To get rid of an old car you have four honest routes: sell it, scrap it, donate it or give it away. Which one pays depends on whether it runs and whether you hold the title. Whatever you pick, the same three pieces of paperwork end your liability, and they are the part most people skip.
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Every way of getting a car off your hands is one of these four; the table is the short answer and the sections below carry the detail.
| Route | What it pays | What you need | Fits best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private sale | Usually the most, because the buyer is paying to drive the car, not to resell it | Title, bill of sale, time to meet buyers, your state’s filings | It runs, looks presentable, and you can wait |
| Dealer or trade-in | Less; the dealer reconditions and resells. A trade-in cuts sales tax on the next car in many states | Title or loan payoff, a trip to the lot | You are buying another car anyway |
| Instant online offer with free pickup | A fixed price from your description, paid by check when the driver confirms the car matches it | Current title in your name, no loan on the car | It doesn’t run, or you would rather not list it |
| Junk or scrap yard | Weight, mostly: steel scrap averaged $319 a ton at the mill in 2025; the yard pays less | Proof of ownership; some states let an old car go without a title | It is a shell, flood-soaked or stripped |
| Donate to a charity | No cash. A deduction, usually capped at what the charity sells it for, and only if you itemize | A qualified 501(c)(3), a written acknowledgment, Form 8283 above $500 | You itemize and the cause is the point |
| Give it to a person | Nothing, though a gift affidavit spares the receiver sales tax in many states | Title signed to them by name, plus the same notice and plate steps as a sale | A relative needs the car |
One honest rule sits over the table: the person who will drive the car pays the most for it, and every route that saves you work is paid for out of the price; where a car sells for the most walks through that trade. For a car worth very little, the routes converge on one question: who tows it free.
A sale is the only route that pays cash, so start here if the car moves under its own power and the title is in your name.
A private buyer pays for a car to drive, so the price carries no reseller’s margin. The cost is your time: photographs, calls, test drives with strangers, a safe way to take payment, and paperwork done by you alone. Price it from what a car is worth and put the price, the mileage and “sold as is” on a bill of sale.
A dealer buys to resell, so the number is lower, and the sale can be done in one visit. In many states a trade-in cuts the sales tax on the next car, which can outweigh the gap between the two offers; our trade-in guide works the arithmetic by state. The record can still show you until the dealer’s buyer titles the car, so file your seller notice as after any sale; selling to a dealership without buying one covers it.
An instant online offer is the route for a car that is hard to sell any other way: it doesn’t run, it is damaged, or nobody nearby wants it. Peddle, the buying partner behind the offer buttons on this site, publishes how its process works:
Leases trip people. A leased car is titled to the leasing company, so the lease has to be bought out before this route works; see selling a leased car and selling a car with a loan. If the car qualifies, you can describe it and read the offer before you decide anything.
A scrapyard buys metal, so its offer starts from weight. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2026 iron and steel scrap summary estimates the 2025 average delivered price of No. 1 heavy melting steel scrap at $319.00 per ton (USGS counts metric tons), with monthly composites from $366.26 in March to $303.46 in November. It also says automobiles are the primary source of old steel scrap: more than 13 million tons of steel a year is recycled from them, the equivalent of about 17 million cars.
Divide those figures and the average scrapped car gives up about three quarters of a ton of steel, roughly $245 at the 2025 mill price. That is the ceiling for the metal, not the yard’s offer: the yard drains, hauls and shreds the car before selling the steel on, so it pays less. What lifts an offer above the weight is the parts worth more than the steel around them, above all the catalytic converter. What a junk car is worth splits the offer into weight, converter, distance and loading; the scrap steel price history shows how far that $319 moves from year to year.
Settle two things first. Ownership: a yard needs proof the car is yours, and states differ on whether an old car can be scrapped without a title; see selling a junk car and selling without a title. And whether junking is right at all: a car that fails to start can be worth far more than scrap to a buyer who repairs it; fix it or junk it gives the comparison and selling a car that doesn’t run covers the buyers who take one as it sits.
An instant offer is the other way to junk a car without a trailer: the buyer’s own statement is that it buys vehicles running or not and arranges the tow, so if a yard has quoted you by weight, another number on the same car costs nothing.
Donating feels like the easy route, and the pickup usually is; the tax side is where people are disappointed. The rules are in the IRS’s own donor guide, Publication 4303, backed by Publication 526, and four of them decide what a donated car is worth to you.
Fair market value has its own trap: it cannot exceed the private-party price for the same car in the same condition, and the guide’s example is a car listed at $1,600 that needs extensive repairs and would only fetch $750, so $750 is the value. A $750 car donated and sold by the charity for $400 is a $500 deduction, worth a slice of that at your tax rate; sold by you, it is $750, which is why a sale beats a donation on the money almost every time.
One more line from Publication 4303 belongs with the paperwork below: the donor should handle the title transfer, file the state’s form saying the car was donated, and remove the plates before donating unless state law requires otherwise.
