COE Price Singapore: Current Rates, History, and What Drives Premiums

If you've been tracking COE prices for the past year hoping to spot a dip, you've probably noticed something frustrating: the price barely budges, and when it does fall, it bounces back within weeks. Understanding why prices behave this way — and what the historical pattern actually tells you — is more useful than refreshing OneMotoring every bidding exercise.

Current COE Prices by Category (February 2026)

As of the second bidding exercise in February 2026, here are the Quota Premium (QP) rates:

The most striking anomaly in 2026: Category A has surpassed Category B for the first time in recent memory. Mass-market buyers competing for smaller-engine cars and affordable EVs have pushed Cat A above the premium segment. This is historically unusual — Cat B has almost always commanded a higher premium because it covers luxury cars whose buyers are less price-sensitive.

The Prevailing Quota Premium (PQP) — the three-month moving average used when renewing a 10-year-old car — sat at approximately S$106,541 for Cat A and S$115,938 for Cat B as of early March 2026. The PQP matters more to owners approaching renewal than the spot QP does to new buyers.

COE Price History: 2021 to 2026

COE prices didn't always look like this. The current S$100k+ normal is the product of a specific sequence of events:

2021: Post-pandemic demand surge hit at exactly the wrong time. Global chip shortages slashed new car supply, meaning fewer cars were deregistered, which meant fewer COEs were released into the market. Cat A climbed from roughly S$40,000 at the start of 2021 toward S$70,000 by year-end.

2022–2023: Prices broke S$100,000 for the first time for Cat A. The LTA introduced "cut-and-fill" quota injections — effectively borrowing future supply and releasing it early to dampen prices. The measures slowed the climb but didn't reverse it.

2024–2025: Prices stabilised above S$100,000. The narrative shifted from "when will COE fall below $80k" to accepting that S$100k+ is the new floor for mass-market cars.

2026: Budget 2026 fundamentally changed the PARF rebate structure (covered below), and the Cat A/B crossover occurred. Cat B softened as buyers reconsidered whether a larger-engine car justifies paying more COE than a Cat A equivalent.

What Actually Moves COE Prices

Three levers control COE premiums, and understanding each one helps you interpret current prices more accurately than trying to read month-to-month movements as signals.

1. Quota Supply

The LTA calculates how many new COEs to release each quarter based on the number of vehicles deregistered in the previous rolling four quarters. If owners hold onto cars longer (as happens when new car prices are high), fewer deregistrations occur, fewer COEs are released, and prices go up. The system is self-reinforcing in the short run.

For the Feb–Apr 2026 quarter, supply dipped slightly by 0.8% compared to the previous quarter. The LTA has historically injected cut-and-fill quotas when premiums spike — but this tool is borrowed supply, which means future quarters get reduced allocations to compensate.

2. Demand Composition

Not all bidders are equal. Private hire vehicle (PHV) operators and leasing companies also bid for COEs, which historically inflated demand. However, their share has fallen significantly — PHVs and leasing firms won less than 10% of COEs in early 2026. The dominant demand source now is ordinary buyers, many of whom are comparing Cat A EVs against ICE alternatives.

The shift to EVs specifically affects Cat A because the LTA raised the Cat A power threshold from 97kW to 110kW in 2022, bringing popular mass-market EVs like the BYD Atto 3 into Cat A rather than Cat B. This increased Cat A competition.

3. Seasonal Patterns

The most predictable movement in COE prices is the Chinese New Year dip. Bidding exercises in January and February consistently show lower premiums due to slower showroom traffic, dealer holidays, and reduced decision-making activity during the festive period. The Feb 2026 data already shows Cat B fell by S$5,889 in a single exercise before partially rebounding.

The actionable implication: if you're planning to buy, the CNY window offers modest but real savings. The catch is that it's also when the PARF changes took effect in February 2026, so buyers timing the market purely on COE price need to weigh that against PARF rebate implications.

The Budget 2026 PARF Change and What It Does to COE Math

This is the single most important shift for anyone interpreting 2026 COE prices in relation to buying decisions. Effective from 13 February 2026, PARF rebates were cut dramatically:

• The maximum PARF rebate cap dropped from S$60,000 to S$30,000
• Rebate percentages were cut by 45 percentage points across all age brackets
• A car registered at age 9–10 years now receives only 5% of ARF as PARF (previously 50%)

What this means for COE price interpretation: the "paper value" of a new car — the amount you'd get back from government if you scrap or deregister it — has effectively collapsed. A luxury car with an ARF of S$80,000 that previously returned S$40,000 at year nine now returns roughly S$4,000.

This doesn't directly change what you pay for a COE at auction. But it changes the total cost of ownership calculation significantly, because the denominator in your depreciation formula has shrunk. Cars registered post-February 2026 are more expensive to own on a per-year basis than an equivalent car registered before the cut — purely due to the policy change, independent of the COE premium itself.

How to Check Today's COE Price

The LTA publishes results after each bidding exercise closes (typically Wednesday at 4:00 PM). The official source is OneMotoring. Third-party sites like sgcarmart, Motorist.sg, and Motorist all republish this data with charts and historical comparisons.

For the PQP — the renewal rate rather than the spot bidding price — the LTA updates this monthly and it's published on the OneMotoring website under vehicle renewal.

One important distinction: the QP (Quota Premium) is what you pay when you buy a new car. The PQP is what you pay when you renew a car that's reached its 10-year lifespan. They move together but can diverge significantly, as the PQP is a three-month moving average that smooths out the volatility you see in individual bidding results.

Making Sense of Where Prices Are Heading

The honest answer is that no one reliably predicts COE prices because the quota calculation depends on deregistrations, which depend on what current owners decide to do, which depends on prices. It's circular.

What you can model is the cost floor. With Cat A PQP above S$106,000, the monthly depreciation on a new mass-market car registered after February 2026 — accounting for near-zero PARF scrap value — works out to roughly S$1,400–1,600 per month in depreciation alone, before running costs. That number is the more useful planning input than trying to time the bidding cycle.

For anyone navigating a COE renewal decision or evaluating a new car purchase against keeping your current vehicle, the Singapore COE Navigator includes worked cost comparison frameworks that use current PQP rates, PARF rebate calculations, and the post-Budget 2026 depreciation formulas — so you're working from the same math the market is using, not the old rules that no longer apply.