Bring a Trailer sells enthusiast cars better than almost anyone. Getting a listing accepted is the hard part. Submissions get turned down for duplicate models, weak photos or a car the audience hasn’t proven it wants, and an accepted car can still wait weeks for a slot.
So here are nine places that will actually take your car, plus the route specialist dealers and clubs are using more and more: running their own auctions.
TL;DR: the short list
- Cars & Bids: the best all-round BaT alternative for cars built from 1980 on
- PCARMARKET: Porsche, and German performance cars in general
- Collecting Cars: cars located in the UK or Europe
- RM Sotheby’s, Gooding and Broad Arrow: six-figure cars with provenance
- eBay Motors: no gatekeeping, best for honest cars between $5k and $30k
- Hemmings: American classics and muscle
- HiBid and regional auctioneers: project cars and non-runners
Selling more than a handful of cars a year? Run your own BaT-style auction site on a one-time license (from $899) and keep the buyer’s premium yourself.
Bring a Trailer alternatives at a glance
| Platform | Best for | Sweet spot | How hard to get in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cars & Bids | Modern enthusiast cars | 1980s to today | Easier than BaT |
| PCARMARKET | Porsche, German performance | Air-cooled to current GT cars | Moderate |
| Collecting Cars | UK and European sellers | Any era, Euro-spec | Moderate |
| RM Sotheby’s | Top-end collector cars | Six and seven figures | Very selective |
| Gooding / Broad Arrow | Provenance-driven cars | Six figures | Selective |
| eBay Motors | Everyday enthusiast cars | $5,000 to $30,000 | Open to anyone |
| Hemmings | American classics | Pre-war to 1970s | Light review |
| HiBid / local auctioneers | Projects, estate cars | Under $15,000 | Through an auctioneer |
Direct competitors
1. Cars & Bids
The closest like-for-like swap. Doug DeMuro founded it to cover enthusiast cars from roughly 1980 onward: modern classics, hot hatches, the odd Japanese import. The audience skews younger than BaT’s, and the results show it. A Mk4 Supra or an E39 M5 does very well here. A pre-war Packard doesn’t.
Acceptance is generally easier and listings go live faster. The buyer’s fee is capped, which matters once you’re past $50,000. If BaT said no to a 2000s car, list it here first.
2. PCARMARKET
Started as a Porsche site and has widened out. It still has the strongest Porsche audience online and is increasingly credible for German performance cars in general. For a 964 or a 997 GT3 it’s a serious option, and arguably a better one than BaT, because every watcher already knows what an IMS bearing is.
3. Collecting Cars
UK-based, with strong European reach and a growing global one. It’s the pick if your car sits in Europe, or if it’s a European-market model that would confuse an American audience. The in-house photography is excellent, and that alone moves hammer prices.
Traditional auction houses that moved online
4. RM Sotheby’s
The top of the collector market. Their online-only sales carry real institutional weight and reach a buyer list of serious collectors. Consignment is selective, and the process feels closer to selling a painting than listing a car.
5. Gooding Christie’s and 6. Broad Arrow
Same tier. Gooding & Company now trades as Gooding Christie’s, and Broad Arrow is part of Hagerty. Use them when the paperwork is the value: competition history, matching numbers, a documented ownership chain. These houses know how to present that story to bidders who pay for it.
Open marketplaces
7. eBay Motors
Still the biggest and the least gatekept. Nobody approves your submission and nobody curates, so buyers trust it less. It works well for solid, honest cars in the $5,000 to $30,000 band, where BaT’s curation adds little. Our guide to sites like eBay compares it with the other general marketplaces.
8. Hemmings
Deep roots in the American classic community and a traditional audience: muscle cars, pre-war, American iron. If your car would be better understood by someone who has read Hemmings for thirty years than by a Discord full of twenty-somethings, list it here.
9. HiBid and regional auctioneers
Overlooked, and sometimes exactly right for a project car or a non-runner that would embarrass itself on a curated site. Local auctioneers move these cars quickly to buyers who can come and collect them. We cover the platform itself in HiBid alternatives.
Selling to the trade rather than enthusiasts? Look at Manheim alternatives for wholesale, Copart alternatives for salvage, or the full list of best car auction sites.
