Bulk VIN Decoder + NHTSA Recalls, Complaints & Safety Ratings

Paste a list of VINs and get one clean row per vehicle: make, model, year, trim, engine, the NHTSA safety recalls for that model year, owner complaint statistics and the official 5-star crash ratings. Built on the official NHTSA APIs (vPIC decoder, Recalls, Complaints, NCAP). Mistyped VINs are caught by the check digit and never charged.

What you get per vehicle	Example
Make, model, model year, trim, body	TESLA · Model 3 · 2019 · Sedan
Engine, fuel, drive, transmission	3.5 L V6 365 hp · Gasoline · 4WD · Automatic
Plant, manufacturer, weight class	Fremont, California, USA · TESLA, INC.
Safety recalls: count, campaign numbers, newest date	22 recalls · 26V507000 … · 2026-08-05
Recalls with "park it" (do not drive) or over-the-air fix	0 park-it · 14 OTA
Full recall details (component, defect, risk, remedy, link)	"Headlights may…" → free OTA update
Complaint statistics	612 complaints · 59 with crash · 5 fire · 23 injury/death
Most complained-about components	Forward collision avoidance (169), Electrical (91) …
NCAP star ratings	Overall 5★ · Front 5★ · Side 5★ · Rollover 5★ (6.6 % risk)
Links	NHTSA VIN recall check · NHTSA model page

Who uses it

• Used-car dealers and marketplaces. Check a whole auction or trade-in list for recalls and weak crash ratings before you buy, and show buyers the facts in listings.
• Fleet managers and leasing companies. Run the whole fleet every month (Apify Schedule) and see which models have new recalls or "park it" warnings.
• Insurers and claims teams. Enrich policies and claims with exact specs, complaint rates (crash, fire, injury) and NCAP stars.
• Importers and exporters of US vehicles. Decode VINs, confirm year and equipment and flag open safety campaigns before shipping.
• AI agents and automations. Flat JSON with stable columns for Google Sheets, CRMs, Make, Zapier or n8n.

How to use it

1. Paste your VINs (one per line, or a comma-separated list). Thousands at once are fine.
2. No VINs? Use Vehicles by make / model / year instead, e.g. 2019 Honda Civic or Ford, F-150, 2013.
3. Choose what to add: recalls, complaint statistics, safety ratings (all on by default). Turn on Also output one row per recall if you want a recall-level table as well. Those extra rows are free.
4. Run it. Download the result as Excel, CSV or JSON, or connect it to your tools with Apify integrations.

Example input

{
    "vins": ["1HGCM82633A004352", "5YJ3E1EA2KF317000", "1FTFW1ET9DFC10312"],
    "vehicles": ["2021 Mercedes-Benz GLC"],
    "recallRows": false
}

Example output (one vehicle, shortened)

{
    "vin": "5YJ3E1EA2KF317000",
    "status": "ok",
    "make": "TESLA", "model": "Model 3", "modelYear": 2019,
    "bodyClass": "Sedan/Saloon", "fuelTypePrimary": "Electric", "electrificationLevel": "BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle)",
    "plantCity": "FREMONT", "plantCountry": "UNITED STATES (USA)",
    "recallCount": 22, "recallsWithParkIt": 0, "recallsOverTheAir": 14, "latestRecallDate": "2026-08-05",
    "recallCampaigns": ["26V507000", "24V935000", "24V376000"],
    "complaintCount": 612, "complaintsWithCrash": 59, "complaintsWithFire": 5, "complaintsWithInjuryOrDeath": 23,
    "complaintTopComponents": [{ "component": "FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE", "count": 169 }],
    "safetyRatingOverall": 5, "safetyRatingFrontCrash": 5, "safetyRatingSideCrash": 5, "safetyRatingRollover": 5,
    "rolloverRiskPercent": 6.6, "safetyRatingVariant": "2019 Tesla Model 3 4 DR RWD",
    "vinRecallCheckUrl": "https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?vin=5YJ3E1EA2KF317000"
}

Pricing: pay only for vehicles that worked

You pay per successfully processed vehicle. These rows are free:

• invalid_vin: wrong length, characters, model-year code or check digit (usually a typo),
• not_decoded: NHTSA does not know the VIN (e.g. a vehicle not sold in the US),
• not_found: a make/model/year with no NHTSA records (usually a spelling issue),
• partial / error: an NHTSA service was down. Just run those again later.

Set Max vehicles or a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops exactly there.

Good to know

• Recalls are per make, model and model year, the way NHTSA publishes them. They show which campaigns cover the vehicle's model year, not whether this exact car has already been repaired. NHTSA does not offer per-VIN repair status through a public API. Use vinRecallCheckUrl (official NHTSA page) to confirm an individual vehicle.
• recallCount counts the vehicle maker's recalls. Recalls of aftermarket equipment, tires or child seats that mention the model are in otherRecallCount and in the recalls list with their recallType.
• Pickups and model families are matched to NHTSA's naming automatically: "F-150" also covers "F-150 SUPER CREW", BMW "328i" also covers "3 SERIES", Mercedes "C-Class" also covers "C300". The names used are in recallModelsMatched.
• Star ratings come from the NCAP variant closest to the decoded vehicle (doors, drive, cab). The variant is in safetyRatingVariant. Vehicles tested before 2011 have no overall score. For those you get front/side/rollover stars.
• Complaints: only numbers. No complaint texts, VIN fragments, locations or anything about the people who filed them.
• A VIN is not personal data, and the output contains no names or contacts.
• US-market vehicles only (NHTSA data). European VINs without a US check digit are flagged as invalid and not charged.

Data source and fair use

All data comes from official, free, public US Government APIs of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: vPIC (VIN decoding, batch endpoint, 50 VINs per request) and api.nhtsa.gov (recalls, complaints, NCAP ratings). No login and no scraping. The Actor is gentle with the source: requests are paced, Retry-After is honoured, VINs are decoded in batches and each make/model/year is looked up only once per run. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by NHTSA.

FAQ

How fast is it? About 60 VINs across 12 different models take roughly 30 seconds. Repeated models are almost free, because each model year is looked up once.

Can I run it every day or month? Yes. Add a Schedule in Apify and connect the dataset to Google Sheets, Slack, e-mail or a webhook.

A field is empty. Why? NHTSA only returns what the manufacturer submitted. An empty value means "no data", not "no such feature". Notes from the decoder are in decodeNotes.