CarComplaints.com Scraper

Scrape CarComplaints.com — the largest public database of owner-reported vehicle problems. Get ranked "worst problems" per model year with average repair cost and mileage, complaint counts across every model year, individual owner complaint stories, and the full model lineup for any of 75+ car makes. No login, no API key, no cookies required.

What this actor does

• Four modes:
  • yearProblems — ranked list of the worst reported problems for a specific make/model/year, each with average repair cost and average mileage at failure
  • complaints — individual owner-submitted complaint stories (title, date, rating, author) for a model year, optionally filtered by problem category
  • modelYears — complaint-count trend across every model year for a given make/model
  • modelsByMake — full list of models CarComplaints tracks for a given make
• 75+ makes available as a dropdown (Toyota, Honda, Ford, BMW, Tesla, and more)
• Automatic AUTO-proxy fallback — the actor lazily engages Apify's free datacenter proxy pool only if it detects blocking, keeping runs cost-free by default
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains fields with real, scraped data

Output fields

Fields present depend on mode:

yearProblems

• make, model, year
• rank — position in the "worst problems" ranking
• problemTitle — e.g. "Excessive Oil Consumption"
• problemCategory — the CarComplaints category the problem is filed under, e.g. "Engine", "Brakes", "Electrical" (derived from the report URL)
• averageCostToFix, averageMileage
• problemUrl — link to the full problem report page

complaints

• make, model, year, problemTitle
• complaintTitle, datePublished, rating (1-10), author, vehicleLabel
• sourceUrl — link to the specific complaint

modelYears

• make, model, year, complaintCount, url

modelsByMake

• make, model, url

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	select	One of yearProblems, complaints, modelYears, modelsByMake
make	select	Vehicle manufacturer (required)
model	string	Model name as used on CarComplaints (e.g. Camry, F-150) — required for all modes except modelsByMake
year	integer	Model year 1950-2027 — required for yearProblems and complaints
problemTitle	string	Optional case-insensitive substring filter, used only in complaints mode. Matches against both the problem title (e.g. "oil", "burning") and the problem category (e.g. "engine", "brakes", "transmission")
maxItems	integer	Max records to return (1-2000, default 50)
useProxy	boolean	Force-enable Apify's free AUTO datacenter proxy

Use cases

• Research the most commonly reported problems for a used car before buying
• Track complaint trends across model years to spot which years to avoid
• Pull raw owner complaint text for sentiment/defect analysis
• Build a "known issues" database for a fleet of vehicle models

Data source

All data is scraped from the public HTML pages of carcomplaints.com — no authenticated API, no cookies, no paid proxy tier required.