How ParkingNova works

No. The site is free, and you pay the operator exactly what you would pay going to them directly. We never add a fee or a markup.

There is no advertising on the site, and nothing on it has been paid for by anyone. If that ever changes we will say so here before it does, and it will not change the order results appear in.

No. ParkingNova is a search tool. We do not own or operate any parking facility, do not take reservations, and never handle your card details. What you pay, you pay to the operator at the lot, under their terms.

No, and no one can. Toronto's municipal lots are first-come-first-served by design; there is nothing to reserve. Those results say No reservation and offer directions rather than a booking button.

Municipal rates are our own compilation, collected from the operator's published rates and checked by us rather than supplied to us by the Toronto Parking Authority. Every one carries the date of the version we hold. Rates change, and there can be a gap before we update, so treat the date as part of the price.

Where a rate has not been confirmed recently, the price is shown as an approximation rather than an exact figure, and labelled. We would rather look imprecise than pretend to a certainty we do not have.

No, and nothing on this site implies otherwise. A municipal lot holds nothing back, because there is nothing to reserve. If it is full when you arrive, it is full. On a game or event night, downtown lots near the venue fill first, so the cheaper option ten minutes' walk away is often the one that still has room.

Because they price differently, and the gap is usually the walk. Rates rise sharply within a couple of blocks of a major venue, and walking ten minutes often halves the cost. A carpark that charges by the half hour and one that charges a flat day rate swap places depending on how long you stay, which is why we work out the total for your window before ranking anything rather than comparing the numbers on the signs.

Yes, where the operator publishes it. Covered and EV charging are toggles on the search bar itself. We also record accessible stalls and 24-hour access, and show them on a result, but they are not filters yet.

We only mark an amenity when the source states it. We never infer one from the type of facility. That means a lot occasionally has a feature we have not listed, which we prefer to claiming one it lacks. Verify accessibility and vehicle height limits before you rely on them.

By the total you would actually pay for the window you searched, then by walking distance. You can re-sort by distance at any time.

Nobody can pay to move a result up. Ranking is the same for every lot, and the City's carparks, which are the whole of the list, pay us nothing at all.

Our map covers the GTA, but not every business name is in it. When we cannot place a destination we say so instead of showing you somewhere else. Being shown lots on the wrong side of the city is worse than being shown none.

Two things that usually work: search the street or landmark nearby instead, or move the map to where you are going and search that area directly. Unrecognised searches are logged without any personal detail and are how we decide what to add next.

There is no account, because there is nothing to sign in to. We keep no history of your searches. We use Google Analytics to see which pages people use, and it sets its own cookies, but what you type into a search is never sent to it. The privacy policy says what it receives and how to turn it off. If accounts arrive later they will be optional, and the privacy policy will change before they do rather than after.

We use it to find parking, and we keep anonymous totals: how many searches were made for a destination in an hour, roughly how long a stay was for, and which result was opened for directions. They are counters, not a record of your visit: no address, no device identifier, and nothing connecting one search to the click after it. The Privacy Policy sets out exactly what is and is not collected.

Please tell us at support@parkingnova.ca. Municipal rates are maintained by hand, so a driver who spots an error is often the first way we find out. You do not need to know the correct price. The lot name is enough, and we check it ourselves.