What ACES and PIES actually cost, all in.

What do we pay before anyone touches our data?

The Auto Care Association publishes its subscription pricing, which makes this the one part of the cost you can check yourself. Access is banded across fourteen levels by annual global revenue.

ACES and the Vehicle Configuration Database, which is the fitment side, runs from $3,150 for a member under $1 million in revenue to $8,625 at the top band above $10 billion. Non members pay $4,410 to $12,075. That subscription automatically includes the Qualifier Database, the Product Classification Database and the Brand Table.

PIES and the Product Attribute Database, which is the product side, runs from $1,050 to $7,763 for members, and $1,470 to $10,868 for non members. It includes the Product Classification Database and the Brand Table.

There is also an entry level bundle at $2,500 for members under $1 million in revenue, covering all five databases across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Auto Care Association, published subscription tiers, checked 28 August 2026.

Do we need both, or just ACES?

If you publish both fitment and product attributes, you need both subscriptions. They are priced separately and they cover different databases.

So the honest all in figure for reference data alone, at the top band, is $16,388 a year for a member and $22,943 for a non member. At the bottom band it is $4,200 and $5,880, which is why the $2,500 entry bundle exists for the smallest members.

Two things follow. Auto Care membership pays for itself at almost any size, because the member discount is roughly thirty percent on both subscriptions. And this is a recurring subscription, not a purchase. It does not stop.

What pushes an outsourced quote up or down?

Five things, in roughly the order they matter. None of them is your SKU count, which is why per SKU pricing tends to be wrong in both directions.

• Applications per part number. This is the real unit of work. A brake pad that fits four hundred vehicle configurations is not the same job as a trim clip that fits three, even though both are one SKU. A catalogue of 5,000 parts might carry 40,000 applications or 900,000.
• How dirty the source is. One brand spelled four ways, part numbers with and without spaces and hyphens, the same part duplicated under two internal codes. Normalising that is the work that cannot be automated cleanly, and it is where estimates go wrong.
• Whether qualifiers sit in free text. "Front, except heavy duty suspension" typed into a notes field is not a qualifier. Turning it into one against the Qualifier Database is a per case judgement.
• Whether digital assets exist. Images, line drawings and documents to PIES specification are a separate scope. If you do not have them, that is a photography and production project, not a data project.
• How many receivers you publish to. Each one has its own rules on top of the standard. That is covered below and it is consistently underestimated.

What is never in the proposal?

Four things, and the last one is the expensive one.

• The reference data subscription. That is yours, priced above, and it renews.
• PIM licensing. If you need somewhere to keep the cleaned catalogue, that is a separate product with a separate bill.
• Digital asset creation. Mapping does not produce images.
• The refresh treadmill. The vehicle database changes. New model years, new configurations, corrections. A catalogue cleaned once and left alone starts decaying immediately, and the second year costs money too. Any quote that reads as a one off project has quietly left this out, and it is the line that decides whether the first year was worth it.

Is it cheaper to hire someone or to buy the capacity?

Worth doing the arithmetic properly rather than assuming.

The role exists and is advertised openly. CTR America has listed a Data and Catalog Manager at $95,000 to $105,000 a year, asking for six years of automotive aftermarket catalog experience with ACES and PIES. Sunsong North America has run a Catalog Manager role asking for three to five years in ACES and PIES catalog management. These are real, budgeted, recurring positions at parts brands.

So the in house comparison is not one salary. It is a salary, plus the reference data subscription, plus a PIM, plus whatever coverage gap exists while you recruit, plus the fact that one person cannot audit a large catalogue and maintain it at the same time. Most catalog teams that work are two to five people.

The honest framing: hiring makes sense when the work is continuous, buying makes sense when there is a backlog to clear. Most companies have both, which is why most end up doing both. Anyone who tells you outsourcing always wins is selling outsourcing.

Does being compliant mean we are done?

No, and this is the part that surprises people. Meeting the standard gets you a valid file. Each receiver then applies its own rules on top.

Walmart Marketplace, for example, states that "the Part Terminology ID, AAIA Brand ID and Manufacturer Part number tagged to the item must match the ACES file exactly for fitment to be enabled", including spaces, hyphens and underscores. It rejects files for a missing Part Type ID, a missing base vehicle ID or part number, or invalid vehicle information.

A file can be perfectly valid ACES and still be rejected because a hyphen sits in the item attribute and not in the file. Every additional channel is another reformatting and reconciliation job, and it recurs.

So what would it cost us?

We are not going to put a number on this page, and we would rather explain why than pretend the question is unanswerable.

The variable that decides the quote is what proportion of your catalogue maps cleanly on the first pass. That figure is different for every catalogue we see, it is not predictable from your industry or your size, and it is measurable in about a day. Quoting before measuring it would either overcharge you or commit us to work we have not scoped.

What we will do is measure it for free, and give you the number in the units this page just described. That is below.