Six steps, and the decision stays yours.
Every part of buying a car is built to move faster than you can think. Keel slows it to your pace and does the tedious arithmetic for you, so by the time you talk to a dealer you already know exactly what you are looking at — including whether you should buy anything at all.
Say what you actually need
Not "select a body style" — how many people you have to seat, what you haul, what gear has to fit, how often you drive far. Keel works out the seats and cargo floor from that, and range becomes a real scoring dimension rather than a spec sheet line. Set your budget, weight what matters, and nothing is quietly pre-checked in favour of a car somebody paid to promote.
Add the car you already have
Most tools assume you have already decided to buy. Keel does not. Put your current car in My Garage — a VIN is enough — and it becomes a working twin: service history and what is coming due, mileage over time, its major systems laid out in 3D, and what it genuinely costs you to run. From then on it sits in every comparison as a real candidate. "Keep it another year" is an answer Keel is willing to give you.
Real listings, scored against your weights
Keel pulls live inventory near you and ranks it by how well each car fits what you said — not by who is advertising. Scores lean on things that can be verified (a VIN decode, EPA figures, safety ratings); what a dealer typed into a listing is capped and marked as claimed. Found a car somewhere else? Paste the link and it joins the same ranking.
Triage fast, and take it back
Swipe through the feed — keep or pass, with a reason if you have one ("too many miles for the money", "too far to go and see"). Nothing is hard-deleted and no rule is invisible: a strip above the list tells you how many cars your own settings are hiding and lets you undo any of it. A short list should mean a thin market, never a filter you forgot you set.
The money, told straight
Sticker price is the number a dealer wants you looking at. Keel works out what you actually pay — sales tax for your ZIP, registration and fees, financing, and the cost of running the car for the years you will keep it. Every payment is shown with the terms behind it, and if the rate is our assumption rather than your approval it says so. Stretch the term and the extra interest appears in the same breath as the smaller payment, which is the trade the four-square worksheet exists to hide.
est. $512/mo · 60 mo · 7.4% APR (assumed) · $4,000 down
An example of the format. Estimates for comparison, not offers of credit.
Line them up, then make the call
Put the finalists side by side — including the car in your garage — and the trade-offs stop being a feeling and start being numbers. Deciding with someone else? Your view stays private and the shared one shows who liked what, so "one of you is in, one of you is out" surfaces as a conversation instead of a car quietly vanishing. When you walk into the dealership, one tap of lot mode hides your ceiling and leaves your ammunition on screen. Keel never pushes a "buy now" — it hands you a clear picture and a number to hold to.