The one fact that decides it
Every tool and guide on this site sorts into one of two paths, and the split comes down to a single fact about your vehicle: was it repaired, or was it declared a total loss?
- Repaired → possible diminished value. If your insurer or the at-fault driver's insurer paid to fix your vehicle, it may now be worth less on the market than an equivalent vehicle with no accident history — even with a flawless repair. That gap is diminished value. See What Is Diminished Value?
- Declared a total loss → total-loss valuation and settlement. If the insurer decided repair cost (plus, in some states, a statutory percentage threshold) makes fixing the vehicle uneconomical, it's declared a total loss instead of repaired, and you're offered a cash settlement based on the vehicle's pre-loss value rather than a repair. See How Insurers Value a Total-Loss Vehicle.
These are mutually exclusive for the same damage event. A single vehicle,
for a single accident, is either repaired or totaled — never both. The confusion usually comes
from timing (see below), not from both applying at once.
Quick self-check
| If this is true for you… | …start here |
|---|---|
| The insurer repaired (or is repairing) the vehicle, and you want to check whether it's now worth less | Diminished Value Baseline calculator |
| Same as above, but the vehicle is leased rather than owned | Leased Vehicle Diminished Value calculator |
| The insurer sent you a total-loss valuation report and a cash offer | Total-Loss Offer Audit calculator |
| You have a total-loss settlement check and want to see how the deductions add up | Settlement Check Breakdown calculator |
| You're deciding whether to keep your totaled vehicle instead of surrendering it | Salvage / Owner-Retained Value calculator |
| You're still not sure | Check My Offer — answer two questions |
Where the two paths can seem to overlap
A few situations make it feel like both apply, even though only one actually does for a given vehicle and accident:
- Multiple accidents on the same vehicle. A vehicle repaired after an earlier accident, then totaled in a later one, genuinely has both a past diminished-value question (from the first accident) and a current total-loss question (from the second) — they're just two separate claims, potentially years apart.
- You're not sure yet which the insurer will decide. Early in a claim, before the insurer has chosen repair or total loss, neither tool has enough information yet. Once you have either a repair estimate or a total-loss valuation report in hand, the self-check table above applies.
- You disagree with the insurer's repair-vs-total-loss decision itself. That's a different question from either tool on this site — it's about the threshold decision, not the value calculation downstream of it. See State Total-Loss Threshold Laws for how that threshold decision is typically made.
What this guide cannot tell you
It cannot tell you which path your specific claim is on — that depends on your insurer's actual repair-or-total-loss decision, which this site has no way to know in advance. It also cannot tell you whether diminished value is recoverable in your state or what your total-loss offer should be; those are handled by the calculators and guides linked above, each with its own sources and limitations stated separately.