Handing the car to a relative or a friend is the simplest route on paper and the one most often done wrong, because people treat it as lending the car. It is a sale with no price, and every filing a sale needs, it needs.
Federal tax rarely enters it. The IRS’s gift tax FAQ defines a gift as any transfer where full consideration is not received in return, puts the annual exclusion at $19,000 per recipient for 2026, and says the donor is generally the one responsible for any gift tax. A used car worth less than that changes nothing on your federal return.
State tax is where a gift form earns its keep. Sales tax on a car is the buyer’s, charged at titling, and many states publish an affidavit that exempts a genuine gift, often only between close family. Our forms library has filled-in walkthroughs: Texas’s Form 14-317, Pennsylvania’s MV-13ST, Massachusetts’s MVU-24, Connecticut’s AU-463, Idaho’s ST-133GT, New Mexico’s MVD-10018, Maryland’s VR-103 and West Virginia’s DMV-5-TR. Where your state has none, write “gift” in the price box on the title and expect the receiver to be asked about tax at the counter.
Then do what a seller does: sign the title to the new owner by name, never to a blank; file your state’s notice of sale or release of liability if it has one, because a gifted car that is never retitled stays on your record and its tickets, tolls and impound bills come to you; and pull the plates where your state says the seller keeps them.
A car that is not in your name, a late parent’s for example, has to pass to you or to the estate first; transfer-on-death titles by state and selling a car for someone else cover both. If the owner is alive and willing, the instant buyer says it can take a car titled to a spouse or relative as long as that person signs the title properly.
Age and mileage limits, as each national buyer states them.
| Buyer | Takes it? | Their rule |
|---|---|---|
| AutoNation | not stated | For an older or high-mileage car: No age or mileage cutoff appears on its pages; a store page says age and mileage are factors in the value. Their page |
| Autotrader | case-by-case | For an older or high-mileage car: High mileage is accepted, but PSX won't sell a car produced before 1989; Autotrader points those to Autotrader Classics. Their page |
| Carfax | not stated | For an older or high-mileage car: No age or mileage limit on Carfax's pages; mileage is one input to the Carfax value and the dealer decides. Their page |
| CarGurus | depends on the dealer | For an older or high-mileage car: High mileage and old age are listed reasons for no offer; no cutoff is given. Their page |
| CarMax | yes | For an older or high-mileage car: No age or mileage limit appears on CarMax's pages; mileage is a key factor in the offer, and its value page for a 1998 Cadillac DeVille (archived February 19, 2026) listed recent offers of $600 to $1,200. Their page |
| Carvana | yes | For an older or high-mileage car: Only cars newer than 1992 with a working odometer; Carvana's pages set no mileage limit and list mileage as a factor in the offer. Their page |
| Driveway | case-by-case | For an older or high-mileage car: Its list of cars it 'may not purchase' includes vehicles over 20 years old and vehicles with high total or annual mileage; it gives no mileage figure. Their page |
| Edmunds | case-by-case | For an older or high-mileage car: No cutoff is stated; offer eligibility depends partly on year, mileage and condition, and the appraisal tool values cars back to model year 1990 only. Their page |
| Kelley Blue Book | case-by-case | For an older or high-mileage car: Hard limits of 24 model years and 300,000 miles, and KBB also lists low value due to age or condition as a reason for no offer. Their page |
| TrueCar | not stated | For an older or high-mileage car: No age or mileage limit; mileage changes the value and the dealer decides. Their page |
The route you choose sets the price; your state sets the paperwork. Each state page has the title steps, the notice form and the plate rule, with the agency’s own page linked.
A buyer who tows it free. An instant online offer covers non-running cars and includes pickup, a scrapyard usually sends its own truck, and most charities arrange a tow. What differs is what comes back: a check at pickup from the instant buyer once the driver confirms the car matches your description, a weight-based price from the yard, or a deduction from the charity that is worth something only if you itemize. Get two numbers before the truck comes.
On the money, selling wins almost every time. If the charity sells the car, your deduction is limited to what it sold for, and a sale of $500 or less caps the deduction at $500 or the car’s value, whichever is smaller. A deduction is then worth only a share of that at your tax rate, and nothing at all unless you itemize. Donate when the cause is the point, and make sure the written acknowledgment arrives within 30 days of the sale.
Every buyer wants proof of ownership, but what counts varies by state: a replacement title is a form and a fee in most states, and some let an old car be scrapped on a bill of sale or an affidavit. Start with our guides to selling a car without a title and cars too old for a title by state, then check your state’s page.
The state keeps showing you as the owner until the new owner titles the car, and anything tied to the plate or the record, from parking tickets to toll bills and impound fees, is addressed to you. In 22 states the seller’s notice is required; in all of them, the notice or the plate return is the proof of the day the car left your hands.
Not through a sale. Buyers need ownership documents, and the instant-offer partner says plainly that it cannot make offers on or pick up abandoned vehicles. Its advice, and ours, is that the rules for an abandoned car vary by state, county and city, so the route is your local police or motor-vehicle agency, which can run the plate and start the process.