Privacy Policy

CarCostBreakdown.com is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website at carcostbreakdown.com.

CarCostBreakdown.com provides a free car ownership cost calculator covering depreciation, insurance, fuel, maintenance, taxes, and financing for 60+ countries. Our calculator uses live data from automated pipelines (exchange rates, fuel prices, CPI inflation, NHTSA recall data, and EV incentives) to produce cost estimates.

Please read this policy carefully. If you disagree with its terms, please discontinue use of the Site. This policy was last updated on January 2026 and applies to all users of the Site worldwide.

We collect information in the following ways:

**Information You Provide Directly** We do not require account creation to use the calculator or any feature of the Site. If you contact us via email or our contact form, we collect your name, email address, and the content of your message.

**Calculator Inputs (Non-Personally Identifiable)** When you use our car cost calculator, you enter inputs such as vehicle make/model/year, country, fuel type, and annual mileage. These inputs are processed entirely in your browser and are not stored on our servers.

**Automatically Collected Information** When you visit the Site, we automatically collect certain technical information including: IP address (anonymised), browser type and version, operating system, referring URLs, pages visited, time spent on pages, and calculator usage patterns in aggregate.

**Cookies and Tracking Technologies** We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to maintain calculator state during your session and to analyse aggregate usage patterns. See our Cookie Policy for full details.

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Provide and improve the calculator and cost database • Analyse aggregate usage patterns to identify popular features and fix bugs • Improve our data pipelines (fuel prices, CPI data, NHTSA recalls, EV incentives, exchange rates) • Respond to your enquiries and support requests, including data correction requests • Send transactional emails if you have contacted us (no marketing emails without explicit consent) • Comply with legal obligations • Protect against fraudulent or illegal activity

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your data for marketing purposes without your explicit consent.

We use session cookies to maintain your calculator state (currency, country, fuel type selections) during your visit. These are necessary for the calculator to function.

We use Google Analytics (with IP anonymisation enabled) to understand aggregate traffic patterns, popular calculator features, and which countries and vehicle tiers are most searched. No personally identifiable information is collected through analytics.

We display advertisements on this site served by third-party advertiser platforms. Our advertising partners use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this site and other websites across the internet. These advertising cookies allow our ad partners to show you more relevant ads and to measure ad performance. For more information on how Google uses data from sites that use its advertising services, see https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting https://www.google.com/settings/ads or the Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out page at https://www.aboutads.info/choices/.

You can control cookies through your browser settings. Disabling non-essential cookies will not affect your ability to use the calculator, but may result in less relevant ads.

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), California residents have the right to request that we do not sell or share their personal information. We do not sell your personal information for monetary gain. However, like many websites, we use third-party advertising partners, which may use cookies to serve personalized ads based on your visits to this and other websites (which may be classified as "sharing" under California law).

If you believe your information has been shared in a way that violates your privacy rights, please contact us at [email protected].

**Your CCPA Rights** • Right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared, or sold • Right to delete personal information collected from you • Right to opt-out of the sale or sharing of personal information • Right to correct inaccurate personal information • Right to limit use and disclosure of sensitive personal information • Right to non-discrimination for exercising your rights

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal data:

**GDPR Rights (EU/UK/EEA Residents)** • Right to access your personal data • Right to rectification of inaccurate data • Right to erasure (right to be forgotten) • Right to restrict processing • Right to data portability • Right to object to processing • Right to withdraw consent at any time • Right to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority

**CCPA Rights (California Residents)** • Right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared, or sold • Right to delete personal information collected from you • Right to correct inaccurate personal information • Right to opt-out of the sale or sharing of personal information • Right to limit use and disclosure of sensitive personal information • Right to non-discrimination for exercising your rights

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days (GDPR) or 45 days (CCPA).

We retain your information for as long as necessary to provide our services and comply with legal obligations:

• **Session data** (calculator inputs): Cleared when you close your browser. • **Consent data** (localStorage): Stored until you clear your browser cache or withdraw consent. • **R2 pipeline data** (fuel prices, CPI, NHTSA, EV incentives, exchange rates): Stored in Cloudflare R2 and updated on automated schedules. • **Analytics data**: Retained for 26 months in Google Analytics (anonymised). • **Contact correspondence**: Retained for up to 3 years from the date of last contact. • **Server logs**: Retained for up to 90 days for security and debugging purposes.

After the applicable retention period, data is securely deleted or anonymised.

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, our privacy practices, or wish to exercise your privacy rights, please contact us:

**Email:** [email protected] **Website:** https://carcostbreakdown.com

We will respond to all privacy requests within 30 days (GDPR) or 45 days (CCPA).

**Last Updated:** January 2026 **Effective Date:** January 2026