From creating your account to AI-powered comparisons.
🔑Creating your account
Registration is open — anyone can create a Hitched account. Here is how to get started:
1
Go to the sign-up page — Enter your email address and choose a password (at least 8 characters).
2
Confirm your email — Hitched sends a confirmation link — click it to activate your account. You won't be signed in until you confirm.
3
Land on your shortlist — You are in! Bookmark the app in your browser for easy access next time.
Tip: If you were invited directly by the Hitched team instead, you will get an invite email — click the link and you will be prompted to set a password the first time. If that invite link has expired, you can request a new one from the expired-invite page, or just register normally instead.
🎯Setting your criteria
Criteria are your must-haves and nice-to-haves. Hitched uses them to score every van you add and highlight matches. Setting them up is a step-by-step wizard rather than a blank form.
1
Open the Criteria tab — Open any caravan and tap its Criteria tab — that is where the wizard lives. (You will also see it on any shared or for-sale listing, letting you build criteria against a specific van before you have even added it.)
2
Work through the steps — Budget, Size & Weight, Living, Power & Water, Build, and Custom (for your own custom fields). Each step suggests common criteria — toggle the ones that matter, edit the target values, and set how important each one is: Must have, Prefer, or Nice to have.
3
That's it — it saves as you go — Changes save automatically a moment after you make them. There is no separate save button.
Tip: Criteria match indicators are shown on each spec field in the van detail page using highlight colours and coloured dots — so you can see at a glance how a van stacks up against your targets.
Additional preferences— a separate, free-text list on the Assessment tab
This is not part of the criteria wizard above. Every van's Assessment tab has an Additional preferences list, tucked under My assessment rules — plain-English context that Hitched reads in full for every AI assessment and chat response. It applies across your whole shortlist, not just the van you added it from. Use it to describe your trip style and priorities in your own words. For example:
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Add your tow vehicle details
Add your tow vehicle, tow capacity (GVM), and maximum ball weight as an Additional preference. The AI will use these to flag whether each van is within your towing limits — one of the most important filters when shortlisting.
e.g. “Our tow vehicle is a 2022 Toyota LandCruiser 300 Series with a tow capacity of 3,500 kg and a maximum ball weight of 350 kg. We need vans that are comfortably within these limits.”
•"We are planning a 6-month trip on The Gibb River Road — the van needs to handle corrugated outback tracks, have good ground clearance, and be fully self-sufficient."
•"We need to be able to go fully off-grid for at least 7 days — solar, battery, and water capacity are critical."
•"This is a family of four with two kids under 10 — we need separate sleeping areas and a van that is not too heavy for our tow vehicle."
•"We will mostly do coastal free-camping in WA and SA. Lightweight, under 2,800 kg ATM preferred."
➕Adding a caravan
Hit Add van from your shortlist (or use the Add a caravan panel on your home screen). Adding a van is a 3-step flow — Add → Review → Assess — and nothing is saved until you get through Review, so feel free to correct anything before it lands in your shortlist.
1
Paste a listing URL (most sites)
The URL alone is enough for most sites — Facebook Marketplace, dealer websites, and more. Paste the link and Hitched will scrape the page with AI to pull in specs, price, and more. The URL is also saved as the source link so you can browse back to the original listing anytime. Before extracting, Hitched checks whether the URL already exists in your shortlist and offers to open the existing van instead of adding a duplicate.
2
Facebook Marketplace
Marketplace item links and share links both import automatically. Facebook group posts, however, are not supported — if you paste a group post URL, Hitched will ask you to open the listing on Marketplace and paste that URL instead, or paste the full ad text.
3
Sites that block automated scraping? Paste the ad text too
A handful of listing sites don't allow automated access. If Hitched can't reach a listing automatically, it will tell you so — paste the URL (so the source link is still saved) and also paste the full ad title and description into the text field, and Hitched will extract the data from that instead.
4
No link? Enter details from a private sale or the seller's message
Toggle this option to paste the ad text directly (title, description, price and specs — handy for a Marketplace chat message or a private-sale text) and/or upload photos. Spec sheets, window stickers, and compliance plates work great — Hitched reads the numbers straight off them.
5
Enter details manually
Fill in specs yourself directly on the detail page. Good for vans you inspected in person, or to fill in anything the other methods missed.
Tip: For any site: try the URL first to see what comes back. If fields are missing, copy the full ad text and paste it into the Supplement with ad text box at the top of the review form — Hitched will extract any remaining data and fill in only the empty fields, without overwriting what you have already entered.
Tip: Use a browser that supports split screen. Open the listing on one side and Hitched on the other — then drag photos straight from the listing and drop them onto the Add photos area to populate images without downloading anything first.
✏️Editing specs, description & images
Open any caravan from your shortlist to reach its detail page. From here you can:
•Edit individual spec fields — tap any field (ATM, length, layout, ensuite, solar, etc.) to edit it in place. Changes save immediately.
•Pin specs — pin any spec field to have it always appear at the top of the detail page for quick reference. Useful for the things that matter most to you. This is separate from criteria — pinning is about visibility, criteria is about scoring.
•Write a description — the Description tab is a free-text blurb about the van. You can write it yourself, or use Draft this for me to have AI generate one — pick a tone (Straightforward, Warm, Detailed) and length (Short, Medium, Long), add a few optional notes, and Hitched drafts a description for you to review and save. This is required if you plan to list the van for sale publicly (see Selling your own van, below).
