Copart Salvage Auction Scraper — Lots, Bids & VINs

Extract salvage auction data from Copart in seconds — lot details, VINs, damage, title codes, odometer readings, bids, and full image galleries for any make, model, or keyword search.

This Copart scraper delivers structured salvage car data at scale. Search by keyword, make/model/year, or paste any Copart search URL to pull every matching lot. Includes inline VIN decode — engine type, transmission, drivetrain, fuel type, and cylinder count are enriched automatically from the VIN for each lot.

Features

• Search by keyword or URL — enter a make/model keyword (e.g. honda, ford f-150) or paste a full copart.com/lotSearchResults URL to replicate any existing search
• Filter by make, model, and year range — narrow results without touching the URL
• Inline VIN enrichment — engine, transmission, drive, fuel, and cylinders decoded and merged per lot
• Full image gallery — complete photo list per lot, not just the thumbnail
• Auto-paginate — walks all result pages up to your maxItems cap
• Session resilience — if the site's session expires mid-run, the scraper re-warms automatically and continues from where it left off; no lost data
• Pay per result — you are charged only for lots actually returned, never for pages browsed

What data you get

Each record is one salvage lot. Fields are sourced from Copart's search and detail endpoints and merged into a single flat object.

Field	Fill rate	Notes
lot_number	100%	Copart lot identifier
vin	100%	Full 17-char VIN
year	100%	Model year
make	100%	e.g. HONDA, FORD
model	100%	e.g. CIVIC, F-150
trim	100%	Trim level when listed
engine_type	100%	e.g. 3.5L V6, 4 CYL
cylinders	100%	Cylinder count
transmission	100%	AUTO / MANUAL
drive	100%	AWD / FWD / RWD / 4WD
fuel	100%	GASOLINE / HYBRID / ELECTRIC / DIESEL
color	100%	Exterior color
has_keys	100%	Y / N
lot_condition	100%	Lot condition description
primary_damage	100%	e.g. FRONT END, HAIL
sale_location	100%	Auction yard name
sale_status	100%	e.g. ON MINIMUM BID, FUTURE SALE
auction_time	100%	ISO-8601 UTC datetime
item_url	100%	Direct link to the lot page
currency	100%	Always USD
estimated_retail_value	~93%	Estimated ACV in USD; not set on all lots
title_code	~93%	e.g. CERT-D, NO-TITLE; depends on state filing
odometer	~80%	Miles; EXEMPT on some salvage titles
body_style	Varies	Not always provided by the source
secondary_damage	Varies	Present when a second damage area is noted
seller	Varies	Seller company name when disclosed
lot_notes	Varies	Free-text auction notes
current_bid	Pre-auction	Null on lots not yet at auction ("Pure Sale" stage)
buy_it_now_price	Pre-auction	Null on lots without an active BIN price
images	100%	List of full-resolution CDN image URLs
latitude / longitude	100%	Yard coordinates
scraped_at	100%	ISO-8601 UTC timestamp of the run

Input

{
  "query": "honda civic",
  "make": "HONDA",
  "model": "CIVIC",
  "yearFrom": 2018,
  "yearTo": 2023,
  "maxItems": 200,
  "fetchDetails": true,
  "fetchImages": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

You can also pass "searchUrl" instead of "query" — paste any copart.com/lotSearchResults URL and the scraper replicates that exact search. When searchUrl is provided it takes priority over query.

Key parameters:

Parameter	Default	Description
query	—	Keyword search (required unless searchUrl is set)
searchUrl	—	Paste a Copart search URL to replicate it
make	—	Optional make filter (e.g. FORD)
model	—	Optional model filter (e.g. MUSTANG)
yearFrom / yearTo	—	Optional year range
maxItems	100	Max lots to return; set to 0 for unlimited
fetchDetails	true	Fetch richer detail fields (VIN, secondary damage, retail value)
fetchImages	true	Fetch full image gallery per lot

Pricing

Pay per result — $0.02329 per lot (charge event: lot-item).

You are only charged for lots actually pushed to your dataset. Browsing pages, retrying sessions, and fetching images do not add to your bill. At this rate, 1,000 lots costs roughly $23.29 — about 10% below the comparable market rate.

The actor runs on a residential proxy for reliable access; proxy usage is billed to your Apify account at platform rates as part of the normal run cost, with no surcharge from us.

