Before you say yes to the repair shop
Your repair shop
just called.
Now what?
Fix or Replace Auto turns a stressful repair estimate into a clear, honest number: what it really costs to keep this car versus what it really costs to replace it — taxes, fees, and financing included.
Fix it. $4,000 is well under what replacing this car would actually cost you.
The problem
“Fix it” and “replace it” are never really the two numbers you're comparing.
A repair quote is one number. A replacement is a dozen — purchase price, sales tax, title, registration, dealer fees, your trade, and financing. Most people compare the first against a gut feeling about the second. We compare it against the real one.
The repair quote looks scary alone
$4,000 sounds like a lot for a 12-year-old car — until you see what actually replacing it costs, out the door.
“Replace it” hides its own math
The sticker price isn't the cost. Tax, fees, your trade-in, and financing interest all move the real number — often by thousands.
Rules of thumb don't hold up
“Never spend more than 50% of the car's value” ignores your car's history, your mileage, and what replacing it actually costs you.
How it works
Four steps, under three minutes once your car's in the garage.
Tell us what the shop said
Type or read off the estimate. We structure it — what's being repaired, and whether it's urgent.
Tell us what you'd replace it with
A used or new vehicle, roughly what it costs. We handle tax, title, fees, and your trade automatically.
Get a real number, not a guess
One deterministic calculation weighing your car's value, history, mileage, and the true replacement cost.
Ask better questions
Walk back into the shop with the right questions to ask before you say yes.
Why trust the number
Sometimes the honest answer is “it's close.”
Most tools force a yes-or-no. We use four honest outcomes, because that's what the math actually supports.
Fix it
The math clearly favors keeping your current car.
Get another quote
Repairing still makes sense, but the price is close enough to worth double-checking.
Replace it
The economics have shifted clearly toward a replacement.
Too close to call
Neither option has a real financial edge. This one's genuinely up to you.
YOUR ALGORITHM DECIDES.
Every recommendation comes from one deterministic calculation — the same math, every time, for every car. We use AI only to turn the shop's estimate into structured data and to explain the numbers back to you in plain English. It never gets a vote in the recommendation itself.