Exchange My Car Vs Motorway Review

In this guide

Car Adviser Rating of Exchange My Car: 4.8 stars out of 5

Car Adviser Rating of Motorway: 4.5 stars out of 5

Where 60% of UK residents prefer to make their car buying experience entirely online, the online car-selling market is still emerging, with new players competing for the top spot.

Exchange My Car and Motorway are two such brands that are transforming the online car-selling experience with their free service. 

But between these two free car websites to sell your vehicle, who is doing better? We’ll compare these two leading competitors on 10 different parameters.

Between Exchange My Car and Motorway, which is a better option? Let’s find out.

free car websites to sell

Key Takeaways from the Review

  • Exchange My Car may present you with offers from its pool of prospective buyers whereas Motorway shows you an estimated auction value.
  • Both services are free to use for sellers and make money by charging a fee to professional buyers.
  • Motorway has been around longer than Exchange My Car.
  • Exchange My Car offers a faster selling experience.

Car Adviser Review Criteria

Car Adviser takes a unique approach when analysing different online car-buying platforms. Our experts have divided 9 different parameters across 3 main domains where a company should excel to provide a seamless car-selling experience. Here they are:

  • Valuation and Payments
    • Offer Accuracy
    • Service Charges
    • Ease of Payment Transfer
  • Business Model
    • Market Standing and Reputation
  • User Experience
    • Ease of Selling
    • Quality of Offers
    • Selling Time Frame
    • Vehicle Handover and Inspection Process
    • Customer Support

What is Exchange My Car? How Does it Work?

Exchange My Car is a UK-based comparison platform that connects car sellers with potential buyers. The service is entirely free for sellers, from offers to instant payment.

Once you’ve logged in, their advanced system swiftly matches your car with the best offers from a network of car-buying partners within 30 seconds. 

When sellers accept an offer, the buyer gets in contact to firm up the details of the vehicle and arrange inspection and collection. Following the inspection, the agreed-upon payment will be transferred to the seller’s bank account, and the buyer will drive away with the car.

What is Motorway? How Does it Work?

Motorway is an online car auction platform in the UK that allows car owners to sell their vehicles directly to a network of over 5,000 verified dealers. 

The journey begins when a seller visits their website. They enter their car’s registration number and mileage to receive an estimated valuation.

After that, the seller has to complete an online questionnaire and upload pictures of their car. Then the vehicle is listed in an online auction where dealers can place bids.

Sellers are notified of the highest bid once the auction concludes, typically within 24 hours. If the seller accepts the offer, the dealer will arrange for the collection of the vehicle. Payment is made directly into the seller’s bank account during the collection appointment.

Exchange My Car Vs. Motorway; Free Car Websites to Sell Your Vehicle

Let’s evaluate the quality of service provided by both car-selling platforms in this side-by-side comparison. Our experts have scored both platforms in each category to help you decide:

1. Offer Accuracy

Winner: Exchange My Car

Reason: Where Motorway gives you an estimated valuation, Exchange My Car presents offers from buyers who want to purchase your vehicle.

Exchange My Car: Exchange My Car’s buyer pool consists of highly specialised auto-buying experts. Exchange My Car makes multiple instant offers from these buyers with greater accuracy.

Sub-category score: 4.6/5

Motorway: Motorway first gives you an offer based on the buying history of their buyers. You get a final offer once the bidding is over.

Sub-category score: 4.3/5

2. Service Charges

Winner: Tie

Reason: Both services are totally free to use for sellers. They charge a commission from professional buyers instead of sellers.

Exchange My Car: Exchange My Car was charging a small facilitation fee almost two years ago, it has since become a no-charge car-selling service.

Sub-category score: 5/5

Motorway: Motorway has been a free-of-charge platform from the get-go. It focuses on maximising the offer value without charging any hidden fees.

Sub-category score: 5/5

3. Ease of Payment Transfer

Winner: Tie

Reason: Both Exchange My Car and Motorway have garnered outstanding reviews for transaction speed and ease of payment. 

Exchange My Car: Exchange My Car’s buyers provide instant payments to car sellers, ensuring that funds are transferred quickly and securely. Sellers get paid after the inspection is completed.

Sub-category score: 5/5

Motorway: Motorway allows dealers to make one-click payments to private car sellers after the auction process, offer, and inspection process is completed. 

Sub-category score: 5/5

4. Market Standing and Reputation

Winner: Motorway

Reason: Motorway started operating almost two years before Exchange My Car and has a well-established and recognisable brand.

