You may have wondered why most car databases sold on this website have strange prices that does not follow popular trends like $49.95. I use an unique pricing system that is based on number of rows in database, and this also for other (non-car) databases.
I started selling 2 car databases in 2012, and in January 2013 I reorganized data, offering 5 databases for sale (all for Europe). This was the moment I introduced pricing formulas:
Car Models List – 1 cent per row = 2960 models = €29.60
Car Models & Engines Database – 1 cent per row = 12031 model versions = €120.31)
Car Models Database – 4 cents per row = 1298 models = €51.92 to get a price between above ones.
“New cars only” packages were offered for Car Models Database and Car Models & Engines Database, priced according same formula, making a total of 5 products.
Over time, prices of above databases grew slowly thanks to updates (added new cars) and historical expansion (added older cars) and I started producing new databases for other continents, more detailed, especially because some companies offered me even $1000 to create custom databases according their requirements.
I came to conclusion that optimal price for full specs database is around $500. American car database with ~60,000 rows I priced 0.9 cents/row while German car database with ~130,000 rows I priced 0.5 cents/row to get target price near $500. For people who do not need technical specifications, but just car names, I sell partial databases priced at various cents per row, to target a price between $150-200. India and Middle East databases are cheaper because diversity of car models sold here is smaller than in Europe, America, Australia, Japan, etc.
Pricing for custom / partial databases
Several customers attempted to negotiate prices in wrong way, for example offering me only 5% of full database price motivating that need only 5 of 100 columns available. Sorry but prices are not directly proportional with quantity of data.
There is a minimum price of 25-50% that you must pay even if you need just 1 column, for example American car database cheapest option cost 1/3 of full database with 109 columns and include 5 columns of car naming (ID, year, make, model, trim) and if you want them in only 1 column you can use an Excel formula =A1&B1&C1 to combine columns A, B, C.
If you need more columns that naming, but cannot afford price of all columns, you can ask for a custom quote. I do not have a fixed price per column, because in my opinion most important columns (after car naming) are engine size, horsepower and fuel efficiency, so I may charge higher for these 3 columns than for the 8 columns of interior dimensions.
If you deal only with new cars, their data is more valuable than old cars data, this I offer option to purchase “new cars only” (usually containing last 3-4 years of models) at double price per row compared with full database.
If you deal only with specific car brands, I calculate price multiplying number of rows with double price per row compared with price per row of all-brands database.
Note: if you buy custom packages you will NOT be notified automatically when updates are available and you will not be able to download them. If you need updates you need to contact me and I will email you.
This is awesome!