NHTSA Vehicle Recalls & Complaints Scraper - By Make & Model

Retrieve official National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) safety recall campaigns and owner-submitted defect complaints by vehicle make, model, and model year. Filter by record mode (BOTH, RECALLS, or COMPLAINTS), component keyword, crash/fire flags, or automatically enumerate all vehicle models for a make and year.

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent open-data integration tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) or the U.S. Department of Transportation.

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What it does

• Queries three official NHTSA public REST APIs:
  • https://api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/recallsByVehicle
  • https://api.nhtsa.gov/complaints/complaintsByVehicle
  • https://api.nhtsa.gov/products/vehicle/models (when allModelsForMake is enabled)
• Normalizes both NHTSA recall dates (DD/MM/YYYY) and complaint dates (MM/DD/YYYY) into strict ISO YYYY-MM-DD strings.
• Outputs unified, schema-validated records (recordType: "RECALL" or "COMPLAINT") with campaign/ODI numbers, affected components, defect summaries, safety consequences, remedies, crash/fire/injury/fatality counts, Do-Not-Drive (parkIt) and Over-The-Air (overTheAirUpdate) flags, and truncated 11-character VIN prefixes (vinPrefix).
• Deduplicates on recordType + (nhtsaCampaignNumber or odiNumber) + make + model + modelYear and sorts newest first by record date (reportReceivedDate or dateComplaintFiled).

Who it's for

• Fleet safety & commercial vehicle operations teams monitoring active safety recall campaigns, Do-Not-Drive (parkIt) advisories, and OTA remedy availability across fleet makes and models.
• Automotive dealers, wholesalers & remarketing platforms checking model-year recall and defect trends across inventory.
• Automotive quality, engineering & market researchers analyzing component-level defect complaints, crash/fire incident rates, and manufacturer recall remedies.

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Input

Field	Type	Default / Prefill	Description
mode	string (enum)	"BOTH"	"BOTH" (recalls and complaints), "RECALLS" (recalls only), or "COMPLAINTS" (complaints only).
vehicles	array of objects	[{"make": "honda", "model": "accord", "modelYear": 2020}]	List of {make, model, modelYear} vehicle selectors.
allModelsForMake	boolean	false	When true, enumerates all NHTSA models for each make + modelYear in vehicles.
componentFilterKeyword	string	""	Optional case-insensitive substring to match against component (e.g. "ELECTRICAL", "BRAKES").
crashOrFireOnly	boolean	false	When true, keeps only records where crash, fire, or parkIt is true.
includeComplaintNarrative	boolean	false	When false (default), complaint rows omit the summary field entirely. When true, complaint rows include the consumer complaint narrative in summary. See the privacy note below.
maxItems	integer	200	Maximum number of records to return, sorted newest first.

Example input JSON

{
  "mode": "BOTH",
  "vehicles": [
    {
      "make": "honda",
      "model": "accord",
      "modelYear": 2020
    }
  ],
  "allModelsForMake": false,
  "componentFilterKeyword": "",
  "crashOrFireOnly": false,
  "includeComplaintNarrative": false,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example run options (default max charge $50)

When starting a run via the Apify API or Console, set a default maximum charge limit of $50 ("maxTotalChargeUsd": 50):

{
  "maxTotalChargeUsd": 50
}

The Actor checks your remaining spending limit before every dataset push and stops cleanly if the limit is reached.

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Output

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
recordType	string	"RECALL" or "COMPLAINT".
make	string	Vehicle make (uppercase, e.g. "HONDA").
model	string	Vehicle model (uppercase, e.g. "ACCORD").
modelYear	integer	4-digit vehicle model year.
nhtsaCampaignNumber	string | null	NHTSA recall campaign number (RECALL records, e.g. "26V332000").
odiNumber	string | null	NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation number (COMPLAINT records).
manufacturer	string | null	Vehicle manufacturer legal name.
component	string | null	Affected vehicle system or component.
summary	string | null	Recall defect summary (RECALL records, always included), or owner complaint narrative (COMPLAINT records, present only when includeComplaintNarrative is true; omitted entirely when it is false).
consequence	string | null	Safety consequence description (RECALL records).
remedy	string | null	Manufacturer recall remedy description (RECALL records).
reportReceivedDate	string | null	Date NHTSA received the recall report in YYYY-MM-DD format (RECALL records).
dateComplaintFiled	string | null	Date the complaint was filed with NHTSA in YYYY-MM-DD format (COMPLAINT records).
dateOfIncident	string | null	Date of reported incident in YYYY-MM-DD format (COMPLAINT records).
crash	boolean | null	Whether the complaint involved a vehicle crash (COMPLAINT records).
fire	boolean | null	Whether the complaint involved a vehicle fire (COMPLAINT records).
numberOfInjuries	integer | null	Number of reported injuries (COMPLAINT records).
numberOfDeaths	integer | null	Number of reported fatalities (COMPLAINT records).
vinPrefix	string | null	Truncated 11-character VIN prefix as published by NHTSA (COMPLAINT records).
parkIt	boolean | null	Do-Not-Drive / Park-It advisory flag (RECALL records).
overTheAirUpdate	boolean | null	Whether the recall remedy is delivered via Over-The-Air (OTA) software update (RECALL records).
sourceUrl	string	Direct NHTSA API URL for the vehicle query.

