Calculators
Six tools for a California purchase, each one showing its arithmetic and naming the statute behind every figure it uses.
The calculators
- Most people start hereWhat fits my budget?The vehicle price a monthly payment supports, with California tax and fees inside it.
- What will DMV charge on a car I'm buying?The DMV charges on a purchase, each with the statute behind it.
- What will it cost out the door?The full price: sales tax, DMV charges and the dealer's charges, added up.
- What rate is this lease?A money factor read as an approximate APR.
- Will I owe more than it's worth?The loan balance against the vehicle's value, month by month.
- Lease or buy?Both structures side by side at the horizon you choose.
- Every figure names its authority
- Every statutory figure carries the statute or the published schedule that sets it, printed beside the amount rather than kept in a source note. A figure built to be quoted has to carry its basis, because stripping context is what retrieval does.
- Unknown is never zero
- A charge with no published rule is not given a placeholder amount. It is listed as not estimated, above the breakdown, before you open anything. A complete-looking total that is not one is worse than an obviously incomplete one, and the care taken over the itemization is what makes the wrong total convincing.
- A default is not an answer
- Any figure a calculator supplies rather than receives is marked as an example until you set it. A number nobody has confirmed should not look like a number somebody has.
- The rows add up to the total
- Money is carried to the cent and rounded once, at the end. That is why five new tires read $8.75 rather than $9, and why the rows add up to the total on screen as well as in the model.
- An edition, never a freshness claim
- The fee schedule carries an edition, not a review date. "California DMV fee schedule, 2026" says which table this is and visibly ages. A freshness claim decays into a false one. The schedule is reviewed each January, because the transportation improvement fee tiers move every January 1 by statute.
- An estimate is not a quote
- These are estimates, not quotes. Your contract is the only place these amounts are settled, and a California-licensed auto broker is who you talk to before you sign one.
- Our fee is not in these figures
- CarOracle’s service fee is separate from the charges these calculators estimate and is not included in any figure they produce. See what we charge for the service.
Each calculator states what its own figures rest on. Three transcribe a published fee schedule, through one engine: the car affordability calculator, the DMV fees calculator and the out-the-door price calculator. The other three are arithmetic over figures you enter.
Reviewed by CarOracle, a California-licensed auto dealer with an auto broker’s endorsement, license #43082.
Bring us the car you're considering
A calculator tells you what the charges are. We tell you what the market is doing on that vehicle in California this month, and what the structure should look like before you sign anything.
Complimentary, 15 minutes. Representation covers purchases and leases from California dealers.