A system and method are provided for automatically estimating a repair cost for a vehicle. A method includes: receiving, at a server computing device over an electronic network, one or more images of a damaged vehicle from a client computing device; performing image processing operations on each of the one or more images to detect external damage to a first set of parts of the vehicle; inferring internal damage to a second set of parts of the vehicle based on the detected external damage; and, calculating an estimated repair cost for the vehicle based on the detected external damage and inferred internal damage based on accessing a parts database that includes repair and labor costs for each part in the first and second sets of parts.