SalvageMarket buyer fees: the full table vs Copart's

SalvageMarket's full buyer fee table, the £35 admin fee and the yard's site fee, what it costs to join, and where it works out dearer or cheaper than Copart.

BUYING · 6 min read

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Short answer

SalvageMarket charges a buyer fee banded by hammer price, a £35 admin fee and a site fee set by the yard selling the car, all plus VAT. The site fee is £85 on most lots. Put those together and SalvageMarket costs more in fees than Copart UK on any hammer price under £800, and less from £800 up. The median closing bid we have recorded on SalvageMarket is £500, so on a typical lot you pay more in fees there, not less. Every figure below comes from SalvageMarket's own published fee page and its per-lot fee data, checked on 25 September 2026.

Who runs SalvageMarket?

SalvageMarket is the online auction of e2e (End to End Total Loss Vehicle Management), the salvage network that grew out of the National Salvage Group, formed in 1985. e2e says it has over 30 member salvage firms from Aberdeen to St Austell. Each car sits at the member yard that is selling it, not at a central site. The same auction runs at salvagemarket.co.uk and at auctions.asm-autos.co.uk, because ASM Auto Recycling is one of those members. In a sample of 80 live lots we took on 25 September 2026, the sellers included Silverlake Autoparts, ASM Auto Recycling, Trader.co.uk, Northern Salvage Automobile Auctions, Charles Trent and DLH Auto Recyclers. e2e says it breaks every Cat B car itself and never resells one, so you will not find Cat B shells there.

The buyer fee table

This is SalvageMarket's standard table for auctions closing on or after 30 November 2023, before VAT. Up to £99.99, £43. £100 to £199.99, £85. £200 to £299.99, £93. £300 to £399.99, £107. £400 to £499.99, £120. £500 to £699.99, £143. £700 to £899.99, £158. £900 to £1,099.99, £167. £1,100 to £1,299.99, £179. £1,300 to £1,499.99, £194. £1,500 to £1,699.99, £214. £1,700 to £2,499.99, £253. £2,500 to £2,999.99, £319. £3,000 to £3,499.99, £389. £3,500 to £3,999.99, £393. £4,000 to £4,499.99, £419. £4,500 to £4,999.99, £479. £5,000 to £5,999.99, £509. £6,000 to £6,999.99, £528. £7,000 to £9,499.99, £539. £9,500 to £11,999.99, £540. From £12,000 it becomes 6 percent of the hammer price. Some lots carry bespoke fees instead, for example police disposals where the client sets the fees, and the lot page shows which table applies.

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The admin fee and the site fee

Every lot adds a £35 admin fee. Each lot also carries a site fee, which the selling yard sets, and SalvageMarket's fee page sends you to the lot page for it. Of the 80 lots we sampled, 64 had an £85 site fee. Twelve had £65, all Met Police disposals from ASM on a separate ASM fee table. The rest were £0, £50 or £90. So budget £85 unless the lot page says otherwise. The buyer fee, admin fee and site fee are all plus VAT at 20 percent. Some lots also carry VAT on the hammer price itself, and the lot page says whether VAT is included.

The police-disposal fee table

The Met Police disposals ASM sells on SalvageMarket are billed on ASM's own buyer fee table, called ASM Pricing in SalvageMarket's per-lot fee data and in force since 1 February 2026, not the standard table above. Before VAT: up to £249.99, £25. £250 to £499.99, £45. £500 to £749.99, £120. £750 to £999.99, £150. £1,000 to £1,499.99, £218. £1,500 to £1,999.99, £263. £2,000 to £2,499.99, £319. £2,500 to £2,999.99, £340. £3,000 to £3,999.99, £400. £4,000 to £4,999.99, £495. £5,000 to £7,499.99, £555. £7,500 to £9,999.99, £641. £10,000 to £12,499.99, £785. £12,500 to £14,999.99, £910. £15,000 and over, £1,500. The same £35 admin fee applies, and these lots carried a £65 site fee. Including VAT, a £300 police lot costs £174.00 in fees against £272.40 for a standard lot with an £85 site fee, and a £500 one £264.00 against £315.60. From £1,000 up the police table is dearer on most prices: £381.60 against £344.40 at £1,000, and £502.80 against £447.60 at £2,000. The lot page's Auction Fees tab shows which table a lot uses.

