Autotrader has its own price tracker. Its site menu says that once you sign in, you can save vehicles and searches and create alerts for price drops and new listings. Dealer adverts also carry a price label, from "Lower price" to "Higher price", against the site's own valuation. None of this needs a proxy. When our server in the United States asked autotrader.co.uk for its home page, the answer was a Cloudflare challenge. Its terms limit search results to personal, non-commercial use.
The built-in alerts
The site menu puts it in one line: "Save vehicles, searches and create alerts for price drops and new listings by signing in." Its help pages explain how to save adverts and searches and how search alerts work. None of those we read describes the price drop alert itself.
To save an advert, select the heart icon on it. Saved adverts appear in the "Saved" section, in the top right corner of the website or at the bottom of the app. To save a search, set your filters, choose "save search" at the top of the results, and tick the box for email alerts.
Alerts need a verified account. You switch them on under Account, then Subscriptions, then "Saved search alerts". The help pages note that saved search alert emails "are sent every 24 hours rather than immediately". The iPhone app promises instant notifications when new vehicles match a saved search.
The price labels on adverts
The site compares the seller's asking price with its own valuation of the car and gives the advert a label:
| label | what Autotrader says it means |
|---|---|
| Lower price | Priced much lower than its valuation. |
| Great price | Slightly cheaper than its valuation. |
| Good price | Priced very closely to its valuation. |
| Fair price | Only slightly more expensive than its valuation. |
| Higher price | More expensive than the valuation, and there may be reasons for it. |
The valuation uses data from millions of vehicles. The help pages name what goes into it, and what does not:
| counted in the valuation | not counted, though it may affect the price |
|---|---|
| Make, model, age and mileage. | The car's condition and colour. |
| Fuel type. | Supply and demand in the local area. |
| Optional extras and features. | Modifications and extra services, such as warranties. |
| The number of previous owners and the service history. |
Some adverts get no label: private adverts, cars under £1,500 or over £70,000, cars over 15 years old and written-off cars. Imports, new cars, rare and classic cars are excluded too. When a dealer changes a price, the label disappears while it updates. The help page puts that delay at 15 minutes.
Price history, and the outside trackers
Google's UK suggestions show that people want more: "autotrader price history" and "can you see how long a car has been on autotrader". The help pages we read describe price labels and alerts. None of them describes a price history for an advert.
Browser extensions from other companies fill that gap. Two of the three we read say they build their history from what their own users see. One says: "Prices are added by users of the extension." Another adds the price of any listing its users open. A paid one says it is "not developed or endorsed by AutoTrader UK". One tracker also says it follows what cars actually sell for, but it records asking prices, and an asking price is not a sale price.
The terms of use, last updated on 7 May 2026, set the rules for the site. You may use search results only "for your own personal, non-commercial purposes". Unless the terms themselves allow it, you may not copy, download, republish or "otherwise extract or re-utilise any of the contents of the Website". Caching it for others, mirroring or framing it, or putting it into another website needs Autotrader's "express written permission". The company also owns "all database rights in our database of vehicles".
The official route for the data
The company offers its data to the trade through Autotrader Connect. Its Current Valuations capability gives dealers and their software partners four valuations for a car: retail, trade, private and part-exchange. They come through the Vehicles, Stock and Valuations APIs. The Valuations API can adjust for condition and features, and can return the price label a price would get. Production access follows "Go Live Checks" with an Integration Manager.
What autotrader.co.uk did when our server asked
We asked autotrader.co.uk and its help centre for pages from our server in St. Louis on 3 October 2026. The home page and the help pages answered HTTP 403, with Cloudflare's "Just a moment..." challenge page. The robots.txt file and the terms of use answered normally. We read the help articles through the help centre's public interface for articles.
Our server sits in a data center in the United States. We did not test from an address in the UK or from a home connection. The test therefore cannot say whether the challenge was about the country, the data center or the plain request.
The robots.txt file has a group for every crawler it does not name. That group closes car searches (/car-search) and car adverts (/car-details), the postcode and radius filters, and the site's data addresses /at-graphql and /at-gateway.
Where a proxy fits
For tracking the price of a car you want, a proxy does not fit. The site's own alerts and price labels do that job in your account.
Collecting the site's adverts does not fit either. The terms limit search results to personal, non-commercial use, and robots.txt closes car searches and adverts to crawlers. A business that needs valuations has the official route above.
Autotrader in the United States is a different company, Autotrader, Inc. Its Android app also offers alerts on price drops.
For other work where a proxy is allowed, our UK page lists the UK cities you can target, and what a residential proxy is explains the type. Residential traffic without city targeting starts at $0.44/GB, and every plan is on our pricing page.
The limits of this page
We did not open the Autotrader website or its app in a browser, so the features are described from Autotrader's help articles, its site menu and its app listing. The help pages we read do not describe the price drop alert, which rests on the site menu's own line. We sent plain requests to Autotrader from one server, without a browser. We did not install any price tracker extension. Autotrader can change its features and its terms at any time. This page is due for a check by 3 January 2027.
Sources
- Autotrader Help, What are the price labels on adverts? updated 25 August 2026, and Why do I have a Price Indicator on my advert?, updated 29 September 2026.
- Autotrader Help, How do I save searches on Autotrader?, How do I save adverts I like on Autotrader? and Why am I not receiving alerts for my saved searches?.
- Autotrader Help, Introduction to Current Valuations, Autotrader Connect.
- Autotrader, Terms of Use, last updated 7 May 2026, and the robots.txt file of autotrader.co.uk.
- Apple App Store, Autotrader New & Used Cars, and Google Play, Autotrader: Shop Cars For Sale (Autotrader, Inc.).
- Our requests to autotrader.co.uk from our server in St. Louis, 3 October 2026.
- Google autocomplete, UK suggestions for Autotrader price phrases, read on 3 October 2026.
Every page above was read on 3 October 2026.
