AutoTempest - Car search

Review by eFreeware

If you are shopping for a used car and keep opening the same search on site after site, AutoTempest is built for exactly that routine. The app gathers listings from a long list of marketplaces across the United States and Canada and puts them behind one query, so a single pass covers far more ground than any one site would on its own.

What appeals to me is the time it removes from the early, wide phase of a search. Rather than retyping make, model, year and price range into a dozen places, you set the terms once and work through what comes back. The developer's pitch is that this stops you from missing a car simply because it happened to be listed somewhere you did not think to check.

It is free, carries no advertising and has no in-app purchases, which is unusual for a search tool of this reach. For anyone comparing a broad set of vehicles before narrowing to a shortlist, that combination makes it easy to try without committing to anything.

A tool for comparison shoppers, not casual browsers

This is for people who treat car buying as a research project. If you are weighing several models against each other, watching prices over weeks, or hunting a specific trim that only turns up occasionally, the value of sweeping many sources at once is obvious. The same goes for anyone shopping across state or provincial lines, where the right car may sit well outside your local market.

It also suits buyers who already know which sites they like but resent re-entering the same filters on each one. The app does not replace those sites so much as sit above them, letting you see what each has without the repetitive typing.

Someone who has one trusted dealer, or who only ever wants the nearest listing of a single model, will find less here to justify the extra step. The app's whole premise is breadth of coverage, and that is where its effort goes.

What one search actually covers

The core of the app is aggregation. It collects listings from major marketplaces in the US and Canada, among them Cars.com, Truecar, eBay Motors, Carvana, Hemmings, Cars & Bids and Carsoup, and presents them together. The developer describes the pool as running into the millions of listings, which is the kind of scale that makes a single search feel worthwhile.

The clever part is how it handles the sites it cannot read directly. For large marketplaces such as Autotrader and Cargurus, and for classifieds like Facebook Marketplace and craigslist, AutoTempest generates comparison links rather than pulling the listings in. You still get to those results from within your search, without re-entering your criteria on each site.

That design keeps the promise of not bouncing between apps and browser tabs, even if the experience is not perfectly uniform. Some results appear inside the app; others open in the source site. For a shopper, the practical difference is small, since the search terms carry across either way.

The developer is upfront that a few sites are not directly accessible, and the comparison links are the answer to that. The result is broad rather than total coverage, but it is coverage that would take a long time to assemble by hand.

Where the app fits alongside the website

AutoTempest also runs as a website, and the developer has said the site will always aim to include every feature and support every device. That is a reassuring position: the app is not the only way in, and nothing is being held back from the browser version.

So what does the app add? The developer's own framing is speed of access. If you search for cars regularly, opening the app is a quicker route back into your hunt than loading a site and starting again. Think of it as a shortcut for a habit you already have.

The recent update focused on vehicle make and model selection, which is the first thing you touch in any search. The developer has also said work is underway to make advanced search more intuitive, so the filtering side is where attention is currently going.

More is planned: an optional login to carry favorite searches and listings between the app, the web and other devices, plus saved searches and, later, saved and ignored vehicles. None of that changes what the app does today, but it shows the direction of travel.

Free, with nothing to buy inside

The app costs nothing to download and use. It contains no advertising, and there are no in-app purchases to work around. For a search tool, that matters: nothing interrupts the comparison process, and there is no paid tier to wonder about.

I would not read the absence of charges as a catch. You are not paying AutoTempest for the privilege of looking.

The one cost to weigh is time, and only in the sense that a broad search returns a broad set of results. Filtering well is what turns that volume into something useful, which is presumably why the advanced search work is a priority.

Alternatives and how they compare

The most obvious alternative is simply using one large marketplace on its own. That is a reasonable choice if you have a favorite and trust its inventory, but you accept that you are seeing one slice of the market. AutoTempest exists precisely because that slice is not the whole picture.

A second option is doing the rounds manually, keeping a note of your criteria and repeating the search on each site. That gives you the same breadth, at the cost of the repetition the app is designed to remove. If you enjoy the hunt and only do it once every few years, the manual route is not unreasonable.

The website version of AutoTempest is the third comparison, and the developer treats it as a full equal rather than a cut-down companion. The app's advantage is convenience for frequent searching; the site's is that it works wherever you have a browser.

What none of these alternatives offer is the comparison links to the sites AutoTempest cannot read directly. That hybrid approach, part aggregation and part signposting, is the app's distinguishing feature.

A sensible starting point for a wide car search

AutoTempest does one job and does it without charging or interrupting you. It takes a task that normally means visiting several sites and reduces it to a single search, then points you to the remaining sources through comparison links. With more than 100,000 installs and a 4.5 average from 623 ratings, it has clearly found an audience among people who shop this way.

I would point it at anyone comparing a range of vehicles across a wide area, especially if they search often enough that opening an app beats loading a site. It is also a good fit for buyers who want to be confident they have not missed a listing on a marketplace they rarely check.

If your search is narrow and local, or you already have one site you trust, the app's breadth will matter less to you. Everyone else gets a free, ad-free way to see more of the market in less time, and the planned syncing features suggest it will only get more useful.

What's new in version 1.0.60

User experience improvements for vehicle make/model selection