What a Korean car marketplace costs to build
Every number on this page is published, which is the whole point of it. A finished template is EUR 199. A site built, branded and handed over is EUR 890. The version that markets itself on Telegram and Instagram while you sleep is EUR 3,490. No discovery call stands between you and those figures.
If you want a marketplace, not an API
The API is the raw material. What most people actually picture is a site like AutoTrader or AutoScout24 pointed at Korean inventory instead of local stock: a catalogue with real filters, a vehicle page per car, prices in their own currency, and a lead form that reaches them.
That is a build, not an integration, and it is the thing three quarters of enquiries here turn out to be asking for. So it is priced below rather than hidden behind a conversation.
- A searchable catalogue over live Korean inventory — brand, model, fuel, year, mileage and price
- A detail page per vehicle, generated on demand, with photos, specification and price history
- Your currency at daily rates, and a landed-cost calculator so a visitor sees the real number
- Multi-language interface, because the buyer and the importer are rarely in the same country
- Your branding, your domain, your lead capture — nothing on it points back here
The whole price list, in one table
Nobody else in this trade publishes these numbers. Ask an agency what a used-car marketplace costs and you get a form; ask a clone-script vendor and you get a price that turns out to exclude the data, which is the expensive part. So here is the entire ladder, cheapest first, with what separates each rung from the one below it.
Read it as a single decision with six answers rather than six products. The only question that matters is how much of the work you want to keep.
| What you get | Price |
|---|---|
| A free API key and your own developer | EUR 0 — 100 requests a day, no card |
| WordPress template, downloaded and self-hosted | EUR 199 one-time |
| Next.js starter, downloaded and self-hosted | EUR 399 one-time |
| Quick Launch — our template, your brand, live in 14 days | EUR 890 one-time |
| Custom Build — designed around your market | EUR 1,790 one-time |
| Autopilot — the custom build, plus the posting machine | EUR 3,490 one-time |
| A Telegram bot or an automation on an existing site | Quoted per job |
One-time means one time. There is no monthly fee on any of the figures above; what recurs is the API key, which is a separate and published decision on the pricing page. The build tiers include API access for their first period, so the first month, quarter or year carries no API cost at all.
Done-for-you builds
Your marketplace, built, branded and handed over working. What separates the three tiers is how much of it is yours alone — and, at the top, whether the site also goes out and markets itself while you sleep.
- The proven marketplace template, deployed and configured on your own domain
- Your logo, colours and typography — nothing on the site points back here
- Live within 14 days with your real inventory in it, not placeholder cars
- Sold cars take themselves down: the API reports a listing gone and the page goes with it
- Prices in your currency at daily rates, plus a landed-cost calculator for your destination
- Lead form wired to your inbox and your WhatsApp, so enquiries reach your phone
- One month of API access included
- A handover call and a written runbook, so the site is genuinely yours to keep
- Everything in Quick Launch
- Interface designed for your buyers — the filters they actually use, in their language
- Custom features: instalment display, deposit flow, enquiry routing by model or budget
- Up to four languages, with the Korean fields translated on the way in
- Real SEO — a page per vehicle, sitemap and structured data, so Google indexes your stock
- Saved searches for your customers, emailed the moment a matching car lands
- A dashboard showing what people searched for and which cars they opened
- Three months of API access included
- Everything in Custom Build
- Autonomous alert engine — a saved search fires the second a matching car is listed or drops in price
- Telegram bot that posts every new arrival to your channel with photos, price and a link back to you
- Instagram auto-posting — new arrivals, price drops and just-sold, published on a schedule without you touching it
- Your own post templates: logo, colours, watermark and price overlay, so the feed looks art-directed rather than automated
- A morning digest of what landed in your filters overnight and what moved on price
- Backend integrations — CRM, ERP, accounting or payment
- Twelve months of API access, maintenance and priority support
Or buy the codebase and run it yourself
If you have a developer, or you are the developer, the cheapest route by a wide margin is a finished codebase already wired to the API. You download it, put your name on it and host it. There is no monthly fee on the code and no switch on our side to turn it off.
Two of them exist — a WordPress build for a site you already run, and a Next.js project for one you want to keep extending. Both carry the full spec, the setup guide and the licence on their own page.
Telegram bots, social posting and automation
A large share of this trade is already conducted in Telegram, so a bot is often worth more than a website: the customer never leaves the app they were already in, and the dealer answers once instead of fifty times.
