NHTSA VIN Decoder, Recalls and Crash Ratings

VIN decoder with NHTSA recalls, complaints and crash test ratings

Paste a VIN and get the full factory build sheet, every open safety recall, consumer complaints, and NCAP crash test scores in one row. No VIN? Look up any vehicle by make, model and year instead.

$2.00 per 1,000 vehicles. No per-run fee. VINs we cannot decode are delivered free.

Covers every vehicle NHTSA lists, from 1949 to next year's models: cars, pickups, SUVs, EVs, motorcycles, buses, trailers and heavy trucks.

Why this scraper?

• 🔧 136 specification fields, not the dozen most VIN decoders stop at: engine, drivetrain, dimensions, plant, battery and charger details.
• 🛡️ The full driver assistance block on modern cars: forward collision warning, lane keeping, blind spot, pedestrian braking, adaptive cruise, backup camera and more.
• 🚨 Do not drive and park outside flags on recalls, the two most urgent warnings NHTSA publishes, which most tools drop entirely.
• 📸 Crash test photos and videos, plus per side driver and passenger scores and rollover probability, not just the headline star count.
• 🎯 Crash ratings matched to your actual vehicle. A 2020 Silverado has six rated body and drive variants scoring 4 or 5 stars; picking the wrong one reports another truck's result.
• 🗓️ Dates normalised to YYYY-MM-DD. NHTSA returns recalls as DD/MM and complaints as MM/DD, which silently corrupts spreadsheets.
• 💸 Undecodable VINs are never charged. They still arrive as rows with the reason, so you can see which entry was wrong.
• 🚫 A failed lookup returns null, never zero. "No recalls" always means NHTSA said none, not that the request failed.
• ⚡ Fast and batched. Fifty VINs decode in a single request, and repeated make, model and year combinations are fetched once per run.

What data can you extract?

🚗 Make, model, year	🏷️ Trim and series	🚙 Body class	🏭 Assembly plant
⚙️ Engine and displacement	🔋 Battery and charger	🛞 Drive type	📏 Weight and wheelbase
🎈 Airbag locations	🛑 ABS and stability control	👁️ Blind spot and lane keeping	📷 Backup camera
🚨 Recall campaigns	⛔ Do not drive flags	📝 Consumer complaints	⭐ Crash test ratings

Two ways to look up a vehicle

🔑 By VIN

The complete picture. Decoding the VIN gives you the exact factory build, then recalls, complaints and crash ratings are matched to that specific configuration.

{
  "vin": "1HGCM82633A004352\n5YJ3E1EA6PF384836\n3GCUKREC5FG186345",
  "maxComplaintsPerVehicle": 50
}

🚙 By make, model and year

For questions about a whole model rather than one car, like "what are the open recalls on a 2019 F-150?". Specification fields stay empty because there is no VIN to decode.

{
  "make": "Ford",
  "model": "F-150",
  "modelYear": 2019
}

How to look up a VIN: step by step

1. Create a free Apify account. Takes 30 seconds, no card needed.
2. Open NHTSA VIN Decoder in the Apify Console.
3. Paste your VINs, one per line, or fill in make, model and year.
4. Click Start. A handful of VINs finishes in well under a minute.
5. Export as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull the results through the API.

How much does this actor cost?

Pricing is pay per result: $2.00 per 1,000 vehicles, with no per-run fee. The Apify Free plan includes $5 of usage credit a month, which covers roughly 2,500 vehicles. The $29/month Starter plan covers about 14,500 a month.

Rows for VINs that NHTSA could not decode are delivered without charge, so a typo never costs you anything.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
vin	string	none	One VIN per line or comma separated. Up to 1000 per run. Duplicates removed automatically.
make	string	none	Use with model and modelYear to look up a vehicle without a VIN. Ignored when VINs are given.
model	string	none	Model name, for example F-150.
modelYear	integer	none	Model year, for example 2019.
includeRecalls	boolean	true	Safety recall campaigns.
includeComplaints	boolean	true	Consumer complaints.
includeSafetyRatings	boolean	true	Crash test ratings, photos and videos.
maxComplaintsPerVehicle	integer	50	Complaints per row, newest first. 0 means no limit.
includeComplaintSummaries	boolean	true	Turn off for much smaller rows when you only need counts and dates.

Output

One row per vehicle. Trimmed here for readability: a real row carries 136 specification fields.

