About MotorJudge.
MotorJudge helps you make the three biggest money decisions about your car: whether to refinance, whether to lease or buy, and whether to sell or keep. Our tools take a few numbers you already know and give you a straight answer, with the math on the page so you can check it yourself.
Most car advice online comes from someone who earns more when you spend more. Dealers want you in a new loan, lenders want you in a bigger one, and plenty of review sites rank whatever pays the highest commission. MotorJudge exists to be the opposite: a place that will tell you to stay put when staying put is the better deal.
How our verdicts work
Every verdict runs on arithmetic you can see: your balance, rate, term and payment, set against what a new loan, a lease or a sale would actually cost you. When a verdict or an article leans on outside data, we name the source. Vehicle safety and recall data comes from NHTSA, fuel economy from the EPA and fueleconomy.gov, fuel prices from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and loan and market figures from published industry reports.
How we research our guides
Our buyer guides are research guides. We check every product we name against the specifications its maker publishes, confirm where it is actually sold, and only quote prices we have just checked. If we cannot verify a claim, we leave it out. Unless a guide says otherwise, our picks are based on that research, published specifications and owner feedback rather than lab testing.
How we make money
MotorJudge is free. We earn a commission when you click through to some partners, such as lenders, instant-offer services and retailers including Amazon, and then sign up or buy. That never changes a verdict. The math decides, and if the right move is to do nothing, that is the answer you get. The details are on our disclosure page.
Independence and corrections
MotorJudge is independent. We are not owned by a dealer group, a lender or an automaker, and no partner sees a verdict or a guide before it goes live.
Rates, prices and recalls change, and sometimes we get something wrong. When we find an error, we fix it and note the correction on the page with the date. If you spot one, tell us through our contact page.