Vehicle Recall and Complaint Lookup

Give it vehicles (make, model, model year) or VINs. It returns every US safety recall campaign on file for each vehicle, plus the owner complaints filed with the US federal vehicle safety agency, one flat row per recall or complaint.

The data comes from the agency's free public API (api.nhtsa.gov for recalls and complaints, vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov for decoding VINs). No login, no API key, no web page scraping.

This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government agency or any vehicle manufacturer.

What it does

1. Checks each input. Bad entries (a VIN with the wrong length, a vehicle with no year) are listed in the FAILED_LOOKUPS record and skipped.
2. For a VIN, asks the VIN decoder for its make, model and year.
3. Looks up the agency's own model names for that make and year. The recall endpoints only match exact names, so crv becomes CR-V, and a VIN decoded as Silverado series 1500 is matched to SILVERADO 1500 and SILVERADO LD 1500. If a name matches more than three models, or none, the lookup fails with the list of names the agency uses for that year.
4. Fetches recalls and complaints for each matched model, drops duplicates, sorts complaints newest first, and keeps up to maxComplaintsPerVehicle.
5. Saves one row per recall or complaint until maxItems is reached.

Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
vehicles	array	one 2018 Honda Accord	Objects with make, model, modelYear, or strings like 2018, Honda, Accord. Not case sensitive.
vins	array of strings	empty	Full 17-character VINs.
includeRecalls	boolean	true	One row per recall campaign.
includeComplaints	boolean	true	One row per owner complaint.
maxComplaintsPerVehicle	integer	50	Newest complaints kept per vehicle. 0 skips complaints.
maxItems	integer	1000	Stop after this many rows in total. Caps the cost of a run.

Example:

{
    "vehicles": [{ "make": "Honda", "model": "Accord", "modelYear": 2018 }, "2021, Tesla, Model 3"],
    "vins": ["1GCUYDED0KZ100000"],
    "maxComplaintsPerVehicle": 20,
    "maxItems": 200
}

Output

A real recall row from a test run on 2026-10-28:

{
    "source_url": "https://api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/recallsByVehicle?make=HONDA&model=ACCORD&modelYear=2018",
    "fetched_at": "2026-10-28T07:08:21.147Z",
    "record_type": "recall",
    "lookup_vin": null,
    "lookup_make": "HONDA",
    "lookup_model": "ACCORD",
    "lookup_model_year": 2018,
    "make": "HONDA",
    "model": "ACCORD",
    "model_year": 2018,
    "manufacturer": "Honda (American Honda Motor Co.)",
    "record_id": "20V314000",
    "date": "2020-05-28",
    "components": ["FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE:DELIVERY:FUEL PUMP"],
    "summary": "Honda (American Honda Motor Co.) is recalling certain 2018-2019 Acura NSX, 2019 Acura RDX, RLX and RLX Sport Hybrid, 2018-2019 Honda Accord, Civic Hatchback, Civic Type R and HR-V, 2019-2020 Insight and 2019 Fit vehicles.  The low-pressure fuel pump inside the fuel tank may fail.",
    "consequence": "If the fuel pump fails, the engine can stall while driving, increasing the risk of a crash.",
    "remedy": "Honda will notify owners and dealers will replace the fuel pump assembly, free of charge.  The recall began July 22, 2020.  Owners may contact Honda customer service at 1-888-234-2138.",
    "notes": "Owners may also contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153), or go to www.safercar.gov.",
    "park_it": false,
    "park_outside": false,
    "over_the_air_update": false,
    "incident_date": null,
    "crash": null,
    "fire": null,
    "injuries": null,
    "deaths": null,
    "complaint_vin": null
}

Every row has the same fields in the same order. Fields that belong to the other record type are null.

