Auction Lens

Estimate auction lot costs and compare prices across UK marketplaces.

Auction Lens is an auction helper that does the arithmetic and the research, so you decide what to bid instead of guessing. A lot page tells you the hammer price and little else. The real cost is that price plus the buyer's premium, the VAT on that premium, and whatever the auctioneer adds for storage, collection or card fees. Auction Lens reads the auctioneer's own fee wording, works out the all-in total, and lets you correct any figure it read wrong — every field is editable, because auctioneers phrase their terms differently and a guess should be fixable. Then it prices the same item against the market. It reads live listings and, more importantly, sold results, so the comparison rests on what buyers have actually paid rather than on what a seller hopes to get. A sold price is treated as what a buyer paid; an asking price is treated as a hope, and discounted as one, because a lot bought at auction is second hand, uninspected and unreturnable. From those figures it answers the three questions a bidder actually has: - Open at — a starting bid that leaves room to answer one counter-bid. - Bid to — win at or below this and you are still ahead of buying elsewhere. - Walk away after — the ceiling, converted back through the fees, so the figure beside it is what actually leaves your bank account. The gap between what the item is worth and what the bid would cost you is your expected profit. It is shown as a number, not a promise. Ask the AI and it goes further: - A product guide: what the item is, what it is used for, what it is commonly compared against, a summary of what owners and reviewers say about it, and the checks worth making before you bid — service history, missing accessories, the fault that model is known for. - A second opinion on the lot: how this one differs from the comparables, and whether that should move the value up or down. - Search terms that find the item when the heading is an auctioneer's, not a shopper's. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO It never places, schedules or submits a bid. It never signs in to your auction account or your marketplace accounts. It does not sell or share your data. The advice is insight, based on previous sales elsewhere. The bid stays yours. FREE, AND PAID The fee arithmetic and the marketplace comparison are free and work signed out. The AI features are paid with credits: one credit per successful call, refunded automatically when a call fails. Credits are a single card payment — there is no subscription, and nothing renews. WHERE IT WORKS It sits beside the lot page on 22 UK auction platforms — salerooms, plant and machinery, and vehicle auctions — and behaves the same way on every one: the fees it reads, the total it shows and the bid guide all come from that lot's own page.