•Upload photos — drag and drop or tap the image area to upload photos of the van, floor plan, or brochure. Images are stored against the van.
•Verify an import — when Hitched extracts specs from a URL or text, it shows you what it found before saving. Uncheck any field you don't want updated — handy when you have already entered accurate data and don't want it overwritten.
•Add notes — there is a free-text notes area for anything that doesn't fit a structured field: things you noticed at inspection, questions for the seller, etc. Star a note to pin it to the main details area of the caravan page and have it appear on the shortlist too.
•Set status — track where you are with each van: Watching, Contacted, Inspected, Shortlisted, Passed, or Sold.
Tip: Description and Criteria are separate from the Assessment tab. Description is your own public blurb, Criteria is the step-by-step wizard for your must-haves, and Assessment is where the AI writes its reasoned verdict on the van (see below).
⚡Running an AI assessment
The Assessment tab on a caravan detail page asks AI to evaluate that van against your saved criteria. It produces a structured score and plain-English summary of strengths, weaknesses, and things to investigate.
•Assessment pulls in the van's specs and your criteria so the analysis is personalised.
•Each criterion is scored individually so you can see exactly where a van wins or loses.
•Run a new assessment any time you update specs — the AI re-evaluates fresh each time.
•Results are saved against the van so you can revisit them later.
Tip: Fill in as many specs as you can before running an assessment — the more data the AI has, the more specific and useful the result.
Tip: Expand My assessment rules at the top of the Assessment tab to add or edit your Additional preferences — the same list used in the Criteria wizard above. Anything you add there applies to every van's assessment and chat, not just this one.
📊Comparing vans
The Compare page lets you view up to three vans side by side across every spec field.
1
Open Compare — Tap Compare in the app header.
2
Select up to three vans — Pick any two or three vans from your shortlist.
3
Review the table — Fields where one van is clearly better are highlighted. Fields that match your criteria are flagged.
Tip: Compare works best after you have filled in specs for all vans. Once you are staring at the table, the AI chat (below) is a great way to talk through what you are seeing.
🤖AI chat
There are two chat modes, both powered by Hitched:
Per-van chat
Open a caravan and tap the chat tab. The AI knows everything about that specific van — its specs, your criteria, and its assessment results. Great for deep-diving one van.
Example questions
"What questions should I ask the seller about the ATM rating?"
"Is this van likely to suit a family of four?"
"What would need upgrading to meet my solar requirement?"
Global chat
The Chat page in the header gives you a conversation with AI across your shortlist. You can chat with all your vans at once, or select specific vans to focus the conversation. Great for cross-van comparisons and broader questions.
Example questions
"Which of my vans comes closest to all my criteria?"
"Compare the pros and cons of the Jayco vs the Coromal."
"Which vans in my list have an ensuite and are under 3,500 kg ATM?"
🛒Browsing public listings
Hitched also hosts a page of public for-sale listings from other users — a small, curated set of vans that have been listed and approved for sale.
•Browse for-sale vans — visit the For Sale page to see approved listings with cover photo, price, location, and key specs.
•Shared listings work the same way — if someone sends you a private share link to their van, you will land on the same kind of page.
•Build criteria against a specific van — even before you have an account, you can open the Criteria tab on a shared or for-sale listing and work through the same criteria wizard to see how that van stacks up against your must-haves.
•Add to my shortlist — click this on any shared or for-sale van and it copies the van into your own shortlist so you can edit, assess, and compare it freely. This is your own independent copy — the seller cannot see anything you do with it, and none of your notes, edits, or assessments are shared back to them.
•Enquire with the seller — every listing has a contact form that emails the seller directly. Your email address is shared with them so they can reply; theirs is never shown publicly.
Tip: If you are not signed in yet, setting criteria or shortlisting a van from a listing will prompt you to register. Anything you built anonymously — your criteria, and the van you shortlisted — is waiting for you as soon as you confirm your new account.
🏷️Selling your own van
Got a van in your shortlist you are ready to sell? Hitched can list it publicly on the For Sale page.
1
Write a description — Fill in the Description tab first (see above) — it becomes the public copy shown to buyers, and is required before you can list.
2
Open the Sell tab — Work through the readiness checklist, then confirm you own the van and hold the rights to its photos.
3
Pass the photo rights check — Hitched scans your photos for signs they were lifted from another listing site. If anything is flagged, either confirm the photo is genuinely yours or remove it before submitting.
4
Submit for review — A human reviews new listings, usually within a day. Once approved, you get a shareable public link at /for-sale/[your listing].
5
Manage the listing — Buyer enquiries are emailed straight to you. Mark the van as Sold, or withdraw the listing, at any time from the Sell tab.
Tip: Listings that sit idle for a while will get a nudge to refresh the price and photos, or mark the van as sold — keeping the For Sale page accurate for buyers.
💬Giving feedback
Hitched is in beta and your feedback directly shapes what gets built next. Look for the small feedback tab on the edge of the app window.
•Bug reports — something broken or behaving oddly
•Feature requests — something you wish Hitched could do
•Confusing bits — anything that wasn't clear or took too long to figure out
The feedback widget has a built-in screenshot and annotation tool — capture part of the page, draw on it if needed, and include it with your message. This makes it much easier for the Hitched team to understand exactly what you are seeing.