{
  "vin": "1G1ZD5ST8LF051234",
  "decoded": true,
  "decodeErrorCode": "1",
  "decodeErrorText": "1 - Check Digit (9th position) does not calculate properly",
  "make": "CHEVROLET",
  "model": "Malibu",
  "modelYear": 2020,
  "trim": "LT (1LT)",
  "bodyClass": "Sedan/Saloon",
  "driveType": "FWD/Front-Wheel Drive",
  "doors": 4,
  "seats": 5,
  "engineCylinders": 4,
  "engineDisplacementL": 1.5,
  "engineModel": "LFV - Direct Injection, Variable Valve Timing, GEN 1",
  "fuelType": "Gasoline",
  "gvwr": "Class 1: 6,000 lb or less (2,722 kg or less)",
  "plantCity": "KANSAS CITY",
  "manufacturer": "GENERAL MOTORS LLC",
  "abs": "Standard",
  "esc": "Standard",
  "airbagFront": "1st Row (Driver and Passenger)",
  "airbagCurtain": "All Rows",
  "airbagKnee": "1st Row (Driver and Passenger)",
  "backupCamera": "Standard",
  "keylessIgnition": "Standard",
  "tpmsType": "Direct",
  "recallsModelName": "MALIBU",
  "complaintsModelName": "MALIBU",
  "lookupFailed": false,
  "recallCount": 1,
  "complaintCount": 194,
  "complaintsTruncated": true,
  "recalls": [
    {
      "nhtsaCampaignNumber": "21V649000",
      "manufacturer": "General Motors, LLC",
      "component": "SEAT BELTS:CRITICAL FASTENERS",
      "summary": "General Motors, LLC (GM) is recalling certain 2016-2021 Chevrolet Malibu and 2019-2021 Cadillac XT4 vehicles. The rear seat belt retractors may be improperly secured with loose or missing fasteners.",
      "consequence": "An improperly secured seat belt retractor may not function properly in a crash, increasing the risk of injury.",
      "remedy": "Dealers will inspect and tighten the rear seat belt retractors, as necessary, free of charge.",
      "reportReceivedDate": "2021-08-20",
      "parkIt": false,
      "parkOutside": false,
      "overTheAirUpdate": false
    }
  ],
  "complaints": [
    {
      "odiNumber": "11755071",
      "components": "STEERING,ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,SERVICE BRAKES",
      "summary": "My 2020 Chevrolet Malibu experienced a sudden and severe electrical failure after driving through normal roadway water...",
      "dateOfIncident": "2026-07-27",
      "dateComplaintFiled": "2026-08-05",
      "crash": false,
      "fire": false,
      "numberOfInjuries": 0,
      "numberOfDeaths": 0,
      "partialVin": "1G1ZD5ST0LF"
    }
  ],
  "safetyRatings": {
    "vehicleDescription": "2020 Chevrolet Malibu 4 DR FWD",
    "variantMatch": "exact",
    "variantCount": 1,
    "overallRating": "4",
    "frontalCrashRating": "5",
    "frontalCrashDriverRating": "5",
    "frontalCrashPassengerRating": "5",
    "sideCrashRating": "4",
    "sidePoleCrashRating": "5",
    "rolloverRating": "4",
    "rolloverPossibilityPct": 10.3,
    "dynamicTipResult": "No Tip",
    "investigationCount": 1,
    "frontCrashPictureUrl": "https://static.nhtsa.gov/crashTest/images/2020/v10914P084.jpg",
    "frontCrashVideoUrl": "https://static.nhtsa.gov/crashTest/videos/2020/v10914C019.wmv"
  }
}

Use cases

• 🏪 Used car listings: decode inventory VINs and flag open recalls before a car goes on the lot.
• 🛡️ Insurance underwriting: verify factory safety equipment and driver assistance features from the VIN.
• 🚛 Fleet safety: batch check hundreds of VINs for do not drive recalls.
• 🔍 Vehicle history reports: enrich your product with official recall and complaint data.
• 🏠 Pre purchase checks: see a car's recalls, complaints and crash scores before buying.
• 📊 Reliability research: aggregate complaint patterns by component across a model year.
• 🔧 Service departments: pull recall status and common failure patterns for a customer's car.
• 🤖 Automotive apps: drop official vehicle data into your own dashboard or API.

Limitations

• Recalls and complaints are per model, not per car. NHTSA publishes them by make, model and year, so results cover that whole configuration rather than proving your specific vehicle is affected.
• Not every vehicle is crash tested. NCAP ratings mostly exist for popular passenger cars and light trucks. Heavy trucks, trailers and most motorcycles have none.
• Crash ratings can be ambiguous. When the VIN does not reveal drive type or cab style, the closest variant is used and variantMatch is set to ambiguous, with every rated variant listed so you can pick another.
• Some vehicles decode only partially. NHTSA occasionally returns a make and year without a model. Those rows arrive with whatever decoded, marked decoded: false, and are not charged.
• A few trucks file recalls and complaints under different names. A 2017 F-250's complaints sit under the crew cab name while its recalls sit under the Super Duty name; the row reports which name produced each result.
• No ownership data. VIN decoding returns factory specifications only. No owner, title, lien, odometer or accident history, none of which NHTSA publishes.

FAQ

How much does this actor cost?

It uses pay-per-result pricing. You pay $2.00 for 1,000 results. The Apify Free plan gives you $5 in usage credits a month, enough for around 2,500 results. If you run regularly, the $29/month Starter plan covers about 14,500 results.

No subscription lock-in. Pause whenever.

Is it legal to scrape this data?

All of it comes from public United States government APIs published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which are open and free to use. Scraping public data is generally allowed in the US and most of the EU, as long as you don't collect personal data covered by GDPR or CCPA without a lawful basis. How you use the output is on you.

Apify's full breakdown: Is web scraping legal?.

Can I integrate this with other tools?

Push results into Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub, Google Sheets, Google Drive, and more. Apify treats every actor as a webhook source, so anything that consumes webhooks or pulls from an API works.

Full list: Apify integrations.

Can I use it with the Apify API?

Yes. Every run is available via the Apify REST API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/sourabhbgp~nhtsa-vehicle-intelligence/runs?token=APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"vin": "1HGCM82633A004352"}'

Docs: Apify API reference.

Can I use it through an MCP Server?

Yes. Apify ships an MCP server that exposes every actor as a tool, so Claude Desktop, Cursor, and any other MCP-capable client can call it. Setup: Apify MCP docs.

Your feedback

Bug, missing field, or odd behavior? Drop a note in the Issues tab. Reports go to a human and fixes usually ship the same week.