FAQ

Do I need an API key or a Copart account? No. The scraper needs no Copart login, no API key, and no external credentials. Just run it — it handles the site's challenge internally using a residential proxy and a resilient browser warm-up.

Are current bids and buy-it-now prices always present? Not always. Copart has a "Pure Sale" pre-auction stage where lots are listed but bidding has not opened yet. On those lots current_bid and buy_it_now_price will be null. Once the lot enters active auction these fields populate normally.

Can I scrape a specific Copart search I already have open? Yes. Copy the URL from your browser — it will look like https://www.copart.com/lotSearchResults/?... — and paste it into the searchUrl input. The scraper decodes all the filter parameters automatically.

How many lots can I pull per run? There is no hard limit on our side. Set maxItems: 0 to pull all available results. Copart's search returns up to 10,000 lots per query (100 pages × 100 lots). For larger datasets, combine multiple keyword or make/model runs.

What happens if the site's session drops mid-run? The scraper detects session expiry (the site's challenge cookie has a ~25-minute TTL) and re-warms the session automatically, then resumes from the same page. You will not lose data already collected, and you are not charged twice for the same lot.

Use cases

• Salvage dealers and rebuilders — monitor specific makes, models, and damage types across all Copart yards to build a live acquisition pipeline
• Parts businesses — identify high-value donor cars (low-odometer, specific engine/trim) before they go to auction
• Insurance and total-loss analysts — track title codes, estimated retail values, and primary damage distributions for reserve-setting and subrogation research
• Arbitrage and export — compare Copart hammer prices against retail and export market values; VIN data plugs straight into any valuation API
• Research and pricing tools — build salvage-car price indices, damage-to-ACV models, or regional supply dashboards using structured lot data
• Notification systems — run the scraper on a schedule and alert on new lots matching your target criteria before auction day

Usage statistics

This Actor creates a small, content-free summary at the end of each run. It is used only to monitor reliability and improve this Actor. A copy is saved as USAGE_STATS in your own Apify key-value store, so you can see the exact record created for your run.

Set disableUsageStats to true in the input to opt out. Nothing is sent then; your USAGE_STATS record only says that statistics were disabled.

Only these fields are recorded:

• schema version, Actor name and build number;
• UTC start and finish hour (not a precise timestamp);
• run duration, number of results and time to the first result, each as a coarse range;
• whether the result was empty, the end status, and an error type from a fixed list;
• memory setting and counts of charged events;
• names of the input fields you set, never their values;
• the selected option for input fields that offer a fixed list of choices (for example a sort order).

We do not collect input text, search terms, URLs, domains, usernames, email addresses, names, proxy credentials, tokens, scraped records, output items, raw error messages, stack traces, or hashes of any of those values. Records are kept for no longer than 13 months, used only as aggregated operational statistics, and never sold or shared.

Additional fields (Phase 2)

This Actor also records your Apify user ID, whether Apify marks the account as paying, the size range of list inputs, the selected country when the input offers a fixed list of countries, and one category from a fixed Actor taxonomy. We use these fields only for aggregate reliability, repeat-use and cross-Actor analysis; reports suppress any cell with fewer than five distinct users.

The same disableUsageStats: true input flag turns these fields off too. The user ID is removed after 13 months; we do not export, sell, share, or attempt to re-identify this data.

Run-outcome signals (v2)

To learn whether a run did what it was asked to do, the record also holds a few more coarse ranges and yes/no flags. None of them contains content:

• the result limit you asked for (a range, when the input has one) and what share of it was delivered;
• results delivered per input item you listed (a range);
• output quality as ranges: how fully the result fields were filled, the share of rows that look like errors, the share of duplicate rows, and how many different fields appeared. These are counted in memory while results are saved; no result content is kept;
• how the run was started (console, API, schedule, webhook, another Actor);
• how it ended: stopped by you, timed out, reached the requested limit, stopped by the charge limit, and how many times the platform moved the run;
• if this Actor reports it: how many items to process worked or failed (ranges) and one failure reason from a fixed list;
• a short code made from the names of the input fields you set, never their values.

Repeat-run fingerprint (v2)

When your Apify user ID is recorded (see above), the record also holds an 8-character one-way code made from your input (proxy settings left out) and this Actor's name. It only lets us see that the same account ran the same input again soon after an unsatisfying run; we never see the input itself. It is stored only in the database, never published, and reports use it in aggregate with the same five-user minimum. It is the one exception to the statement above that no hashes are collected, and disableUsageStats: true turns it off.