# SonarDeals: machine-readable product and data guide

Canonical site: https://sonardeals.com/
Contact: hello@sonardeals.com

## Purpose

SonarDeals is an independent comparison and screening service for used-car listings. It indexes
offers from multiple markets, normalizes core vehicle fields, and exposes filters, a DealScore,
country-level coverage, and modeled cross-border landed-cost estimates. SonarDeals is not a seller,
dealer, broker, customs authority, insurer, or vehicle-history provider.

## Current catalog

- The public catalog contains 1,000,000+ indexed records across 50+ markets.
- The current ranked catalog is the strongest 1,000,000-listing publication set selected after the pipeline screens many millions of source listings.
- The catalog is continuously refreshed; counts can change between requests.
- Source links are kept private until a user opens a deal. Confirmed dead links are suppressed, and
  a bounded liveness check runs again before the source is opened.
- A record can still become unavailable between checks. Users must verify price, availability,
  identity, condition, title, tax and transport details with the original source and authorities.
- At low zoom the map's country-level totals reconcile to every catalog listing. From regional zoom
  onward it loads a bounded detail layer that preserves the globally highest-ranked listings first
  and then adds ranked country breadth. Listings without usable coordinates are not discarded: they
  are placed deterministically near their country's capital and explicitly labeled "exact location
  unknown". Source-area and approximate-feed points remain separately labeled; no point claims an
  exact street address.
- Visitors can choose a buying country and switch to “buy in my country”. That mode uses only
  listings from the selected country and, where a supported local comparison model exists, only
  that country's comparable market. It never silently substitutes a continental market. If local
  data or a local comparison model is unavailable, the interface says so instead of fabricating a
  deal or ROI.

## Public catalog JSON

Endpoint: https://sonardeals.com/api/catalog

Useful query parameters:
- country: ISO-3166 alpha-2 code or ALL
- sort: deal, price, year, or km
- page: zero-based page number
- pageSize: 25, 50, 100, or 200
- fuels: comma-separated normalized fuel values
- gear: comma-separated gearbox values
- yearMin, yearMax, priceMax, kmMax: numeric filters
- damaged=1: include the damaged-vehicle view

The JSON response contains public comparison fields only. It never contains seller contact data or
source URLs. API availability and schema may evolve during the public beta; canonical user-facing
interpretation remains on the website and methodology page.

## Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Streamable HTTP endpoint: https://sonardeals.com/mcp
Human-readable guide: https://sonardeals.com/mcp-guide

The MCP server is public and read-only. It exposes `search_deals`, `market_coverage`, and
`corridor_cost`. Results contain public comparison fields and SonarDeals detail URLs, never private
seller contact data or original source URLs. Tool users must preserve the availability and
independent-verification caveats returned with every result.

## Interpretation

- DealScore is a comparative screening signal derived from normalized public fields and comparable
  listings. Higher is more attractive within the indexed data; it is not a vehicle inspection or
  guaranteed profit.
- “Below modeled market” is an estimate based on the available comparable set, not a certified
  appraisal.
- In local-buying mode, price and deal comparisons remain country-local. The global/import view is
  a separate mode and must not be interpreted as the user's domestic market.
- Landed-cost results are modeled ranges. Final transport, registration, customs and tax amounts are
  determined by providers and authorities at the time of purchase/import.
- Odometer history is not established by this catalog. Independent history and inspection checks are
  required before purchase.
- Dealers cannot pay for ranking placement.

## Canonical references

- Main catalog: https://sonardeals.com/
- Market map: https://sonardeals.com/map
- Methodology and limitations: https://sonardeals.com/methodology
- MCP endpoint and setup guide: https://sonardeals.com/mcp-guide
- FAQ: https://sonardeals.com/faq
- Used-car market index: https://sonardeals.com/index-report/
- Import guides: https://sonardeals.com/guides/
- Odometer-fraud research: https://sonardeals.com/stats/odometer-fraud
- Privacy: https://sonardeals.com/privacy
- Terms: https://sonardeals.com/terms

## Crawler policy

The public crawler policy is at https://sonardeals.com/robots.txt and references the XML sitemap at
https://sonardeals.com/sitemap-index.xml. Public pages are intended to be indexable. Authentication,
rate limits and source-link protections must still be respected.