CarWise – VIN Decoder & Car Buying Co-Pilot

When you walk onto a used car lot, the dealer knows the vehicle history, the open recalls, the real market value, and exactly how much pressure to apply in the finance office.

You know the sticker price and your gut feeling.

That information asymmetry costs buyers thousands of dollars per transaction. Every year. On one of the largest purchases most people make.

I built CarWise to close that gap.

What it does

Install the extension. Browse any used car listing on CarMax, Carvana, AutoTrader, CarGurus, KBB, Edmunds, TrueCar, Craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace.

CarWise surfaces in the side panel automatically:

• Full VIN decode — make, model, trim, engine, drivetrain from NHTSA's official database

• Open recalls — every unresolved safety recall on that specific vehicle

• NHTSA safety ratings — crash test results before you get in the car

• Real market value — depreciation-adjusted private party, trade-in, and dealer retail ranges

• EPA fuel economy — actual cost to run the vehicle

• F&I protection guide — what the dealer's finance office will try to sell you and whether it's worth it

Every data point comes from government APIs. No black box. No affiliate deals.

The stack

Chrome Extension (Manifest V3) — content scripts + side panel Railway server for auth and scan tracking Supabase for user data NHTSA vPIC API, NHTSA Recall API, EPA fuel economy API — all free government data

Total infra cost: ~$10/month.

Pricing

Free: 5 full VIN scans per month Pro: $9.99/month — unlimited scans

Honest launch numbers

Installs: — Revenue: $0 Reviews: 0

The distribution problem

Chrome Web Store cold-start is identical to the App Store cold-start. No reviews → low visibility → no installs → no reviews.

The angle I'm betting on: every time someone searches "VIN decoder free" or "how to check used car recalls", CarWise should be the answer. Six long-form articles targeting every variation of that search are already live.

What's next

Reddit. Every thread about buying a used car, every r/personalfinance post about getting ripped off at a dealership — that's the audience. Not advertising. Just being genuinely useful in the conversation.

What's the worst used car buying experience you've had? That's exactly the scenario I want CarWise to prevent.