About · ScanAuctions
Built by one person,
for the UK’s independent car buyers.
ScanAuctions started in a kitchen in September 2024. Today it scans Motorway and CarWow in parallel, checks every car against 1,000,000+ live market prices, and saves UK independents hours every week on sourcing. This is how we got here — and why.
Founder
Abdullah Ahmed
Founder & Engineer
A note from the founder
I started ScanAuctions because I personally hated how I was buying cars — half my day lost to switching between Motorway, CarWow, and AutoTrader, manually checking the same vehicles twice, and missing deals because someone else had already bid.
There were tools that solved one piece of this. There weren’t any that solved the whole thing without charging £400 a month and locking you into a CAP HPI subscription. So I built it. Then dealers asked if they could use it. Then they paid for it.
“If it doesn’t make sourcing genuinely faster, I won’t ship it.”
— Abdullah Ahmed
By the numbers
Numbers we’d publish with our name on them.
1M+
Live market prices tracked
Refreshed daily
2
Auction platforms scanned
Motorway & CarWow, in parallel
9 in 10
Valuations within 15%
vs AutoTrader Trade Portal retail
110,000+
Cars scanned to date
Across the platform
Why we built this
Independents deserved better tools.
The UK car trade has roughly 8,500 independent dealers. Most run between 5 and 60 cars on their forecourt. Most source from Motorway, CarWow, BCA, Manheim, or part-exchanges. And most are paying premium prices for software that doesn’t actually solve their core problem: finding the right car at the right price before someone else does.
The big tools — the ones with annual contracts and account managers — are built for franchise groups with twenty branches. They cost £400+ a month and assume you have a buying manager on payroll. They were never designed for the trader who works from their phone between school runs.
ScanAuctions is built the other way around. One subscription, one login, Motorway and CarWow in one scan. AutoTrader Trade Portal values built in when connected, with our own valuation engine as a fallback. MOT history, risk signals and estimated margin sit beside each result so the strongest buying opportunities are clear.
We charge £129/month for the basic plan because that’s genuinely all it costs us to run, plus a margin we’re comfortable with. No paid datasets to license. No expensive sales team. No enterprise tier that’s secretly the real product.
The build log
From kitchen table to 1M+ market prices.
Sep 2024
The kitchen-table prototype
First version was a Python script that scraped one auction site and printed prices to a terminal. It saved me four hours that week. I knew it would save other people the same.
Dec 2024
Put to work inside Thames Cars
The first real test was the founder's own forecourt — Thames Cars — sourcing stock off the back of a scan instead of trawling auction sites by hand. If it earned its keep there, it would earn its keep anywhere.
Mar 2025
Our own valuations
Built our own valuations from public-marketplace data, checked against the AutoTrader Trade Portal — so every car carries a defensible number, not a guess.
Aug 2025
Parallel auction scanning
Motorway and CarWow came together in one workflow, with every listing ranked by retail value, risk and estimated margin instead of split across browser tabs.
Jun 2026
1,000,000+ live prices
The dataset passed 1,000,000+ live market prices, refreshed daily. Nine in ten valuations now land within 15% of AutoTrader Trade Portal retail — accurate enough to bid on with confidence.
How we work
Three things we won’t compromise on.
Principle 01
Built by someone who buys cars
I'm not a venture-backed founder building software in the abstract. I started ScanAuctions because I was personally losing four hours a week to manual sourcing. Every feature exists because I needed it first.
Principle 02
No paid datasets, ever
Some valuation tools cost £400/month because they license CAP HPI. We built our own valuations from freely available public prices — and we publish our accuracy numbers. £129/month gets you the whole platform.
Principle 03
We answer the phone
Two people run this company. When you email info@scanauctions.com, it lands in our inbox. Median first response is under an hour during UK business hours.
Two-person company. Real software.
See it work on your forecourt.
No contracts, cancel anytime, 30-day deal guarantee. Talk to a real human if anything gets in the way.
Car sourcing software for UK independent dealers. Scan Motorway and CarWow in parallel, surface only the profitable deals.
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© 2026 ScanAuctions · Made in the UK