MechanicScan

Privacy

Last updated October 24, 2026. Short version: no account, no ads, no selling data, and your estimate photo is never stored.

What you give us when you check a quote

  • Your car (year, make, model, and if you add them: VIN, engine, mileage), your ZIP code and the type of shop.
  • The repairs and prices from the quote, and the note about what the shop said, if you write one.
  • A photo of the estimate, if you add one.

What happens to it

  • To estimate labor time and parts prices, the car, repairs and photo are sent to an AI model through OpenRouter. We only use AI providers that do not keep the data and do not train on it (zero data retention).
  • The photo is not stored. It is only used to read the repairs and prices.
  • Your result is kept in memory for 2 hours so it is still there if you buy the full report. Then it is gone.
  • We keep a simple log of checks (car, repairs, prices, verdict, date) to improve the fair ranges, and simple counts of visits (which site sent you, if any). It has no name, email or phone number, and uses no cookies.
  • VINs are looked up with the free US government database (NHTSA). Model lists come from NHTSA and the EPA.

Limits and passes

  • To give everyone 3 free checks a day, we keep a scrambled (one-way hashed) version of your IP address for that day. We cannot turn it back into your IP address.
  • If you buy a pass, a small cookie on your device remembers it. Payment is handled by Stripe. We never see or store your card number.

What we don't do

  • No account and no sign-up.
  • No advertising or tracking cookies, and no selling or renting of data to anyone.
  • No sharing of your quote with repair shops.

Car blueprints

Blueprints are drawn by AI from freely licensed photos on Wikimedia Commons. Each one credits the photographer and the license under the picture.

Questions or deletion

Because we keep no name or contact details, we usually can't tell which check was yours. If you want a check removed, send us the date, the car and the price, and we will delete matching entries.