How to choose
Match the platform to the people who understand your car. It sounds obvious, and sellers ignore it all the time. An air-cooled 911 on a general marketplace leaves money on the table. A ratty but honest E30 at a fine-art auction house wastes everyone’s afternoon.
Then photos and paperwork. Every platform here rewards the seller who shows up with 200 good photos, a service history and honest notes on the flaws. Sellers who hide rust get caught in the comments, and the comments are public.
On reserves, we’d go no-reserve if you can stomach it. On enthusiast sites a no-reserve listing pulls more watchers and more bidders, and reserve listings often stall just below the number. Our breakdown of absolute vs. reserve auctions has the reasoning.
The other route: run your own Bring a Trailer
Here’s what most “alternatives” lists leave out. If you’re a specialist dealer, a restoration shop or a marque club, every one of the platforms above owns the buyer relationship and takes a cut of every sale.
Do the maths on a modest operation. Forty cars a year at a $40,000 average, with a 5% buyer’s premium, is $80,000 a year in fees going to someone else’s platform. And the bidders’ email addresses go with it. If you already have the audience (a mailing list, a club roster, 20,000 Instagram followers), the software is the cheap part.
That’s the business we’re in. Our car auction software is a white-label platform that runs on your own server, installed and set up by our team, under your own brand, and it’s built for exactly this kind of timed online sale:
- Soft close, so a bid in the final minutes extends the timer. That’s the same anti-sniping behaviour that makes BaT endings so tense.
- Proxy bidding, reserve prices and watchlists
- VIN decoding that fills in year, make, model and trim from the 17 digits
- Bidder deposits and whitelisting, so only verified buyers can bid on a $90,000 car
- Galleries for 200-photo listings, video walkarounds, and inspection and title documents
- Your own buyer’s premium, collected through Stripe or PayPal, with Escrow.com available for high-ticket cars
Pricing is a one-time license, with no monthly fee and no commission: $899 Standard, $1,999 Professional, $2,999 Enterprise. The Professional and Enterprise tiers include custom development hours. That’s where we’d build the community layer, public lot comments and seller Q&A, because that’s the part that makes the BaT format work. Set against the $80,000 example above, the license pays for itself on the first car.
For the full plan, read how to build your own exclusive automotive auction site. The technical side is in building a Bring a Trailer clone website, and the 7 must-have features for car auction software works as a checklist whichever vendor you pick.
Want to see it running before you decide?
Click through the live demo, compare license options, or tell us about your auctions and we’ll say honestly whether it fits.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Bring a Trailer?
For most cars built after 1980, Cars & Bids. For Porsches, PCARMARKET. For a car located in Europe, Collecting Cars. For a six-figure car with serious provenance, RM Sotheby’s or Gooding.
Why was my car rejected by Bring a Trailer?
Usually one of three things: the same model is already in the queue, the photos aren’t good enough, or the car doesn’t have a proven audience on the site. Cars & Bids and PCARMARKET both accept a wider range, so try them next.
Is Cars & Bids better than Bring a Trailer?
For modern enthusiast cars it’s at least as good, sometimes better, because the bidders are younger and want exactly those cars. For pre-1980 classics BaT still has the deeper bidder pool.
Which Bring a Trailer alternative has the lowest fees?
eBay Motors for a simple listing. Lower still is running the auction yourself: on your own platform you set the buyer’s premium and keep it. Curated platforms charge more because the curation is what you’re paying for.
Does no-reserve really get a better result?
On enthusiast platforms, consistently yes. A no-reserve listing signals that you’re committed to selling, and it draws more watchers and more bidders. Reserve listings often stall below the reserve and end with no sale.
Can I build my own site like Bring a Trailer?
Yes. You need timed auctions with soft close, proxy bidding, big photo galleries, verified bidders and a way to collect a buyer’s premium. You can build all that from scratch for tens of thousands of dollars, or start from ready-made car auction software and spend the budget on marketing.
How much does it cost to build a car auction website?
A custom build usually runs $15,000 to $60,000, and a full multi-seller marketplace can pass $80,000. A self-hosted license like ours starts at $899 one-time, plus hosting and whatever customisation you add. How much it costs to build an auction website breaks the numbers down line by line.
