Skip to content
SUVDekho

Methodology

How we compute an on-road price

Every number on this site is either read off a primary source or computed from published law. This page shows the arithmetic and tells you which is which.

The formula

on-road = ex-showroom
        + road tax           state % of ex-showroom, by price slab and fuel
        + registration        ₹600, CMVR Rule 81
        + HSRP number plate   state-set, ~₹1,000
        + state / municipal cess where the state levies one
        + insurance           (TP by engine cc + OD % of IDV + PA cover) × 1.18
        + TCS                 1% where ex-showroom > ₹10,00,000
        + FASTag              ₹500
        + hypothecation       only if financed
        + dealer handling      optional, negotiable, excluded by default

We compute this on read from about 350 rule rows rather than storing a price per city per variant. Storing it would mean roughly 4.8 million rows that all have to be right, and it would encode a false claim — that Pune and Nagpur could have different road tax. They cannot. Road tax is a state subject.

Every line, and its basis

Ex-showroom priceProvisional

The manufacturer's price before tax and registration. OEMs set it per price zone — usually one national price, occasionally two to four zones. Ours are currently typed by hand and unverified against the OEM price list; they are replaced automatically the first time we ingest the manufacturer's own page.

Road taxEstimated

A percentage of ex-showroom, set by each state's Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, banded by price and often differing by fuel. Rates run from about 4% to over 20%. We have modelled the slab structure for all 36 states and union territories and cite the governing Act on every row, but the percentages have not yet been confirmed against gazette notifications — so every figure that depends on one is labelled Estimated.

Registration feeVerified

₹600 for a private car, central and uniform under Rule 81 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules. The larger 'registration' number on a dealer invoice is this plus the number plate, smart card and any state cess, which is why we itemise them separately.

CMVR Rule 81

FASTagVerified

₹500, mandatory for new vehicle registration under NHAI rules.

InsuranceEstimated

Third-party premium rates are notified by MoRTH in consultation with IRDAI — the authority moved from IRDAI to MoRTH from FY2022-23 under section 147(2) of the Motor Vehicles Act — and are banded by engine capacity: up to 1000cc, 1000–1500cc, and above 1500cc. Nearly every SUV sits in the top two. Own-damage premium is de-tariffed and insurer-set, so we model it as a percentage of IDV. IDV itself is a percentage of the EX-SHOWROOM listed price, not the on-road price — GST, registration and road tax are excluded from it, and getting that wrong inflates the premium.

GST on the insurance premiumVerified

18%. The 56th GST Council meeting on 3 September 2025, effective 22 September 2025, exempted individual life and health insurance and left motor insurance at 18%. A number of calculators built in late 2025 wrongly zeroed this, which understates a mid-size SUV's on-road price by roughly ₹5,000–9,000.

TCSVerified

1% of ex-showroom where the price exceeds ₹10,00,000, under section 206C(1F) of the Income Tax Act. Every SUV we list clears that threshold. The dealer collects it and it appears on the invoice, so it belongs in the total — it is credited against your income tax when you file, but you pay it up front.

Income Tax Act s.206C(1F)

Dealer handlingEstimated

Not statutory. Widely charged, varies by city tier and dealer, and negotiable. Excluded from our headline figure by default — a calculator that folds it in silently is quoting the dealer's preferred number rather than yours.

What we will not do

  • We do not scrape other car websites. Not for specifications, not for images, not to bootstrap the catalog. Facts are extracted from manufacturer brochures and official pages, government sources and openly licensed data such as Wikidata. Every fetch passes an explicit per-domain allow-list with a default of deny, and every attempt — allowed or refused — is logged.
  • We do not publish a number without a source. Source URL, extraction method, confidence and retrieval date are recorded for every published field, and the database physically cannot store a published fact without a citation attached.
  • We do not promote an estimate to a fact. If a figure is modelled rather than verified, it says so on the page, next to the number, at the same visual weight as the number.
  • We do not generate a page for every city in India. Road tax is state-level. A separate page for each of ~1,500 cities within the same state would be the same content with the place name swapped, which is neither useful nor honest.

Found something wrong?

A correction is worth more to us than the page it fixes. If you are a manufacturer and a figure of ours is wrong, tell us and we will correct it and record who corrected it.

Report a correction