---
title: "Carvana vs CarMax: What Their Own Filings Show"
description: "Both companies file audited accounts, so one comparison cannot be spun: Carvana keeps 20.63% of each dollar against CarMax’s 10.84%. What that means for a buyer, and what it does not."
url: "https://baronauto1.com/buying-guides/carvana-vs-carmax/"
type: "article"
published: "2026-08-27"
modified: "2026-08-27"
site: "Baron Auto"
disclaimer: "This site is under new ownership and is not affiliated with Baron Auto Emporium dealership."
---

# Carvana vs CarMax: What Their Own Filings Show

> Both companies file audited accounts, so one comparison cannot be spun: Carvana keeps 20.63% of each dollar against CarMax’s 10.84%. What that means for a buyer, and what it does not.

*Used Car Buying · 14 min read · 3,086 words*

## The short version

- Both companies file audited accounts with the SEC, so the one comparison nobody can spin is available for free: how much of every dollar each keeps.
- In the most recent year on file Carvana kept a gross margin of 20.63%. CarMax kept 10.84% — roughly half.
- That gap is recent. In 2020 the two were close, at 14.21% and 12.55%. They have diverged sharply since.
- A higher margin is not proof of a worse deal, and this article does not claim it is. It is a reason to check rather than assume the online seller is the cheap one.
- Return windows, delivery fees and inspection promises change constantly. Anything you read about them, here or anywhere, is out of date — read the current terms.
- The federal protections are identical either way. Both are dealers, so both owe you a Buyers Guide on the window, and neither can sell you out of an open safety recall you failed to check.

Almost every comparison of these two companies is written by somebody paid when you click through to one of them. The tell is that they all compare the same things — return windows, delivery, haggling — and none of them cites anything.

There is a better source sitting in public. Both are listed companies. Both file annual accounts that are audited and signed under penalty. Those filings will not tell you which one has the right car for you, but they answer a question the marketing never does: how does each of these businesses actually make its money?

![A person working at a laptop showing an online vehicle marketplace listing page, with a grid of car photographs and a filter sidebar](https://baronauto1.com/assets/photos/online-retail-2-1280.webp)

*Buying a car through a website removes the desk and the handshake. It does not remove the dealer, the margin, or any of the federal rules that attach to a dealer sale.*

## The number neither company advertises

Gross margin is the share of revenue left after the cost of the goods sold. For a used-car retailer that is, roughly, what the company keeps on top of what it paid for the cars and the work done to them.

**Figure: Gross margin at the two large public used-car retailers**

Paired bars for six annual periods comparing the gross profit margin reported by CarMax and by Carvana in their audited filings.

Gross profit as a share of revenue, taken from each company’s own 10-K filings rather than from either company’s marketing. In the most recent period on file Carvana kept 20.63 per cent against CarMax’s 10.84 per cent. These are whole-company figures that include financing and wholesale, so they are not the margin on any single car — but the direction of travel is the point, and it runs opposite to the assumption that the online seller is the cheap one.

In the most recent annual period on file, Carvana reported revenue of $20.32 billion and gross profit of $4.19 billion, a margin of 20.63%. CarMax reported $25.88 billion and $2.81 billion, a margin of 10.84%.

Carvana keeps close to twice as much of each dollar as CarMax does.

The more interesting part is that this is new. Trace the two lines back and they converge: in the year the pandemic began, Carvana was at 14.21% and CarMax at 12.55%, which is a normal difference between two firms in the same trade. In 2022 Carvana actually fell below CarMax, at 9.16% against 9.43%. The gap that exists now opened up in the two years after that, as Carvana went to 16.01%, then 21.03%, then 20.63%, while CarMax stayed in a narrow band around ten and eleven per cent.

## What that does and does not prove

It would be easy, and wrong, to read the previous section as “Carvana overcharges”. Three reasons it does not say that.

**These are whole-company figures.** Both businesses do several things: retail cars to consumers, sell cars wholesale to other dealers, and originate and sell finance. Gross margin blends all of it. A company that earns more from lending and less from the metal can show a higher margin at the same sticker price.

