Autotrader leads close at 3.0% across the 169 dealerships we measure. That ranks 4th of 12 providers we track: below Capital One (3.5%) and above Edmunds (2.5%). A dealership using it gets about 73 leads a month, which at that rate is roughly 2.2 sales a month and 33 leads worked per sale.
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How Autotrader 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 | 64,033 | 137 | 49 | 3.9% | 4.3 |
| 2023 | 82,117 | 152 | 55 | 3.5% | 4.9 |
| 2024 | 74,500 | 162 | 49 | 3.6% | 4.4 |
| 2025 | 98,560 | 155 | 65 | 3.2% | 4.7 |
| 2026 (partial) | 80,455 | 154 | 68 | 2.9% | 4.6 |
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 49 to 65 Autotrader leads a month (+31%), while the close rate went from 3.9% to 3.2% (−17%).
What the average hides
The average hides a volume cliff. Split the 85 dealerships with enough Autotrader leads into thirds by how many they get: the two smaller thirds close them at 3.4–3.9%, while the top third — around 151 leads a store a month — closes at 2.6%. 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 Autotrader leads at 1.7–4.8%.
The fairest comparison is inside the same store, where the sales team is the same on both sides. Counting the stores that run both, Autotrader beats CarGurus at 49 of 80, beats CARFAX at 38 of 55, beats Cars.com at 35 of 48, and beats TrueCar at 19 of 21. It comes out ahead in every one of these matchups.
How it compares
Close rate by source, leads from July 2025 to June 2026. Green bars are the dealership's own channels; Autotrader is in orange. All sources in this sample together close at 4.5%.
The honest framing: no paid lead provider we track closes above 7.0%, while a referral closes at 35.2%. 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 Autotrader close rate for car dealers?
Autotrader leads close at 3.0% across the 169 dealerships we measure. That ranks 4th of 12 providers we track: below Capital One (3.5%) and above Edmunds (2.5%). A dealership using it gets about 73 leads a month, which at that rate is roughly 2.2 sales a month and 33 leads worked per sale.
How many leads does Autotrader send a dealership each month?
A dealership using Autotrader received about 73 leads a month from July 2025 to June 2026, averaged across 169 independent dealerships. At a 3.0% close rate that is about 33 leads worked for every sale.
How do Autotrader leads compare to a dealership's own leads?
Autotrader leads close at 3.0%. A dealership's own channels close far higher: referral 35.2%, repeat customer 34.4%, walk-in 27.9% and phone 12.6%. No paid lead provider we track closes above 7.0%.
How is this close rate measured?
It is the share of Autotrader 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 Autotrader 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 July 2025 to June 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 Autotrader only when it arrived through the Autotrader 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 June 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 →