AutoTrader Canada Scraper — Extract Vehicle Listings from AutoTrader.ca

Scrape AutoTrader Canada listings into clean, structured data from any AutoTrader.ca search or vehicle URL. Built for car dealers, automotive market researchers, and data teams who need accurate Canadian vehicle data — price, specs, mileage, dealer details, and photos. Unlike HTML scrapers, this actor parses the embedded JSON on each listing page, so records stay complete and analysis-ready.

What is the AutoTrader Canada Scraper?

The AutoTrader Canada Scraper is an Apify actor that turns AutoTrader.ca search results and vehicle detail pages into structured JSON, CSV, or Excel. You provide one or more AutoTrader.ca URLs (any make, model, location, or filter); the actor paginates through every result page, opens each listing, and extracts 100+ fields per vehicle — including numeric price and mileage values ready for analysis without cleanup.

What you get

Every record carries the same field set. Which of them are filled depends on what the dealer published — see Field coverage before you build against a specific field.

Listing info

• listing_url — direct link to the vehicle listing
• ad_id — unique AutoTrader ad identifier
• data_source — origin of the record (AutoTrader Canada)
• status / vehicle_status — Used or New
• listing_status — listing state (e.g. Active)
• created_timestamp — exact date/time the listing went up (ISO-8601)
• posted_age_days — how many days it has been listed, for freshness and stale-inventory filters
• leads_range — bucketed buyer-interest signal ("Zero" / "Some")
• description — full vehicle description text

Vehicle specs

• make, model, year, trim
• vin — vehicle identification number (used vehicles; see coverage)
• stock_number — dealer stock reference
• body_type, transmission, drivetrain, fuel_type
• cylinders, displacement, doors, seats
• exterior_color, interior_color

Pricing & market position

• price_formatted — formatted string (e.g., "$ 29,873")
• price_cad — numeric CAD value for direct calculations
• market_median_price — AutoTrader's median price for comparable vehicles
• price_vs_market — dollars above/below that median (negative = cheaper than market)
• price_vs_market_pct — the same gap as a percentage, ready to sort on
• suggested_retail_price, suggested_retail_price_raw — MSRP when new (see coverage)
• price_evaluation — AutoTrader's price rating
• price_is_final, price_is_negotiable, price_is_conditional — pricing flags
• financing_available, leasing_available, warranty_exists

Mileage & fuel economy

• mileage_formatted — formatted (e.g., "11,213 km")
• mileage_km — numeric km value
• fuel_city_l_100km, fuel_highway_l_100km — numeric consumption

History & condition

• accident_free — accident-history flag
• carfax_available — whether a Carfax report is offered
• carfax_url — link to the report (the free report link where the dealer provides one)
• carfax_mode — how the report is offered, and the reason vin is or isn't present
• has_full_service_history, non_smoking, new_inspection, is_rental

Seller & dealer

• seller_name, is_private_seller, dealer_is_dealer, dealer_type, dealer_id
• dealer_phone, dealer_phone_call_to — display and dial-ready formats
• dealer_sms_number — the dealer's SMS line where enabled
• dealer_address_full, dealer_address_street, dealer_city_province
• dealer_inventory_url, dealer_logo_url

Location

• city, province, country, zip_code, full_location
• latitude, longitude — precise coordinates for mapping and radius analysis

Media

• image_urls — array of full-resolution photo URLs
• image_count — number of photos
• header_image — thumbnail URL
• video_urls, has_360_view

Field coverage

The actor emits 127 keys per record, and reads only what AutoTrader publishes on the page — it never guesses or backfills. Around 85 fields populate on a typical dealer listing; the rest come back null. The ones worth knowing about before you build:

