NHTSA Vehicle Recall Search - Cars, Makes & Campaigns

Search the official National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recall API by vehicle year, make and model or by exact campaign number. Export clean records containing the defect, safety consequence, manufacturer remedy, affected component, urgent park warnings, and vehicle combinations.

No API key, login, browser automation, or website scraping is required.

What data can I extract?

• NHTSA campaign number and manufacturer
• Vehicle year, make, and model
• Affected component and report-received date
• Official defect summary, safety consequence, remedy, and notes
• Potential number of affected units when NHTSA supplies it
• Park-it, park-outside, and over-the-air-update flags
• Reproducible official API URL and total result count

Each row represents one campaign and vehicle combination returned by NHTSA.

Input example

{
  "make": "Honda",
  "model": "Civic",
  "model_year": 2020,
  "max_items": 10
}

For an exact campaign lookup, provide campaign_number; it overrides the vehicle fields.

Output example

{
  "manufacturer": "Honda (American Honda Motor Co.)",
  "campaign_number": "21V215000",
  "report_received_date": "2021-03-25",
  "component": "FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE:DELIVERY:FUEL PUMP",
  "potential_units_affected": null,
  "summary": "The low-pressure fuel pump inside the fuel tank may fail.",
  "consequence": "Fuel pump failure can cause an engine stall while driving, increasing the risk of a crash.",
  "remedy": "Dealers will replace the fuel pump assembly free of charge.",
  "model_year": 2020,
  "make": "HONDA",
  "model": "CIVIC",
  "park_it": false,
  "park_outside": false,
  "over_the_air_update": false,
  "search_mode": "vehicle",
  "total_matches": 5
}

Common use cases

• Automotive safety and service research
• Used-vehicle due diligence by year, make, and model
• Fleet maintenance and recall monitoring
• Product-safety journalism and market analysis
• Building recall alerts and internal vehicle datasets

Use with AI agents and MCP

The stable flat schema lets an agent find safety campaigns, summarize consequences, compare remedies, or identify urgent park warnings without parsing NHTSA's source response. Use an exact vehicle combination for discovery or a campaign number to enumerate affected models.

Pricing and cost control

Output is billed per result at $0.002 per result (about $2.00 per 1,000 results), plus a $0.0005 Actor-start charge billed once per gigabyte of memory at run start. Use max_items to cap both output volume and charges. The price shown on the Apify Store listing is authoritative.

Reliability

The Actor calls NHTSA directly, retries temporary transport, rate-limit, and service failures, validates the response shape, normalizes dates and model years, and never emits more rows than requested. Persistent upstream errors fail visibly instead of becoming false zero-result runs.

Limitations and responsible use

• NHTSA determines source coverage, corrections, and update timing.
• A year/make/model search is not a VIN-specific open-recall check.
• Potential affected-unit counts are not present on every NHTSA response path.
• Recall applicability can depend on build dates, equipment, and VIN ranges not represented by a model-level match.
• Verify safety-critical decisions against NHTSA or the manufacturer. This Actor does not provide mechanical or legal advice.

Turn this into a recall monitor

1. Save one bounded Task per vehicle family or campaign-number watchlist.
2. Schedule the Task weekly or monthly according to your fleet's review cadence.
3. Add an ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED Task webhook or integration and use resource.defaultDatasetId to feed new results into maintenance, notification, or safety-review systems.

Related fleet tools: Google News Search tracks manufacturer and model coverage, openFDA Search covers regulated product and device recalls, and Google Maps Business Search can locate relevant service businesses.

FAQ

Can I check a VIN?

No. This Actor searches model-level recalls or an exact NHTSA campaign. Use NHTSA's consumer VIN lookup for a vehicle-specific open-recall check.

Why does one campaign produce several rows?

A campaign can cover multiple makes, models, and model years. NHTSA returns each vehicle combination separately.

What is a park-it or park-outside warning?

These are urgent flags supplied by NHTSA. Follow the official recall instructions and manufacturer guidance.

Does an empty result prove the vehicle has no recalls?

No. Check the spelling and exact model designation, and use NHTSA's VIN service for vehicle-specific confirmation.