How COE bidding works

From reserve price to quota premium

When you submit a bid you type a reserve price, the highest amount you would pay. The system does not use that figure directly. It keeps a current COE price for each category, equal to the highest bid that is out of the running plus $1, and moves every live bid up one dollar at a time as others arrive. Your bid stays in the running while your reserve is at least the current price. When the current price rises above your reserve, your status turns to “out bid” and you drop out unless you revise upwards.

The price stops rising when the number of bids still in the running equals the quota. At 4 pm on the closing day, every bid at or above the current price wins, and that price becomes the quota premium for the exercise. Two people who typed $152,004 and $132,004 pay exactly the same if both won. If several bids sit on the same amount at the cut off and accepting them all would exceed the quota, none of the tied bids wins; the unused certificate is carried to the matching exercise of the next month. LTA’s COE page works through an example of that rule.

What you need before the exercise opens

Individuals bid at a DBS or POSB ATM; companies and motor traders bid through DBS, UOB or Maybank online banking. The account must hold the deposit, $10,000 for Categories A, B, C and E and $1,500 for Category D, plus the bank’s administration fee, which LTA says ranges from $2 to $10. An individual must be at least 18 and may submit one bid per exercise, in their own name and with their own account. A six digit acknowledgement code is issued with every accepted bid or revision: keep it private, because it is what allows a revision from another channel.

You can follow your bid on OneMotoring with Singpass. The status reads “accepted” while you are in the running and “out bid” once the current price has passed your reserve. The current prices of all categories are visible during the exercise, so the price at the close is rarely a surprise to people who watch it on the last afternoon, and that is also when most revisions are made.

After the results

A winning bid becomes a temporary COE in the bidder’s ID. You then have 6 months to register a car in Category A or B, 3 months in C or E and 1 month for a motorcycle. At registration you pay the premium minus the deposit already held. Certificates in Categories A, B and D cannot be transferred; C and E certificates won by an individual can be transferred once, and those won by a company cannot be transferred at all.

Choosing a reserve price

Nobody knows the next premium, and this site does not guess it. What the calculator at the top does is replay the past: it counts in how many of the last six, twelve or twenty four months of exercises your reserve would have been enough. Over the last 24 exercises the Category A premium ranged from $102,009 to $133,009, with a median of $123,847. Since everybody pays the same premium, a reserve set well above recent results does not cost more when you win; it only commits you to paying more if the premium does climb that far.

Most buyers never bid themselves. A dealer package usually includes the COE: either a certificate promised at a fixed price, with the dealer carrying the risk, or a number of bidding attempts, with the price passed on to you. Ask which one you are signing, and compare the COE line of the offer with recent COE results. The full car cost calculator shows what the premium does to your cost per year.

Bidding dates left in 2026

Exercises usually open on the first and third Monday of the month and last three working days, closing on Wednesday afternoon. A public holiday in between pushes the close back. LTA announces the quota for each category before every exercise; it is revised every three months from the number of vehicles deregistered, the allowed growth of the vehicle population and adjustments for taxis and expired certificates. The full calendar is on LTA’s schedule of exercises.