The same plumbing posts to a channel or a feed. A car arriving in your filters is an event, and once something is watching for it that event can become a Telegram message, an Instagram post, an email to a waiting customer or a row in your CRM — usually all four. Scope swings from a one-command search bot to a full sales pipeline, so these are quoted rather than listed; the Autopilot build above is the whole catalogue, pre-packaged.
Which one you actually want
Said plainly, because paying for the wrong tier is the normal way this goes wrong.
- You have a developer — take the free API key and build it. Nothing here is required.
- You have a WordPress site already — the EUR 199 template, and an afternoon.
- You want to own the code and keep extending it — the EUR 399 Next.js starter.
- You want a site and have no developer — Quick Launch at EUR 890.
- Your market needs something specific — Custom Build at EUR 1,790.
- You want the stock to market itself on Telegram and Instagram — Autopilot at EUR 3,490.
- Your customers are already in Telegram — a bot, quoted to the job.
Questions people ask about this
How much does it cost to build a used car marketplace?
On Korean inventory, with the data included, the published ladder here runs from EUR 0 to EUR 3,490 one-time. A free API key and your own developer is EUR 0. A finished template you host yourself is EUR 199 for WordPress or EUR 399 for Next.js. Having it built, branded and handed over is EUR 890 for the template on your domain in 14 days, EUR 1,790 for a build designed around your market, and EUR 3,490 for Autopilot — that build plus autonomous price alerts and automatic posting to Telegram and Instagram. None of those recur. The reason agencies quote five figures for the same brief is that they are also building the data layer; here that already exists and is rented by the month.
Can you build me a Korean car marketplace like AutoTrader or AutoScout24?
Yes. Done-for-you builds start at EUR 890 for a branded template live on your domain within 14 days, EUR 1,790 for a custom build adapted to your market, and EUR 3,490 for Autopilot — the custom build plus autonomous price alerts and automatic posting to Telegram and Instagram. API access is included for one, three and twelve months respectively.
What is actually included in the price, and what is not?
Included: the site, the design, the deployment on your domain, the integration with the live listings, the Korean-to-English field translation, the currency conversion, the landed-cost calculator, the lead routing, the handover call and the runbook — plus API access for the tier's first period. Not included: your domain registration and hosting bill, which you own directly rather than through us, and the API key once the included period ends. Nothing in the list is a surprise line item later; if a job needs something outside it, the quote says so before the work starts.
How long does a build take?
Quick Launch is 14 days from the point your branding and your inventory filters are agreed. Custom Build is typically three to five weeks, because the interface is designed rather than configured. Autopilot adds about a week on top for the alert engine and the posting templates. Those are the real figures rather than the comfortable ones, and the thing that moves them is almost always how quickly decisions come back from your side.
Do you build Telegram bots for car dealers?
Yes — search bots, saved-search alert bots, lead-qualifying bots and dealer-side stock automation into a site, a spreadsheet or a CRM. Scope varies too much to list a price, so these are quoted per job. The full catalogue is on encar-api.com/telegram.
What happens on my site when a car is sold?
It takes itself down. A sold or withdrawn vehicle answers 404 with SOLD_OR_REMOVED instead of returning stale data, so every build here treats that as the signal to pull the page, drop it from the catalogue and stop advertising it. Nobody enquires about a car you can no longer source, which is the single complaint importers raise most about scraped sites.
Do I need an API key as well as the build?
Yes, an active Encar API key — the site is a window onto live listings and the key is what opens it. Every done-for-you tier includes that key for its first period: one month for Quick Launch, three for Custom Build, twelve for Autopilot. After that it is the published monthly price on the pricing page, and a real catalogue with real visitors normally sits on the EUR 49 or EUR 199 plan rather than the free tier.
AutoTrader and AutoScout24 are named here only to describe the kind of site being built, and Telegram and Instagram are named as the platforms a bot or a post runs on. Encar API is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to AutoTrader, AutoScout24, Telegram, Instagram, Meta or Encar.com. Nothing offered here is a copy of anyone's product — it is a marketplace built on Korean listing data, in the shape of a site you already recognise.
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Not logos. Three live businesses importing Korean cars into three different markets, each serving its public inventory from these endpoints.
There are exactly three, and the right answer depends on how fresh your data has to be and how much engineering time you want to spend keeping it that way.