NHTSA Vehicle Recalls & Complaints

Unofficial tool. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) or the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Look up safety recalls and owner complaints for US vehicles by make, model and model year, and export them as one row per record. It's for dealers, used-car buyers and sellers, fleet managers, repair shops and researchers.

Input: one or more make, model and year combinations (or recall campaign numbers), and a mode: recalls, complaints or both.

Output (recalls): campaign number, component, summary, consequence, remedy, notes, report date, units affected (campaign lookups), park-it and park-outside flags, and a link to the recall on nhtsa.gov. Output (complaints): complaint ID, components, filed and incident dates, crash and fire flags, injury and death counts, and NHTSA's redacted summary.

This is not safety advice. Recall status can change. Always confirm open recalls for a specific vehicle by its VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls.

Have a VIN? Use our NHTSA VIN decoder Actor.

Vehicle recalls and car complaints input

• make, model, modelYear: one vehicle, e.g. Honda / Accord / 2020
• vehicles: more vehicles as [{"make":"Ford","model":"F-150","modelYear":2021}] (up to 200)
• campaignNumbers: NHTSA recall campaign numbers, e.g. 20V314000
• include: both (default), recalls or complaints
• complaintsFiledFrom: YYYY-MM-DD
• maxResults: up to 10,000

Output fields

Recall rows: campaignNumber, manufacturer, make, model, modelYear, reportReceivedDate, component, summary, consequence, remedy, notes, potentialUnitsAffected, parkIt, parkOutside, overTheAirUpdate, recallUrl, confirmAt

Complaint rows: odiNumber, manufacturer, make, model, modelYear, dateComplaintFiled, dateOfIncident, components, crash, fire, numberOfInjuries, numberOfDeaths, summary

The partial VIN in complaint records is dropped, and emails and phone numbers are removed from complaint summaries.

Free status rows (not charged): no-results, invalid-input, api-error, free-plan-limit, charge-limit-reached.

Example: {"make":"Honda","model":"Accord","modelYear":2020,"include":"both","maxResults":10}

Ready-made examples

• Ford F-150 (2021) Recalls and Complaints: NHTSA safety recalls and owner complaints for the 2021 Ford F-150 in one table; change the make, model and year for any vehicle.

Unofficial examples. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any company or agency named above.

Data source and compliance

• Source: NHTSA's public recalls and complaints API (api.nhtsa.gov). No key. Paced at about 2 requests a second.
• Not safety advice. Confirm open recalls by VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls.
• No NHTSA or DOT logos are used.
• Free-plan accounts get up to 100 results per run.

Pricing. Pay per result: $0.10 per 1,000 records ($0.0001 each), the same price on every plan, no start fee. Free status rows are never charged.