Cartuul is reconditioning software built inside a working dealership, priced at a flat $400 to $800 per month per rooftop, published right on our site. Carketa is an end-to-end dealer platform where reconditioning is one of five solutions, with pricing you have to ask for. Both will show you where your cars are. The difference is what happens when a step is done, and that difference is most of this comparison.
Here is an honest side-by-side, with one rule: every Carketa claim below comes from carketa.com as of November 2026. Where their website does not answer a question, we say we cannot confirm it instead of guessing, and you should ask them in a demo.
What Carketa is
Carketa describes itself as an end-to-end platform for car dealers: buying inventory, appraising, analyzing competition, reconditioning, and pricing. Its reconditioning page promises real-time visibility, customizable workflows, and team collaboration tools. If you want one vendor from sourcing through recon, that is their pitch, and it is a fair one.
But one detail on their own reconditioning page is worth a second look. Carketa runs a comparison table of its own there, and in it they describe their vendor capability as "Internal Collaboration with Task Tracking." Those are their words, not ours. If outside vendors (PDR, glass, upholstery, sublet mechanical) carry a real share of your recon, that phrase is the first thing to ask about in their demo.
Pricing: we publish ours
Cartuul Lite is $400 per month with no setup fee. Pro is $800 per month plus a one-time $1,500 setup, and adds the external vendor portal, parts module, and AI tools. Multi-rooftop Enterprise groups get a custom quote. Billing is month-to-month after an initial three-month term. All of it is on our pricing page.
Carketa does not publish pricing on its website. You get a number after the demo. We think a dealer should be able to see the price before the sales call, so you can do that math without talking to anyone.
What happens when a step is done
This is where we spend our time, because it is where your days go. We built Cartuul inside a working dealership, running recon ourselves, and the thing that kills time-to-line was never the work. It was the waiting between steps.
A car can be in more than one place at once. Cartuul was not built one dimensional, where a step by step process must be implemented. Between vehicle statuses, locations, tasks, custom labels, and much more, it was designed to flex and bend in ways specific to every dealer. A unit can be in service and still show your PDR tech, glass vendor, and detailer exactly what they need to do, in parallel. Carketa's site says its workflows are customizable; it does not say how deep that goes, so bring your real process to their demo and ask them to build it live.
Your team actually uses it. Most people only ever see their own task list, and their whole job is to mark their task done. That one action moves the car to the next person automatically. There is almost nothing to learn, which is why teams get up and running in about a day.
Your vendors work inside it. The External Vendor Portal gives each vendor a login that shows only their assigned jobs, with the VIN, location, photos, and comments attached. They update status themselves, and you see exactly how long each vendor holds cars, so vendor performance becomes a number instead of a feeling. Carketa's site describes internal collaboration with task tracking; we cannot confirm from their site whether outside vendors get their own access.
Less manual entry, not more. Cartuul integrates with 35+ systems your store already runs. It pulls inventory from your DMS, updates status from key-box and VIN scans, and triggers the next step automatically, so updates stop falling behind and the numbers keep matching reality.
You can measure all of it. Time in Transit, Time in Recon, Time to Frontline, and Time to Sale, per vehicle, per stage, and per vendor. Carketa's site promises real-time reporting; per-stage and per-vendor dwell time is the specific report to ask them to show you.
Feature comparison
| Cartuul | Carketa (per carketa.com) | |
|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | Yes, from $400/mo flat | No |
| Automatic handoff when a step is done | Yes | Not shown on their site |
| External vendor portal | Yes, in Pro | "Internal Collaboration with Task Tracking" (their words) |
| Per-vehicle workflows and parallel tasks | Yes | "Customizable workflows," depth not specified |
| VIN scanning, GPS location, key box integration | Yes | Not shown on their site |
| Per-stage and per-vendor time reporting | Yes | "Real-time reporting" |
| Appraisal and market pricing tools | Through integrations (vAuto, HomeNet) | Yes, built in |
Who should choose which
Choose Carketa if you want sourcing, appraisal, pricing, and recon from one vendor, and your recon work happens mostly in-house.
Choose Cartuul if recon is where your days are going, outside vendors carry a real share of the work, your cars need parallel work done, or you want to keep the appraisal and pricing tools you already trust. For the full field, including Rapid Recon and iRecon, see our reconditioning software roundup, and for how to test any platform in a demo, what features to look for in reconditioning software.
The bottom line
Carketa sells breadth: five tools in one platform. We sell what happens between "done" and "next," because that gap is where dealers lose their days. If your whiteboard already tells you where cars are and they still are not moving, visibility was never your problem.
Want to compare on your own inventory? Book a Cartuul demo and bring your slowest recon step and your slowest vendor.
Frequently asked questions
Is Cartuul a good Carketa alternative?
Yes, especially for dealers whose main goal is faster, more accountable reconditioning. Cartuul executes the recon workflow instead of just displaying it, and it connects to your existing appraisal and pricing tools instead of replacing them.
Does Carketa have an external vendor portal?
Carketa's website describes its vendor capability as internal collaboration with task tracking, and we cannot confirm more than that from their site. In Cartuul, the External Vendor Portal is part of the Pro plan: vendors log in, see only their assigned jobs, and update status themselves.
How much does each platform cost?
Cartuul publishes its pricing: Lite at $400 per month with no setup fee, Pro at $800 per month plus a one-time $1,500 setup, and custom quotes for multi-rooftop Enterprise groups, with month-to-month billing after an initial three-month term. Carketa does not publish pricing on its website.
How long does it take to switch to Cartuul?
Lite can be live in about 24 hours. Pro includes a full workflow audit and build, and most Pro customers are fully operational within two to three days.