Built by car people,
for car people.
AutoArchive was born out of frustration. Enthusiast cars are some of the most meticulously maintained vehicles on the road, and the tools to prove it haven’t kept up. So we built the thing we wanted for our own cars.
Service history isn’t a database. It’s a paper trail.
CarFax and similar services only capture a fraction of a car’s real history. They miss independent shops, private work, trackday prep, and specialist services; exactly the maintenance enthusiast buyers care most about.
So the real history ends up in a binder, and then in an auction listing as forty unsorted phone photos nobody can read. Meanwhile forged records are a genuine problem in this market, because the paperwork is worth real money and there has never been a standard way to scrutinise it.
AutoArchive makes the paper trail legible, screens each record for the problems software can actually catch, and puts the original document in front of the buyer.
Four passes over every record.
Read
A VLM reads each document and pulls out the structure: date, shop, mileage, VIN, parts, cost. It classifies the work as specifically as the invoice allows, “Rod Bearing Replacement,” not “Engine Repair.” This is the one job we trust a model with, because reading is what they're good at.
Inspect the file
Your original upload, not a copy, is analysed at the byte level, in code. Was the PDF re-saved after it was created? Does its metadata name an image editor? Are there editable form fields layered on top? This catches a specific kind of fake: someone opening a real invoice and changing a number.
Compare the timeline
Every record is checked against the rest of the car's history, in code. Mileage should never fall. No service should predate the car. The VIN should belong to the right manufacturer. This is the layer that catches odometer rollbacks, the fraud the community actually worries about.
Show the original
Every record displays the document it came from, next to the data we read out of it. Not a summary. The scan. Because the last and best check is a human who knows what a real invoice from that shop looks like.
Notice what’s missing: we don’t claim to detect edits by looking at the picture. A VLM never receives your original file, only a downsampled copy, so the traces real forensics depends on are gone before it sees anything. Ask a model to spot a font anomaly and it will confidently invent one. The file-level checks run in code, on the real bytes, where the evidence still exists.
The restraint is the product.
We say “Checked,” never “Verified.”
One word, and we chose it carefully. Automated screening can confirm the absence of the problems we looked for. It cannot prove a document is genuine. Any service telling you it can is describing something software doesn't do.
We'd rather miss than cry wolf.
A fraud tool that cries wolf is worse than no tool. One false accusation on a receipt an owner knows is real, and they'll never trust another flag we raise. So the unreliable signals stay advisory, only hard evidence escalates a record, and nothing is ever auto-rejected.
The buyer is the last check, not us.
Our job is to make the paperwork legible, surface what we can actually detect, and then get out of the way. The original document is always on the page. You're the one deciding.
The archive belongs to the car.
Sell the car and the history goes with it. The next owner inherits every record and keeps adding. That's how a paper folder in the glovebox has always worked, and it's the part worth keeping.
I built AutoArchive because I had a folder.
Every enthusiast has one. Invoices from shops chosen carefully rather than conveniently. Parts receipts. An inspection report from the day the car changed hands. Years of decisions that cost real money and that I’d have to explain to a stranger someday, one receipt at a time.
The problem was never that the records didn’t exist. It’s that there was no way to show them to someone that didn’t amount to handing over a shoebox and asking them to take my word for it. CarFax doesn’t see the shops I use. An auction listing turns the folder into forty photos nobody scrolls through. So the work goes unpriced, and the buyer discounts what they can’t check, not because they think you’re lying, but because they have no way to tell the difference.
That’s the whole idea. Make the folder legible. Screen it for the things software can honestly catch. Then put the original document on the page and let the buyer decide.
I’m careful about what AutoArchive claims because I’m also the person reading the badge, and I know exactly how little I’d trust one that claimed too much.
— Zackary, founder
Ready to archive your car’s story?
Archiving is free, for as many cars as you own. You only pay when you want to publish a report link for a buyer.
Start your archive