What it adds up to

Fees including VAT, with an £85 site fee. £300 hammer: £272.40 at SalvageMarket against £228.00 at Copart UK. £500 hammer: £315.60 against £280.80. £1,000 hammer: £344.40 against £400.80. £2,000 hammer: £447.60 against £562.80. £5,000 hammer: £754.80 against £832.80. The Copart figures use Copart UK's published member-fee table on the lower-volume tier, the one almost every private buyer pays, including its internet bid fee and £50 lot retrieval fee. SalvageMarket's flat £120 of admin and site fee is what makes it dearer on cheap cars. Its buyer fee bands climb more slowly than Copart's, which is what makes it cheaper on dearer ones. On a lot with no site fee, SalvageMarket comes out cheaper at every hammer price.

Joining

You need a SalvageMarket account, ID checks and a paid bidding subscription. The subscription is £50 for 12 months, £90 for 24 months or £200 for 60 months, plus VAT. For ID, SalvageMarket asks for a passport or photocard driving licence plus one proof of address, such as a utility bill, a bank or credit card statement, or a community charge or Inland Revenue bill. If the address on your licence differs from the one you registered, you need two proofs. A business registration needs your licence plus two business documents, such as a bank statement or a VAT certificate. Non-UK residents can register with a passport or national ID and proof of address. Bidding opens once your ID is approved and the subscription is paid, and SalvageMarket says that can take under 24 hours. New accounts can be suspended from bidding for a while pending seller checks.

How the bidding works

SalvageMarket uses proxy bidding. You enter the most you will pay and the system bids for you in steps up to that limit, so you pay the current highest bid, not your limit, unless someone pushes you to it. If a lot has a reserve, your first bid jumps straight to the reserve or your limit, whichever is lower. The steps are £10 up to £100, £25 from £101 to £1,000, £50 from £1,001 to £5,000, £100 from £5,001 to £25,000 and £250 above that. A bid in the last 60 seconds extends the auction by 15 seconds, and that repeats until the bidding stops, so there is no sniping a lot in the final second.

Paying, collecting and what goes wrong

You pay the selling yard, not SalvageMarket. Contact the yard 24 hours before you collect and pay in cleared funds before or at collection. You have 72 hours to pay in full. After that there is a £25 late payment charge and your account can be suspended. Storage is £15 a day once a lot has sat uncollected for 7 calendar days. A lot not paid for within 72 hours or not collected within 7 days can bring a re-listing or backing-out fee of 10 percent of the winning bid, minimum £100 and maximum £500, to reactivate your account. A yard can charge £15 to load a car onto a multi-vehicle transporter, and delivery is by agreement with the yard. Check the car before it leaves the yard. SalvageMarket says taking it away means you accept it, and no refunds are discussed after that.

Using the Analyzer on a SalvageMarket lot

Paste the link to a SalvageMarket lot page, the one with /lot/ in its address, and the Analyzer reads the listing itself: year, make, model, mileage, current bid, photos and that lot's own site fee. It bills the lot on SalvageMarket's fee table, or on the yard's own table where the lot has one, like the police disposals above, grades the damage from the photos and works out a max bid that allows for SalvageMarket's fees, not Copart's. You can also choose SalvageMarket under Fee table in the costs panel and type the details in yourself. Our free salvage price pages show the median closing bid recorded on SalvageMarket for each model, and the lots of that model at auction now. These are the highest bids recorded as each auction ended, not confirmed sales.

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