Edmunds for Dealers: The Real Close Rate

Measured across 16,930 leads at 49 independent dealerships. Not a survey, not a case study — the recorded outcome of every lead that entered the CRM.

Leads from Jul 2025 – Jun 2026 Sample: 16,930 leads Updated monthly
Short answer

Edmunds leads close at 2.5% across the 49 dealerships we measure. That ranks 5th of 12 providers we track: below Autotrader (3.0%) and just above CarGurus (2.4%). A dealership using it gets about 37 leads a month, which at that rate is about one sale a month and 41 leads worked per sale.

2.5%
close rate
last 12 months
16,930
leads
measured
49
dealerships
in the sample
37
leads per dealer
per month

How Edmunds 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 10,816 48 28 3.4% 7.6
2023 19,836 51 42 2.8% 6.7
2024 14,572 48 36 2.6% 6.6
2025 20,044 51 44 2.6% 7.9
2026 (partial) 10,710 41 36 2.3% 6.3

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 28 to 44 Edmunds leads a month (+57%), while the close rate went from 3.4% to 2.6% (−22%).

What the average hides

The fairest comparison is inside the same store, where the sales team is the same on both sides. Counting the stores that run both, Edmunds beats CarGurus at 6 of 11.

How it compares

Referral 35.2%
Repeat customer 34.4%
Walk-in 27.9%
Phone 12.6%
Autotrader 3.0%
Edmunds 2.5%
CarGurus 2.4%
CARFAX 2.2%
Cars.com 2.1%
OfferUp 1.3%
TrueCar 1.2%
Facebook 1.0%
CarZing 1.0%

Close rate by source, leads from July 2025 to June 2026. Green bars are the dealership's own channels; Edmunds 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 Edmunds close rate for car dealers?

Edmunds leads close at 2.5% across the 49 dealerships we measure. That ranks 5th of 12 providers we track: below Autotrader (3.0%) and just above CarGurus (2.4%). A dealership using it gets about 37 leads a month, which at that rate is about one sale a month and 41 leads worked per sale.

How many leads does Edmunds send a dealership each month?

A dealership using Edmunds received about 37 leads a month from July 2025 to June 2026, averaged across 49 independent dealerships. At a 2.5% close rate that is about 41 leads worked for every sale.

How do Edmunds leads compare to a dealership's own leads?

Edmunds leads close at 2.5%. 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 Edmunds 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 Edmunds 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 Edmunds only when it arrived through the Edmunds 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 →

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