• vin is published only for used vehicles whose listing carries a purchasable Carfax report — typically 55–75% of a mixed new/used search. AutoTrader does not print the VIN anywhere on the page for the other cases: new vehicles (no Carfax), listings offering a free Carfax report, and listings where the buyer must request the report from the dealer. For those, vin is null — the data isn't on the page to take, and no setting changes that. VINs are returned exactly as the dealer published them, including the occasional typo, rather than being silently dropped or "corrected".
• suggested_retail_price is the manufacturer's suggested retail price when the vehicle was new — it is not a previous asking price. On a used vehicle, MSRP minus the asking price is depreciation, not a discount. AutoTrader does not publish listing price history, so no "was/now" price drop is available; market_median_price and price_vs_market are the reliable way to judge whether a listing is priced well. MSRP is present on roughly 40% of listings.
• posted_age_days and province are computed rather than published — the age from created_timestamp, and the province from the postal code (Canada Post assigns the first letter by province). Both are exact, not estimates.
• Equipment lists (comfort_equipment, safety_equipment, all_equipment, …) are populated only when the dealer fills in the structured equipment section. Many dealers put this in description free text instead.
• Fields such as engine, power_hp, average_market_price, price_drop, and dealer_google_rating are retained in the schema for compatibility but are not currently published by AutoTrader and return null.

If a field you need is null across your results, it is missing from the source page rather than dropped by the scraper — reach out via the Issues tab and it can often be derived from another field.

Sample output

A real record, abridged (127 keys are returned in full):

{
  "ad_id": "6abe52b0-9bc8-416f-9a71-03f0cae48952",
  "listing_url": "https://www.autotrader.ca/offers/ford-escape-awd-panoramic-roof-tech-package-low-km-gasoline-white-cat_ma29gr18589tr11414-6abe52b0-9bc8-416f-9a71-03f0cae48952",
  "data_source": "AutoTrader Canada",
  "make": "Ford",
  "model": "Escape",
  "year": 2024,
  "trim": "AWD | PANORAMIC ROOF | TECH PACKAGE | LOW KM",
  "vin": "1FMCU9MNXRUA61773",
  "stock_number": "N6350A",
  "status": "Used",
  "price_formatted": "$ 29,873",
  "price_cad": 29873,
  "market_median_price": 31300,
  "price_vs_market": -1427,
  "price_vs_market_pct": -4.6,
  "price_evaluation": 1,
  "price_is_negotiable": false,
  "mileage_formatted": "11,213 km",
  "mileage_km": 11213,
  "body_type": "SUV",
  "transmission": "Automatic",
  "drivetrain": "All Wheel Drive",
  "fuel_type": "Gasoline",
  "cylinders": 3,
  "displacement": "1,500 cc",
  "doors": 4,
  "seats": 5,
  "exterior_color": "White",
  "interior_color": "Black",
  "fuel_city_l_100km": 9.2,
  "fuel_highway_l_100km": 7.4,
  "accident_free": true,
  "carfax_mode": "BuyCarFax",
  "carfax_available": true,
  "carfax_url": "https://www.carfax.ca/order?vin=1FMCU9MNXRUA61773&report=verified&ref=trader&refID=5_70436986_ON20080213110737382&refdomain=2",
  "city": "Scarborough",
  "province": "ON",
  "country": "CA",
  "zip_code": "M1L 2N1",
  "full_location": "Scarborough, CA",
  "latitude": 43.72814,
  "longitude": -79.28359,
  "is_private_seller": false,
  "seller_name": "Donway Ford Inc",
  "dealer_phone": "437-889-2758",
  "dealer_address_full": "1975 Eglinton Avenue East, Scarborough, M1L 2N1",
  "financing_available": true,
  "image_count": 11,
  "image_urls": [
    "https://prod.pictures.autoscout24.net/listing-images/6abe52b0-9bc8-416f-9a71-03f0cae48952_4358cf4f-9b2b-47a4-b9a7-1cbeaaef68e8.jpg/1280x960.webp",
    "https://prod.pictures.autoscout24.net/listing-images/6abe52b0-9bc8-416f-9a71-03f0cae48952_b987bc9a-3448-4f93-beb2-e917edced353.jpg/1280x960.webp"
  ],
  "listing_status": "Active",
  "created_timestamp": "2026-06-11T09:10:50.665Z",
  "posted_age_days": 36,
  "leads_range": "Some",
  "description": "Experience style, performance, and advanced technology in this exceptionally low-kilometre 2024 Ford Escape ST-Line AWD..."
}