Exchange My Car: Exchange My Car was established in late 2019. The platform’s reputation is growing fast due to its unique model of presenting multiple offers instantly, and most importantly because it filters buyers to match customers, which had never been done before. 

Sub-category score: 4.4/5

Motorway: Motorway has established itself as a reputable and fast-growing player in the online car-selling space since launching around 2017. The platform’s rapid growth and large dealer network show it is a trusted option for selling used cars in the UK.

Sub-category score: 4.6/5

5. Ease of Selling

Winner: Exchange My Car

Reason: The process of selling a car with Exchange My Car is easier as you don’t have to fill out a long questionnaire and wait for the auction results to come in.

Exchange My Car: The selling process of Exchange My Car is straightforward. Simply register your vehicle, enter a few details, and you’ll get the highest offers they could find for your vehicle. You can choose which one you want to proceed with by clicking accept, the buyer then gets in touch to arrange your free collection and payment.

Sub-category score: 4.9/5

Motorway: The car-selling process at Motorway isn’t that straightforward. Starting with an estimated valuation, followed by a detailed submission process, photography, and an online auction, and waiting for the highest offer can be tedious. But upon accepting an offer, the buyer comes to your location, pays you, and leaves with the vehicle. So, that’s good.

Sub-category score: 4.6/5

6. Quality of Offers

Winner: Exchange My Car

Reason: Exchange My Car matches sellers with buyers who exclusively deal in their type of vehicle, this has never been done before.

Exchange My Car: The buyer pool of Exchange My Car consists of high-vetted specialised buyers divided into several categories. Say you’re looking to sell a non-runner car; Exchange My Car will connect you with a buyer strictly interested in non-runners.

Sub-category score: 4.9/5

Motorway: The buying process of Motorway adds an extra step of the auction to the mix. So, you can’t be sure of the quality of the offer as it may come from any of the 5,000 buyers.

Sub-category score: 4.5/5

7. Selling Time Frame

Winner: Exchange My Car

Reason: The selling time frame of Motorway is usually longer due to the fact that you do not get instant offers. Sellers have to wait for bids to come in and you don’t know if you will receive a worthy offer.

Exchange My Car: The complete selling process of Exchange My Car is very swift as compared to Motorway. It can take as little as 24 hours from getting an offer to inspection and final payment with some of their buyers. Exchange My Car puts you in touch with buyers immediately so you can sell your car as quickly as you would like to.

Sub-category score: 4.8/5

Motorway: The additional step of listing the car through its auction can delay the overall selling process. Sellers have to track the bidding process in order to view offers and you will only know who will potentially be buying your vehicle at the end of the auction. You will then liaise with the dealer to arrange collection and payment.  

Sub-category score: 4.3/5

8. Vehicle Handover and Inspection Process

Winner: Exchange My Car

Reason: Although the vehicle handover process of both platforms is easy, Exchange My Car’s inspections are expected to be more consistent.

Exchange My Car: Customers have reported that Exchange My Car’s buyers have a straightforward inspection routine and a seamless vehicle handover process.

Sub-category score: 4.8/5

Motorway: Motorway has a streamlined vehicle handover process. But they have a very large pool of buyers as opposed to a specialised and vetted buyer pool of Exchange My Car.

Sub-category score: 4.3/5

9. Customer Support

Winner: Exchange My Car

Reason: With extended customer support hours and genuine attempts to help the sellers, Exchange My Car is doing better in the customer support category.

Exchange My Car: According to customer reviews, Exchange My Car’s support staff is honest and helpful. They go above board to help customers sell their cars at the maximum price.

Sub-category score: 4.8/5

Motorway: Motorway support staff is known to be helpful and cooperative, but people seem to complain about the final inspections and pricing negotiations with their dealers.

Sub-category score: 4.0/5

Other Independent Reviews and Ratings of Exchange My Car

Other Independent Reviews and Ratings of Motorway 

The Overall Winner: Exchange My Car Vs. Motorway

Exchange My Car and Motorway have studied the problems sellers face on online platforms very closely and found solutions that work the best. 

Both platforms have their pros and cons, so it’s better to get a valuation from both before making a final decision. But do consider the other differences mentioned above.

If you’re looking for advice on breakdown cover, car warranty, GAP insurance, car buying and car maintenance, ULEZ, and MOT, please visit our blog and check out our tools.

Zakki Sohail
Zakki Sohail
Twitter Linkedin Youtube
© Car Adviser 2024 - All rights reserved.
We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.
Cookies settings
I agree
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookies list
Cookie name Active

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service. Visit Google's Privacy & Terms site to learn more: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites Google Analytics We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Registration

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.
Save settings
Cookies settings