Hemmings is a well-regarded car auction website. PrivateAuto is a new, technology-driven car auction platform. Let’s compare the two.

There are many websites to sell your car, but all of them—Hemmings included—offer no help for seeing the transaction through. They allow a buyer and seller to find one another, and that’s the extent of their value. PrivateAuto is the world’s first transactional marketplace for peer-to-peer car sales, and we make every part of the deal easy, safe, and intuitive.

A self-serve auction allows you to take multiple bids for your vehicle, and sell it to the highest bidder. It enables you to conduct the entire process yourself, rather than using an auction house or third party to manage the auction.

PrivateAuto is a technology stack that empowers you to conduct your own auction. Our transactional tools take you from creating a listing all the way through getting paid for your car by the winning bidder.

Hemmings is not a self-serve auction. They are a traditional auction service with a hands-on, analog approach.

When listing a vehicle on Hemmings, the seller must first have the car vetted and accepted by Hemmings' team of experts. Hemmings specialists then work with the seller to set an appropriate reserve price for the auction. During the auction itself, Hemmings consultants facilitate and monitor the bidding process.

This high-touch approach contrasts with PrivateAuto’s self-serve, technology-driven auction solution. It also comes at a much higher pricepoint, which is understandable, given that Hemmings needs to pay the staff salaries of all its employees who mediate the auction process.

Looking at total fees across a sale, PrivateAuto is far cheaper than Hemmings.

Let’s talk about seller costs. On the surface, Hemmings looks like it saves you $75. That’s if you don’t factor in buyer costs. Once you account for buyer costs, you’re losing money.

Why should a seller account for buyer costs when comparing prices for the two platforms? To answer that, let’s put ourselves in the winning bidder’s shoes.

Let’s look at a hypothetical.

As the buyer, you are willing to spend $80,000 total to buy that classic car, buyer’s fee included. On Hemmings, you know you’ll end up paying a 5% buyer’s fee, which means your highest bid is in the ballpark of $76K.

On PrivateAuto, you’ll only pay $150, so you can pretty much afford to bid up to your $80K budget.

In either case, the buyer is out of pocket $80K. On Hemmings, the seller takes home just over $76K. On PrivateAuto, the seller takes home just shy of $80K.

PrivateAuto is a way better deal for buyers and sellers alike.

PrivateAuto is far easier to navigate with its intuitive interface and powerful transactional technology.

Hemmings, like all our other competitors, runs on a combination of legacy technology and human intervention. This means that it has little in the way of transactionality. Listings are glorified blog posts—web pages with text and images—and don’t offer any functionality beyond allowing a buyer and a seller to find one another.

PrivateAuto, in contrast, enables every stage of the deal.


On Hemmings, the buyer and seller are left to their own devices to communicate, meet up, handle paperwork, and figure out how to transfer funds (spoiler alert: outside of PrivateAuto Pay, there are no good options).

PrivateAuto offers greater security and safety than Hemmings.

PrivateAuto has a built-in payment service called PrivateAuto Pay. It transfers any amount of money instantly and with no transfer fees. Sort of like Venmo—for high-dollar transactions.

Hemmings does not support payments. The buyer and seller need to navigate the transfer of funds on their own. Here are their options:


Outside of PrivateAuto Pay, payment options are risky, slow, inconvenient, expensive—or all of the above.

Hemmings is a bare-bones auction website. PrivateAuto is an integrated ecosystem. We’ve partnered with reputable providers for the following services, all of which can be accessed through your PrivateAuto dashboard:

When you use a legacy service like Hemmings, it’s smart to use an escrow company because the Hemmings platform has no safeguards.

When you use PrivateAuto, we give you escrow-like control and protection. Unlike an escrow service, PrivateAuto Pay is free and instantaneous.


With PrivateAuto Pay, you act as your own escrow agent. Here’s how PrivateAuto Pay protects you in a PrivateAuto auction:

1. Buyer and seller each link their banking institution to their PrivateAuto Pay account. The buyer funds their PrivateAuto Pay account and the funds are verified to the seller.
2. The buyer wins the auction and the PrivateAuto mobile app takes the buyer and seller through a series of confirmations and asks each to electronically sign the official bill of sale.
3. The PrivateAuto app confirms to each party that the other party has signed the bill of sale. At this point, the buyer is safe to transfer the money since the seller is bound by a legal agreement to deliver the vehicle.
4. The app prompts the buyer to release funds and the buyer initiates payment.
5. The seller instantly gets confirmation that funds have appeared in their PrivateAuto Pay account. This works on nights, weekends, holidays, or anytime.
6. The seller signs over the title and delivers the keys to the buyer.

No cost, no hassle, no wasted time. It’s the ultimate way to handle escrow in a car sale. Using PrivateAuto Pay, a buyer can even buy a car long-distance and have it shipped!

The auction format is perfect for unusual or enthusiast cars. These cars can’t be easily valued with a car value calculator or a Kelley Blue Book search. The auction format allows you to see what the market is willing to pay.

Here are some car categories that may do better via an auction than a standard listing:


If your car is unusual in any way, consider auctioning it on PrivateAuto. If your vehicle is a mass-produced car, you might be better off listing it in a standard sale.