Use cases

• ✓ Used car dealers monitoring competitor pricing on AutoTrader.ca by make, model, and region
• ✓ Automotive market researchers building Canadian vehicle pricing datasets with clean numeric fields
• ✓ Insurance and fintech teams valuing vehicle portfolios from targeted listing subsets
• ✓ Inventory aggregators feeding car-search platforms with fresh AutoTrader Canada data
• ✓ Resellers and flippers filtering accident-free, low-kilometre vehicles across regions
• ✓ Data scientists who need ready-to-use price_cad and mileage_km values without post-processing
• ✓ Teams matching listings to their own VIN records, or mapping inventory density by latitude/longitude

How it works

• Provide one or more AutoTrader.ca search URLs — any make, model, province, or filter combination
• The actor maximizes results to 100 per page and handles all pagination automatically
• Each vehicle detail page is fetched and the embedded __NEXT_DATA__ JSON is parsed directly — no HTML scraping, no headless browser
• Runs are resumable — state is persisted, so an interrupted run picks up where it left off
• Failed pages retry automatically with exponential backoff for reliability
• Results land in the Apify dataset, exportable as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or JSONL

Why this scraper

• Parses embedded listing JSON instead of scraping HTML — records are more complete and rarely break on layout changes
• Returns both formatted strings and numeric values for price and mileage — drop straight into Excel or a database
• Handles pagination internally — no manual page incrementing in your URLs
• High-concurrency fetching pulls hundreds of detail pages per minute through rotating proxies
• Resumable state means large runs survive interruptions without re-scraping

Input example

{
  "start_urls": [
    { "url": "https://www.autotrader.ca/cars/on/toronto/?rcp=100&rcs=0&srt=35" }
  ],
  "start_page": 1,
  "end_page": 5
}

Leave start_page and end_page empty to scrape every available page. Supply a custom proxy_url to use your own proxy, or leave it blank to use the built-in rotation.

FAQ

Does it handle proxies and anti-bot protection? Yes. Rotating proxies are used by default with browser-like request fingerprinting and automatic retries. You can supply your own proxy_url instead.

What output formats are available? JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, and JSONL — all available from the Apify dataset UI and REST API.

Can I scrape a single vehicle URL instead of a search? Yes. Pass a direct listing URL in start_urls — both the current https://www.autotrader.ca/offers/... form and the older https://www.autotrader.ca/a/... form (which AutoTrader redirects) are supported — and the actor scrapes just that vehicle.

Do all listings include a VIN? No. AutoTrader publishes a VIN only for used vehicles carrying a purchasable Carfax report — roughly two thirds of a mixed new/used search. New vehicles don't have one, and listings with a free Carfax report don't expose it on the page, so vin is null there. See Field coverage.

How do I filter results? Apply any filter on AutoTrader.ca — make, model, price, location, year — then paste the resulting search URL. The actor honors every filter in the URL.

Can I limit how many pages are scraped? Yes. Set start_page and end_page to scrape a range, or leave them blank to fetch all pages.

Is the data live? Yes. Every run fetches current listings directly from AutoTrader.ca — no cached or stale data.

Does it support scheduling and webhooks? Yes. Use Apify's built-in scheduler for cron-based runs (hourly, daily, weekly) and webhooks to trigger downstream pipelines.

Can you add more fields? The embedded JSON contains extensive vehicle data, so most additional fields can be added on request — reach out via the Issues tab.

Use via API or MCP

Run this actor programmatically via the Apify REST API, or connect it as an MCP server for AI agents like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor.

API run endpoint:

POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fayoussef~autotrader-ca/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN

MCP server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/actors/fayoussef~autotrader-ca

Full API docs: https://docs.apify.com/api/v2

Need a custom scraper?

Need a different automotive site, extra fields, or a fully managed data pipeline? Visit automationbyexperts.com for custom builds, retainers, and data-as-a-service.