Field	Recalls	Complaints
source_url	API request the row came from	same
fetched_at	When the API answered (UTC)	same
record_type	recall	complaint
lookup_vin, lookup_make, lookup_model, lookup_model_year	What you asked for (after VIN decoding)	same
make, model, model_year	Vehicle as the agency lists it	same
manufacturer	Manufacturer name	same
record_id	Recall campaign number, such as 20V314000	ODI complaint number
date	Date the agency received the recall report	Date the complaint was filed
components	The affected component, as one entry	List of components named
summary	Recall summary	The owner's complaint text
consequence, remedy, notes	Recall text	null
park_it, park_outside, over_the_air_update	Agency flags: do not drive, park outside, fixed by software update	null
incident_date, crash, fire, injuries, deaths	null	As reported in the complaint
complaint_vin	null	The partial VIN (first 11 characters) the API publishes

Dates are YYYY-MM-DD. The API sends recall dates day first and complaint dates month first; both are converted. Text fields over 20,000 characters are cut and marked.

Two records go to the run's key-value store, not the dataset, so they are never charged:

• SUMMARY: counts per run and per lookup, the agency model names used, how a VIN decoded, complaints left out by the per-vehicle cap, API requests and retries, and stopped_by (done, maxItems or charge limit).
• FAILED_LOOKUPS: each input that failed, with the reason. A lookup where recalls worked but complaints failed is listed with "partial": true and its recall rows are still saved.

Limits

• A VIN lookup is not a check of one vehicle's repair status. The public API has no recall-by-VIN endpoint. The actor decodes the VIN to make, model and year and returns every recall for that vehicle line. Whether a specific car is affected or already repaired is on the manufacturer's or the agency's own VIN search page.
• US vehicles only. Recalls and complaints filed with the US agency, as the API returns them, with the same delay the agency has in publishing them.
• Vehicles only. Tires, child seats and equipment recalls are not looked up.
• A vehicle with no recalls or complaints gives no rows and is not charged. It is listed in SUMMARY with zero counts.
• Complaint text is written by the public and passed through exactly as the API returns it. The actor adds nothing to it and does no enrichment. The API itself publishes only a partial VIN for complaints.
• Requests are sent one at a time with 0.5 to 1 s between requests to each API host. HTTP 429 and 5xx answers, timeouts and network errors are retried up to 3 times with backoff (2, 4, 8 s, or the API's Retry-After up to 60 s). robots.txt of each host is read once and respected.
• Each lookup makes 3 to 5 requests, so plan on about 4 seconds per vehicle.

Pricing

Pay per result: $0.50 per 1,000 rows ($0.0005 per recall or complaint row). Failed lookups, vehicles with no records, and the SUMMARY and FAILED_LOOKUPS records are free.

Typical runs:

Run	Rows	Cost
One vehicle, recalls plus 50 newest complaints	about 55	about $0.03
20 vehicles with the defaults (stops at the default maxItems of 1,000)	up to 1,000	up to $0.50
500 fleet VINs, recalls only	about 5,000 (about 10 recalls each)	about $2.50

The default maxItems of 1,000 caps a run at $0.50. Raise it for big lists. Apify's per-run cost limit also stops the run when reached.

Use it from an AI agent

Add this actor as a tool through Apify's MCP server: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=comradecoding/vehicle-recall-lookup. The agent gets flat JSON rows of US recalls and owner complaints for a make, model and year or a VIN.

Integrations

Anything that can call the Apify API can run this actor: the Apify API and client libraries, and Apify's integrations for Make, n8n, Zapier and LangChain. Results come back as a dataset you can download as JSON, CSV or Excel.

FAQ

Does a VIN lookup tell me if my car was repaired?

No. The public API has no recall-by-VIN endpoint, so the VIN is decoded to make, model and year and every recall for that vehicle line is returned. Check one car's repair status on the manufacturer's or the agency's own VIN search.

Which countries are covered?

US vehicles only, as filed with the US agency.

Am I charged for a vehicle with no recalls?

No. It gives no rows and is listed in SUMMARY with zero counts.

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