Facebook Marketplace vs Craigslist vs Cars.com vs Your Dealer Website
If you are a used-car dealer or salesperson comparing Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, the short version is this: both can put a car in front of local buyers, but they work differently on cost, on who gets the lead, and on how much control you have. Marketplace is free to post and messages go to whoever posted. Craigslist charges dealers a fee per car listing. Cars.com is a paid portal billed to the dealership. Your own website is the one place where the listing, the lead and the data are all yours.
I sell cars for a living, so I am comparing these the way a rep sees them, not the way a marketing brochure does. I have tried to keep three kinds of statements separate: things I checked on a primary source, things that are commonly reported or commonly understood in the industry, and things that vary by store. I will label each one. If you want the Autotrader and CarGurus comparison in depth, I wrote that separately: Facebook Marketplace vs Autotrader vs CarGurus.
What I could verify and what I could not
Verified on a primary source
- Craigslist's posting fees page lists cars and trucks by dealer in the US at $5 per listing. I read it at craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees when I wrote this. Fees can change, so check that page before you budget.
- Meta's Commerce Policies let it limit or suspend Marketplace access, and they are the rules you have to live within.
Not published
- Cars.com does not publish dealer pricing that I could find. The public dealer pages I checked are consumer-facing directories with no price list. A dealer package is something you ask a sales rep about, and the number depends on your market and package. I am not going to guess at it.
Reported, not verified by me
- Trade press reported that Meta ended feed-based bulk inventory uploads to Marketplace around September 2021, and that from January 30, 2023 it stopped supporting vehicle listings created from Business Pages. Personal-profile posting remained. For the full history, see can car dealers post on Facebook Marketplace.
General and industry-common framing
- Posting a Marketplace listing from a personal profile has been free in my experience. I did not find a fee schedule to cite.
- Portal leads often go to a BDC or shared inbox first. Marketplace messages go to whoever posted the car. This varies a lot by store.
- Portals tend to see earlier-stage shoppers comparing across a wide radius. Marketplace and Craigslist tend to be more local and more message-first. That is the common framing among people who work these channels, not a measured comparison, and I have no lead or conversion numbers to offer.
The side-by-side
| Facebook Marketplace | Craigslist | Cars.com | Your dealer website | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who pays | No one to post | The poster, $5 per dealer car listing (verified) | The dealership; pricing not published, ask sales | The dealership, through its website vendor or hosting |
| Who gets the lead | Usually whoever posted the car, in their Messenger | Whoever's contact details are on the listing | Commonly a BDC or shared inbox first | Whatever your forms and phone routing send it to |
| Audience | Local, browsing, comfortable messaging a person | Local, classifieds-style | Wider radius, research-stage shoppers | People who already know you, plus search and ad traffic you send |
| Who controls it | The individual poster, within Meta's rules | The poster, within Craigslist's rules | Dealership management | Dealership management |
| Who owns the data | Probably Meta, as far as I can tell; the conversation sits in your Messenger | Probably Craigslist; check its terms | Probably Cars.com, with leads delivered to you; check your contract | You |
Facebook Marketplace
What it is good for
It is free, it is local, and the buyer messages a real person. For a salesperson that is the whole appeal: a car you post from your own account can bring a buyer who asks for you by name. There is no queue between you and the customer.
Limits
The catch is that you are a guest on someone else's platform. Meta sets the rules, listings get removed, and dealers have no official bulk path outside Meta's Automotive Inventory Ads. The conversation lives in Messenger, not your CRM, so tracking what came from where is on you. If a listing disappears, read why was my Facebook Marketplace listing removed for the usual causes.
Craigslist
What it is good for
Craigslist is a local classifieds board, and dealers pay $5 per car listing (verified above). That makes it cheap to test on a handful of units, and you can put your own contact details on the ad. It draws a local, price-aware crowd. That last part is a general observation, not a statistic.
Limits
It is a pay-per-post model, so the cost scales with how many cars you list and relist, and you have to do the posting work each time. I have no data on how many Craigslist leads convert at a dealership, and I would be suspicious of anyone quoting one without showing their source. Check the current rules for dealers on Craigslist's own help pages before you build a routine around it.
Cars.com
What it is good for
Cars.com is a paid portal, and like the other big portals it is aimed at shoppers doing research across a wide area. If your store already pays for it, it reaches people who may never open Facebook while shopping for a car.
Limits
The dealership pays, management decides the package, and inquiries commonly route through a BDC or shared inbox before a salesperson sees them. That is not a knock. It is how those systems are built. Since pricing is not published, the only way to know what it costs your store is to ask, and to ask what you get per dollar. I am not going to put a number on it.
Your own dealership website
What it is good for
Your vehicle detail pages (VDPs) are the one asset in this list that you own. Leads from forms, calls and chats go where you decide. You keep the customer data. You control the photos, the description and the price on the page. Every other channel here, in the end, is a way to send people to that page or to reproduce it somewhere else.
Limits
A website does not bring buyers by itself. It needs search visibility, ads or a reason for people to visit. It is also usually run by management or a vendor, so a single salesperson cannot change it. Its real value for a rep is as the source of truth: clean inventory pages with good photos are what make it possible to post the same cars elsewhere without retyping them.
How I would use them together
- Keep the dealer website inventory accurate. It feeds everything else.
- Keep whatever portals the store already pays for. They reach shoppers Marketplace does not.
- Use Marketplace as the channel you personally control, and keep track of what it produces. My thinking on that is in how to sell more cars without buying leads.
- Treat Craigslist as a cheap test on a few cars, not a system, unless your own numbers say otherwise.
Quick answers
Is Facebook Marketplace better than Craigslist for selling cars?
I cannot point to a study that says so. Marketplace is free and messages go to the poster; Craigslist charges dealers $5 per car listing. Which one works better for your store is something to test with your own inventory and track.
How much does Craigslist charge dealers?
At the time I checked, its posting fees page listed cars and trucks by dealer in the US at $5 per listing. Confirm at craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees since fees can change.
How much does Cars.com cost a dealer?
Cars.com does not publish dealer pricing that I could find. Ask its sales team for a quote for your market and package.
Who gets the leads from Cars.com?
It depends on how your dealership set it up. Commonly the inquiry reaches a BDC or shared internet inbox first, then gets assigned. Ask your manager how yours is routed.
Can dealers post on Facebook Marketplace at all?
Yes, with caveats about how. Trade press reported that Meta ended feed-based bulk uploads around September 2021 and stopped supporting Business Page vehicle listings from January 30, 2023. The details are in can car dealers post on Facebook Marketplace.
Do I still need a dealer website if I use Marketplace?
Yes. It is the place you own, and it is where clean inventory data comes from. Marketplace is a channel, not a replacement for it.
Where LotLift fits
I built LotLift because posting the same cars to Marketplace by hand ate my afternoons, when all the details were already on my dealership's website. LotLift is a Windows desktop app that reads your dealership's used-inventory page and posts new listings from your personal Facebook profile, in Chrome on your own PC. It posts new listings only. It does not post from Business Pages, mark cars sold, delete, renew or edit anything on Facebook, sync price changes, reply to messages, or track leads or revenue. Facebook does not officially support third-party posting automation, and Meta's terms restrict automated access without permission, so you should weigh that yourself. As of this writing it is $298 per month, one plan, no free trial. See how LotLift automates this.