**Cost structures differ underneath the line.** Gross margin sits above overheads. A business with no physical stores has different costs from one with a national chain of them, and the comparison at the gross line does not capture that. Neither company’s gross margin is its profit.

**The accounting periods are not identical.** CarMax closes its year at the end of February, so its most recent annual period runs from March 2025 to February 2026, while Carvana’s is the 2025 calendar year. That is a genuine two-month offset. It is small relative to the gap being described, but it is there, and any comparison that does not mention it is being careless.

What the figures do support is narrower and still worth having: the assumption that buying online cuts out a middleman and therefore costs less is not visible in these accounts. If it were, the online business would show the thinner margin. It shows the fatter one.

## Scale, and why it is about to matter more

The revenue lines tell a second story. CarMax has been broadly flat: $26.54 billion, then $26.35 billion, then $25.88 billion across its three most recent years. Carvana over the same span went $10.77 billion, $13.67 billion, $20.32 billion.

One is holding its ground. The other has roughly doubled in two years and is now within striking distance on revenue while earning far more per dollar of it.

For a buyer this is not a reason to prefer either. It is a reason to expect the market to keep moving, and a reason to distrust any comparison of these two companies written more than a year ago — including the ones still ranking well for this search. The relationship being described has changed twice in five years.

## The decade behind the gap

Reading the two series year by year is more informative than reading the latest pair, because it shows which company changed.

CarMax was, for years, boringly consistent. Its margin ran 13.75%, 13.6%, 13.65%, 13.4% across four consecutive years — a business that had found its level and held it. That stability ends in 2020. From there the figures go 12.55%, 10.31%, 9.43%, and it has not returned to thirteen since; the three most recent readings are 10.22%, 11% and 10.84%.

Carvana’s line does the opposite and is far less smooth. It starts at 7.93%, the profile of a company buying market share, and climbs each year to 15.05%. Then, in 2022, it collapses to 9.16% — below CarMax for the only time in the whole comparison. The recovery afterwards is the steepest move either company makes: 16.01%, then 21.03%.

That 2022 inversion is the most useful single data point here, because it is a reminder that neither company’s position is structural. One of them had a year in which its economics looked worse than its older rival’s, and then reversed it in twenty-four months. Anyone telling you what these two companies fundamentally are is describing a snapshot.

For a buyer the practical reading is about pricing pressure rather than about either brand. A retailer expanding its margin is not, at that moment, competing hardest on price. A retailer whose margin has been compressed for five straight years may be. That is a hypothesis rather than a promise, and the only way to test it is on the two actual cars in front of you.

## The cost that only exists in the online model

There is one line of cost in a distance sale that has no counterpart on a forecourt, and it is easy to forget because it happens out of sight.

![A two-tier car transporter photographed side-on under a heavy grey sky, a teal crossover held nose-down on the raised upper deck by a red ratchet hook looped under its front wheel and a pale silver hatchback standing on the lower deck beneath it](https://baronauto1.com/assets/photos/online-retail-1280.webp)

*Neither of these cars is being driven to its buyer. Both are riding on an open deck, secured at the wheels, exposed to the weather and the road for the length of the route — and the moment one of them arrives is the moment any damage picked up on the way becomes a question of who can prove what.*

A car bought from a lot is already where you are. A car bought online is somewhere else, and getting it to you means a transporter, a route, a schedule and a handover. Somebody pays for that, and it is either itemised on your paperwork as a delivery fee or absorbed into the price of the car.

It also introduces a failure mode that does not exist locally: the vehicle can be damaged in transit, and the moment it arrives is the moment that becomes your problem to detect. Photograph the car before you sign anything the driver hands you, in daylight, including the roof and the lower panels. A transport scuff discovered a week later is very hard to attribute.

None of this makes distance selling a bad idea — the reach it gives you is real, and being able to buy the right car from four states away is worth something. It does mean the comparison is not simply price against price. It is price plus transport plus a shifted inspection burden, against price plus the afternoon you spend driving to a lot.

## The things every other comparison leads with

Return windows. Delivery fees. Whether the price is negotiable. Warranty periods. Inspection point-counts.

