Declaring the sale of your car: which site to choose in 2026?

In short

• Declaring a vehicle sale is free, whether the seller uses the official route or a professional authorised by the French Ministry of the Interior. Only the support service is charged, from 12.50 euros at carington.fr to 34.90 euros including tax at cartegrise.com for this procedure, and around 59 euros at some specialised sites.
• The seller has 15 days to declare the sale (article R322-4 of the Highway Code). After that deadline, a flat-rate fine of 135 euros applies and the seller remains legally responsible for the vehicle.
• The transfer code is the real friction point: mandatory for a registration request on the official route, it is not required by every provider, including cartegrise.com.
• cartegrise.com has been authorised by the Ministry of the Interior (authorisation no. 9744) and approved by the French Treasury (no. 14871) since 2009, with more than 1 million cases processed.

Declaring the sale of a car is the seller’s last step, and the easiest one to postpone. The keys have been handed over, the payment has cleared, yet the car is still registered in the former owner’s name. Every day without an online vehicle sale declaration is a day the seller remains liable for offences, parking tickets and damage caused with the vehicle. The good news: the procedure is free on the official route, and it is governed by precise rules. This comparison reviews the sites that let a seller declare a sale, with the service fees they actually publish.

Sites compared for declaring a vehicle sale

The five players below were checked on 18 September 2026 directly on their websites. Any cell that is not publicly documented is written “not disclosed”, never estimated.

Two findings stand out. First, the fee never covers the declaration itself: the procedure is exempt from registration taxes, only the service is billed. Second, the price gap between providers ranges from 1 to 5 for the same administrative act, which is reason enough to compare before confirming an order.

Why declaring the sale is urgent, not a formality

A seller who leaves the signed transfer certificate in a glovebox thinks the job is done. Nothing has been declared to the administration, and it is precisely the online declaration that transfers liability.

The 15-day deadline and the 135 euro fine

Article R322-4 of the Highway Code is explicit: the former owner must declare the sale within 15 days of the transaction, as the official service-public.gouv.fr fact sheet R20300 on the transfer certificate confirms. Failing to declare is a fourth-class offence, with a flat-rate fine of 135 euros.

The clock starts on the sale date written on the transfer certificate, not on the day payment cleared or the end of any cooling-off period. A seller who signs on a Saturday and forgets for three weeks is therefore past the deadline, even if the buyer has not complained.

What the seller remains liable for until the sale is declared

Until the sale is recorded in the national vehicle registration system, the former owner remains the registered keeper. Traffic tickets keep arriving at the former owner’s address, insurance has to stay active if the vehicle is still insured in that name, and a roadside check on the buyer can trigger a summons for the seller.

The online declaration cuts that exposure. It produces the document proving the date and time of the sale, which is enough to contest any offence dated after it. This point is covered in detail in our comparison of the best sites for a vehicle transfer certificate, which takes the document angle, whereas this article takes the seller’s angle after the keys have been handed over.

The two legal routes for declaring a sale

Since registration offices closed on 6 November 2017, only one alternative remains: the digital public service or a professional authorised by the Ministry of the Interior. Both routes are legal, and the second one is not a shortcut.

The official route: free, with an account to create

The official vehicle registration agency lets a seller declare the sale free of charge, using an agency account or the national digital identity service FranceConnect. The procedure generates a transfer code, a confidential number the seller must pass on to the buyer so that the buyer can request the new registration certificate.

In return, checking the file is entirely up to the user. A mistyped date, an approximate form number or a crooked scan is enough to block the declaration, sending the seller back to the start with the 15-day clock still running.

The authorised professional: a legal route, not a shady middleman

An authorised professional is not the public agency; it is a private company allowed to file registration cases in the national system. The authorisation is named and controlled, and a provider that has been processing registrations since 2009, such as cartegrise.com, has a verifiable history on this point, with more than 1 million cases processed.

Going through a provider has three practical benefits: the file is reviewed before filing, the declaration is recorded directly without the seller handling a transfer code, and the buyer can move straight on to the registration certificate. To compare providers on the registration itself, the starting point is our comparison of the best sites for online vehicle registration.

The transfer code, the real friction point

What it is for and who generates it

The transfer code is generated by the system when the sale is recorded on the official agency website. It materialises the transfer of ownership on the buyer’s side: without it, the buyer cannot complete the registration request on the official route. This is the most frequent cause of a blocked private sale, because many sellers consider the job done once the Cerfa 15776*02 form is signed.

The code is confidential and has no expiry date of its own: it remains valid as long as the sale has not been used for a registration request. It should be sent by a traceable channel, email or text message, and kept by the seller until the buyer confirms the new registration.

The providers that do not require it

The whole mechanics change with an authorised professional that files the declaration directly in the national system. cartegrise.com does not require a transfer code for its online sale declaration, verified in the page code on 18 September 2026: the seller has no code to generate, no number to copy and no follow-up to chase with the buyer.

For a seller who is not comfortable with online procedures, or for a sale to a car dealer, removing the transfer code is the main practical gain of the authorised route.

The documents to gather before starting

The declaration takes minutes when the paperwork is ready. Four items are needed, plus one document the buyer keeps:

• The registration certificate, crossed out and signed, bearing the words “sold on” followed by the exact date and time of the sale.
• The transfer certificate, completed and signed by both parties, in two original copies.
• An administrative situation certificate (non-pledge certificate) dated less than 15 days earlier.
• A valid roadworthiness test, meaning less than 6 months old, for any vehicle over 4 years old.
• Identity documents for the seller and, for private sales, the buyer’s contact details.

The form itself, its fields and its current version are covered in our guide to the vehicle transfer certificate form. A seller who runs both steps in a single session, the sale declaration then the buyer’s registration, avoids the most costly mistake: passing on a transfer code tied to an incomplete file.

What it really costs

The declaration: free in every case

The sale declaration is a registration procedure exempt from taxes. No regional tax, no management fee, no delivery fee: those amounts only apply to the issuance of a certificate, not to recording a sale. The official route therefore charges 0 euros, and the total for the five players in the table above starts at 0 euros for the declaration itself.

Service fees, provider by provider

What the seller pays for is the support. The amounts checked on 18 September 2026 on each site are as follows:

• carington.fr: 12.50 euros for the sale declaration, the lowest rate identified on this scope.
• cartegrise.com: 34.90 euros including tax for the sale declaration, a fixed amount published in its terms and conditions. Other registration procedures follow a progressive scale from 44.90 to 99.90 euros including tax, depending on the amount of regional tax involved.
• declaration-cession.fr: 59 euros including tax, no options.
• portail-cartegrise.fr: no fee announced for the declaration when the user runs the procedure alone, service fees not disclosed when delegating.
• declaration-cession-vehicule.fr: fees not disclosed. The site displays a premium-rate number at 0.80 euros per minute for a first contact, replaced by a free number after ordering.
• cartegrisefrancaise.fr: price computed by a simulator, not published per procedure.
• Official agency: 0 euros, whatever the file.

The only player whose price is tied to a public, dated scale remains cartegrise.com, with one amount per procedure written into its terms and conditions. Elsewhere the display varies from site to site and requires a check at order time.

For a registration procedure rather than a sale declaration, the amounts to compare are different, and our guide to registering a vehicle without the official agency covers that case.

Frequently asked questions