% | 5% |
what is sold most · label is the typical price
the hybrid market is largely Toyota territory
Electric and hybrid cars now make up 16.8% of the market — 4,646 electric and 9,791 hybrid listings — and the share is climbing fast, from 11% of 2020-registered cars to 34% of 2025 ones.
They cost more to buy: a typical electric car is £19,869, a hybrid £19,850, both around 36% more than the typical petrol car at £14,627. Electric cars also carry far less mileage, 13,568 miles on average against 25,909 for petrol.
But they split sharply on resale. An electric car loses value fastest of any fuel type, dropping around 13% a year, so a 3-year-old EV keeps only about 65% of what it cost new. A hybrid does the opposite, losing roughly 6.5% a year and keeping about 82% after 3 years: Toyota's hybrids in particular hold on well. An EV is generally a stronger buy used than new, since the first owner absorbs the steepest part of the drop. A hybrid is a safer long-term keeper, new or nearly new.
Give an ordinary buyer a clear picture of the UK used-car market: what a car costs now, what makes up that price, what matters more and less, how value fades with age, and what kinds of car are out there. Along the way, we also flag listings that look underpriced.
In total, about 86,000 cars were collected spanning a price range of £3,700 to £41,995. For each car, we know the price, make, model and trim, year, mileage, fuel, gearbox, body, engine size, doors, seats, colour, area, dealer, and the full advert text.
Real listings are messy, so the data was tidied before use. Blanks and placeholder text were treated as genuinely missing, fields that were empty or identical for every car were dropped, and inconsistent labels (several spellings of the same fuel, for instance) were fixed. Impossible figures were thrown out too, including 888 cars showing more than 500,000 miles, where phone numbers and reference codes had slipped into the mileage box.
Every figure comes from an analyst working through the data with everyday operations: grouping cars, taking medians and averages, counting shares, ranking, and comparing like with like.