These are the substance of nearly every article on this subject and they are deliberately not tabulated here, for the same reason this site does not print state-by-state fee tables: they change without notice, and a table that is wrong is worse than no table. Both companies have altered their return terms more than once. An article that confidently states a return window is telling you what was true on the day it was written, and it will not tell you when that stops being true.

Check the current terms on the day you buy, from the company itself, and read the actual contract rather than the summary on the marketing page. That is not a satisfying answer, but it is the correct one, and it is the same answer at any dealer.

## What is identical whichever you choose

Here is the part that does not change, because it is federal law rather than company policy. Both of these businesses are dealers. Every rule that binds a dealer on a forecourt binds them.

**The Buyers Guide.** Under the FTC’s Used Car Rule, a dealer must display a Buyers Guide on every used vehicle offered for sale, stating whether it comes with a warranty or is sold as is, and the form’s contents become part of your sales contract. Buying at a distance does not remove this; it means you should be given the same disclosure in the transaction rather than on a window you never stand in front of. Our guide to [whether a used car comes with a warranty](https://baronauto1.com/buying-guides/does-a-used-car-come-with-a-warranty/) takes that form apart box by box.

**Open recalls.** Neither company can make an open safety recall go away, and a recall is free to fix at a franchised dealer regardless of who sold you the car. This is checkable from the VIN in about a minute, and it is the single highest-value check available. Our guide to [checking a car for open recalls](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/how-to-check-a-car-for-open-recalls/) covers the free federal tool.

**Title brands.** A salvage, flood or rebuilt brand follows the vehicle through the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, whoever is retailing it. An online listing photographed in good light is exactly as capable of carrying a branded title as a car on a lot.

**Odometer disclosure.** Federal law requires a written odometer disclosure on transfer, and the same mileage record is checkable against the vehicle’s history either way.

## The inspection question is the real difference

If there is one substantive structural difference between buying online and buying from a lot, it is not price and it is not the return window. It is that you cannot have the car inspected before you commit.

At a physical dealer you can, in principle, ask to take the car to an independent mechanic before signing. Buying sight-unseen inverts the order: you buy, the car arrives, and the return window is what stands in for the inspection. That is a real protection and it is not nothing — but it puts the burden on you to detect a problem within a fixed number of days, on a car you are still learning, rather than on a professional detecting it in an hour beforehand.

The practical response is to use the window as an inspection period rather than as a trial. Book an independent inspection for the first days after delivery, not the last, and treat the report as the decision. Our guide to the [used car pre-purchase inspection](https://baronauto1.com/buying-guides/used-car-pre-purchase-inspection/) covers what a proper one includes.

## Financing is where the margin lives

Both companies will offer to finance the car, and for both of them lending is a meaningful part of the business rather than a courtesy.

That is not sinister — it is how car retail has worked for decades — but it does mean the finance offer is a product being sold to you, priced for margin, at the same moment you are concentrating on the car. The defence is the same one that works at any dealer: get an approval from your own bank or credit union first, so the number in front of you has something to be compared against.

Our guide to [what credit score you need to buy a car](https://baronauto1.com/financing/credit-score-to-buy-a-car/) covers what determines the rate you will actually be offered, which is worth understanding before rather than after.

## How to actually decide between them

The filings do not pick a winner, and neither will this article, because the right answer depends on a specific car rather than on a company. What the evidence supports is a method.

- **Compare cars, not brands.** Both list thousands of vehicles of wildly varying quality. The variation within each company is far larger than the difference between them.
- **Price the total, not the sticker.** Delivery, fees, and the finance rate are where the difference actually appears. Our guide to the [out-the-door price](https://baronauto1.com/buying-guides/out-the-door-price/) is the tool for this.
- **Do not assume online is cheaper.** The accounts give no support to that assumption, and some evidence against it.
- **Check the individual VIN before you engage.** Recalls, title brands and the mileage record are free to check and decide more than the retailer does.
- **Read today’s terms.** Anything you have read about return windows, including here, may already be stale.

## Where to go if it goes wrong

Size is not the protection people assume it is, and neither company’s customer service is a substitute for knowing which door to knock on. The routes are the same for both, and for any dealer.