Sample output row (synthetic example)

{
  "recordType": "RECALL",
  "make": "EXAMPLE MOTORS",
  "model": "SEDAN LX",
  "modelYear": 2024,
  "nhtsaCampaignNumber": "26V999000",
  "odiNumber": null,
  "manufacturer": "Example Motors North America, Inc.",
  "component": "ELECTRICAL SYSTEM:SOFTWARE",
  "summary": "Example Motors is recalling certain 2024 Sedan LX vehicles due to a body control module software fault.",
  "consequence": "Intermittent loss of exterior lighting visibility can increase the risk of a crash.",
  "remedy": "Dealers or an over-the-air (OTA) update will install updated body control module software, free of charge.",
  "reportReceivedDate": "2026-09-15",
  "dateComplaintFiled": null,
  "dateOfIncident": null,
  "crash": null,
  "fire": null,
  "numberOfInjuries": null,
  "numberOfDeaths": null,
  "vinPrefix": null,
  "parkIt": false,
  "overTheAirUpdate": true,
  "sourceUrl": "https://api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/recallsByVehicle?make=example+motors&model=sedan+lx&modelYear=2024"
}

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How pricing works

Pay per result. You only pay for rows returned.

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Data source and terms

• Official Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Public APIs (https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa-datasets-and-apis).
• Update Frequency: Updated daily by NHTSA.
• Terms of Use: NHTSA recall and complaint records are U.S. government open data in the public domain. See the NHTSA Terms of Use (https://www.nhtsa.gov/about-nhtsa/terms-use). The structured fields carry no personal consumer identifiers, and VINs arrive pre-truncated by NHTSA to 11-character prefixes (vinPrefix, hard-truncated again in this actor).
• Complaint narratives are off by default: consumer complaint narratives are free text and live narratives can contain dealer street addresses and phone numbers. For that reason complaint rows omit the summary field entirely unless includeComplaintNarrative is set to true. When you enable it, the narrative is reproduced exactly as NHTSA publishes it. Manufacturer-authored recall text stays as is: the recall summary and remedy fields are always included, and remedy text can contain the manufacturer toll-free line printed in the source record.

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Troubleshooting (PARTIAL: status messages)

• If a run finishes with a status message starting with PARTIAL:, the Actor preserved and pushed all validated records collected before a query cap (100 vehicle queries), scan-time budget (240s), upstream HTTP retry exhaustion, or schema drift check was triggered. If more than 20% of scanned rows fail validation, the run fails instead of pushing, because the source shape has changed.
• A PARTIAL: caused by a source problem (drift, staleness, or source errors) ends with: "If this keeps happening, please open an issue on this actor's Issues tab and we'll fix it fast." A PARTIAL: caused only by your own limits (maxItems, charge cap, or scan caps) does not carry that line.
• A run that matches nothing finishes successfully with Complete: 0 rows matched your filters, with a note on which filters to widen.
• Found a problem or need a field? Open an issue on the Issues tab; we respond quickly.

Limits and FAQ

• How can I fetch all models for a brand in a given model year? Set "allModelsForMake": true and provide {"make": "honda", "model": "", "modelYear": 2020} in vehicles. The Actor enumerates the full model universe for that make and year from NHTSA's /products/vehicle/models endpoint (the paginated listing without an issue-type filter, reconciled against the endpoint's own reported total; if the enumeration cannot be shown complete, the run says so in a PARTIAL: status instead of silently covering a subset) and then queries every model.
• How are recall and complaint dates sorted together? Both reportReceivedDate (recalls) and dateComplaintFiled (complaints) are normalized to ISO YYYY-MM-DD strings and sorted newest first across the combined dataset.
• Why did BOTH mode return few recalls? In BOTH mode recalls and complaints are merged and sorted together newest first, so at maxItems the recalls can be truncated by newer complaints. For full recall coverage, use mode RECALLS.

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Changelog

• v0.1.3 (2026-11-01): Grok Red Team fix round. Complaint narratives are now gated behind includeComplaintNarrative (default false): when off, complaint rows omit the summary field entirely, because live narratives can contain dealer street addresses and phone numbers; recall summary and remedy text (manufacturer-authored) is unchanged. Also: README now notes that BOTH mode merges recalls and complaints newest first so recalls can be truncated at maxItems (use mode RECALLS for full recall coverage), and the terms link now points to the NHTSA Terms of Use instead of the privacy policy.

• v0.1.2 (2026-10-31): Red Team correction round (the 0.1.1 review was a PULL). Blocker 1: allModelsForMake enumerated models from the issueType-filtered endpoint variant, which silently returns a small subset (honda 2020 returned 11 entries and missed models with real recalls, including CR-V and PILOT); it now enumerates the full paginated model universe (no issueType) and reconciles the collected count against the endpoint total, ending PARTIAL when completeness cannot be shown. Blocker 2: the drift sentinel now covers every headline field (Manufacturer, Summary, Consequence, Remedy for recalls; manufacturer, summary, numberOfInjuries, numberOfDeaths for complaints), checks presence across the whole page instead of only the first record, and non-object result entries are counted as bad rows. Also: defaultRunOptions and an example run input were added to the build; Retry-After HTTP dates are honored; the privacy note now states that free-text summary and remedy fields are reproduced as published and can contain business phone numbers from the source record; a zero-match status under crashOrFireOnly explains the recalls parkIt semantics; the listing description now starts with "Scrape". TEST_NOTES was rewritten from fresh runs after the earlier file was found to contain status and coverage figures that live runs contradicted.

• v0.1.1 (2026-10-31): Honest-status fixes: zero matches now finish as Complete: 0 instead of failing; the Issues-tab line appears only on source-caused PARTIAL: runs; charge-limit stops now start with PARTIAL:; status counts report pushed (not collected) rows and note when maxItems is reached; core-column sentinel added for filter, dedupe, and sort fields; validation failures over 20% now fail the run; vinPrefix is hard-truncated to 11 characters; model-enumeration failures now surface in the status.

• v0.1 (2026-10-31): Initial release supporting NHTSA recalls, complaints, and model enumeration with ISO date normalization, schema validation, and pay-per-event spending limit protection.