Start with the paperwork rather than the phone. The Buyers Guide that came with the car is not a leaflet — under the Used Car Rule its contents become part of the sales contract and override anything in that contract which contradicts them. If the form said the car came with a warranty and you are being told otherwise, the form is the stronger document.

For the sale itself, the Federal Trade Commission takes consumer complaints about dealers, and for anything to do with the loan — the rate, the add-ons, the servicing of the account — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau maintains a complaint database and forwards complaints to the company for response. Your state attorney general is the third route, and often the most effective one, because vehicle sales are licensed at state level and a licence is worth more to a dealer than an individual dispute.

Do all of this in writing, keep the Buyers Guide, and keep the advertisement as it appeared when you bought.

## The car matters more than the company

Both of these firms sell good cars and both sell cars you should walk away from, because both buy their stock from the same auctions and trade-ins as everyone else. The brand on the website is a much weaker signal than the record attached to the vehicle.

Before you get attached to a listing, run its VIN. The title-brand history, the open recalls and the reported mileage are the three things that most often turn a good-looking listing into a car you should not buy, and they are all checkable from the seventeen characters in the advert. You can [decode the VIN and pull the title and recall record](https://carcheckervin.com) in one pass, whichever company’s website the car is sitting on.

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, Carvana or CarMax?

Neither company’s filings support a general answer, and any article giving you one is guessing. What the accounts show is that Carvana keeps a larger share of each dollar — 20.63% against 10.84% in the most recent year — which is the opposite of what most people assume about an online seller. Compare the two specific cars you are considering, all-in.

### Does buying online cut out the middleman?

Not in any sense visible in the accounts. Both companies buy cars, recondition them and resell them at a margin. Removing the showroom removes a cost, but the gross margin data does not show that saving being passed on.

### Is a car from either of them inspected properly?

Both advertise a reconditioning process. Neither is a substitute for an independent inspection, because both inspections are carried out by the party selling you the car. Arrange your own within the return window.

### Do I get a warranty from Carvana or CarMax?

That depends on the individual car and on what is disclosed on its Buyers Guide, which is a federal form both are required to provide. Read the box that is ticked rather than the reassurance on the listing page.

### Can I return a car if I do not like it?

Both have offered return periods, and both have changed the terms. Check the current policy at the moment of purchase and get it in the contract. Treat any figure quoted in an article, including this one, as potentially out of date.

### Are these companies safer than a small local dealer?

They are subject to exactly the same federal rules — the Used Car Rule, the odometer disclosure requirement, recall obligations. Size changes how likely a company is to be sued, not what it owes you. The individual vehicle record remains the thing worth checking.

### Why compare their financial filings at all?

Because it is the only comparison in this space that is audited, public, and free of anyone’s affiliate incentive. It does not answer which car to buy, but it does test a claim that is otherwise repeated without evidence: that buying online is structurally cheaper.

## Sources and further reading

- [SEC EDGAR company facts API](https://data.sec.gov/)
- [SEC EDGAR filings: Carvana Co.](https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1690820)
- [SEC EDGAR filings: CarMax, Inc.](https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1170010)
- [FTC used car buying guide](https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/buying-used-car-dealer)
- [FTC Used Car Rule](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/dealers-guide-used-car-rule)
- [16 CFR Part 455 (Used Car Rule)](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-455)
- [16 CFR § 455.2 (Consumer sales — window form)](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-455/section-455.2)
- [NHTSA recall lookup](https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls)
- [NHTSA odometer fraud](https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/odometer-fraud)
- [NMVTIS (US Department of Justice)](https://vehiclehistory.bja.ojp.gov/)
- [CFPB auto loan resources](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/auto-loans/)
- [CFPB consumer complaint database](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/)

Recall, complaint and safety-rating figures on this page were retrieved from the federal databases above on August 19, 2026. Federal data changes — re-check any VIN before you rely on it.

---

*This site is under new ownership and is not affiliated with Baron Auto Emporium dealership.*

Canonical source: https://baronauto1.com/buying-guides/carvana-vs-carmax/