CarMax Used Car Listings & Price Drop Alerts

Search CarMax's used-car inventory by make, and optionally model, near a US ZIP code and get one flat row per car: price, the price before a drop, mileage, the store it is at and how far that is, the shipping fee to bring it to you, when CarMax made it available, trim, colours, engine, MPG, the feature list, VIN and the carmax.com link. Run it on a schedule sorted newest listings first and diff on stock_number to get a CarMax new-inventory alert, or filter on price_dropped for a price-drop alert on the cars you are watching.

No account, no API key, no login, no browser. One request returns up to 100 cars.

Input

Field	Notes
make	Required. As it appears in a carmax.com address: toyota, ford, land-rover, mercedes-benz. Case and spaces do not matter.
model	Optional. camry, cr-v, f150, mustang-mach-e. Spelling that differs from CarMax's only in punctuation (F-150, Mustang Mach-E) is mapped onto CarMax's. Empty means every model.
zipCode	Required. Five-digit US ZIP. Distance, shipping fee and arrival dates are measured from the store CarMax assigns to it.
radius	nationwide (default), 25, 50, 75, 100, 250 or 500 miles from the ZIP.
sort	new-arrival (default, newest listings first), price-asc, price-desc, mileage-asc, mileage-desc, year-desc, year-asc, distance-asc, best-match.
maxItems	Cars to read (default 100, up to 10,000). 100 per request.
proxyConfiguration	Apify proxy by default.

A make or model CarMax does not know

CarMax answers a make or model it has never heard of with HTTP 200 and its whole 64,000-car inventory, unfiltered, and a model that does not belong to the make drops the make filter too. Left alone, make: toyta would return and bill 100 arbitrary cars. The actor reads the filters CarMax says it applied (selectedFacets) and, when they are not the ones asked for, either maps the spelling onto CarMax's own list or stops the run with the list of valid makes (or the models of that make). Nothing is charged for the rows it refuses.

The ZIP code and the radius

• A ZIP CarMax does not recognise (00000, letters) is answered with HTTP 200 and a store CarMax picks itself (Kansas City). The actor compares the ZIP CarMax echoes with the one you gave and stops the run if they differ.
• The radius is honoured at 25, 50, 75, 100, 250 and 500 miles. Measured for Honda from ZIP 90001 (Los Angeles): 142, 395, 485, 546, 803 and 1,312 cars against 6,111 nationwide. CarMax silently ignores 5 miles and any other distance and answers nationwide, so only the honoured ones are offered.

About the sorts

The sorts are CarMax's own and the actor checks each one: CarMax answers a sort name it does not know with HTTP 200 and its default "best match" order, so the actor reads the sort the response says it applied and fails the run (at no charge) rather than return mis-ordered rows. date-desc, the name some write-ups use for newest-first, is one of those ignored names; the working one is newarrival, which this actor sends for new-arrival.

new-arrival orders by made_saleable_at, the time CarMax made the car available (newest in the 2026-10-12 probe: 2026-10-11 19:38 UTC, descending from there). Cars marked coming soon are listed before they are for sale; they have no made_saleable_at, is_coming_soon is true and is_saleable is false. Filter them out if you only want cars you can buy.

Output

Prices are US dollars, distances and mileage are miles.

Field	Notes
query	The make (and model) searched, as CarMax URL segments: ford or ford/f150.
stock_number, url, vin	CarMax's stock number (the number in https://www.carmax.com/car/<stock_number>), the link, and the VIN. Compare runs on stock_number.
year, make, model, trim, body, series	As CarMax shows them. trim is null on cars CarMax lists without one (15 of 332 sampled); series is null on most cars.
price	CarMax's listed price, before taxes, title, registration and shipping.
original_price, price_dropped	price_dropped is CarMax's own flag. original_price is the price before the drop and is null unless CarMax sends it - 1 of 332 sampled cars - never 0. A car can be cheaper than last week without CarMax flagging it; for a price history, diff price between runs.
mileage	Odometer, miles.
store_id, store_name, store_city, state, state_code, distance_miles	The store the car is at and the distance from your ZIP. distance_miles is 0.0 for a car at your ZIP's own store.
made_saleable_at	When CarMax made the car available (ISO 8601 UTC). Null for cars that are coming soon (24 of 332 sampled).
is_new_arrival, is_coming_soon, is_saleable, is_reserved, is_available_to_transact	CarMax's flags. is_available_to_transact is whether it can be bought online from your ZIP.
transfer_type, transfer_fee, transfer_text	How the car reaches you: test-drive (at your store), shipping-from (shipped in), available-elsewhere, coming-soon. transfer_fee is the shipping fee in dollars, 0.0 for a car already there or shipped free, and null when CarMax sends none (63 of 332 sampled: coming-soon and available-elsewhere cars and some at your store). transfer_text is CarMax's line verbatim ($1999 Shipping, Free Shipping).
transfer_min_days, transfer_max_days, transfer_arrival	Estimated transfer time and CarMax's arrival text (10/13 - 10/16, Tuesday). The arrival text moves with the day the run happens, so do not diff on it. Null when CarMax sends no estimate.
exterior_color, interior_color, transmission, drive_train, engine_type, engine_size, cylinders, horsepower, torque	As CarMax words them. interior_color is null on 3 of 332 sampled cars, horsepower and torque on 20.
mpg_city, mpg_highway	Null where CarMax prints none (22 of 332 sampled, mostly electric cars), never 0.
ev_range_miles	Original battery range, on electric cars. Null on the rest.
vehicle_size, vehicle_types, packages, features	CarMax's size class, categories, option packages and the full feature list. Empty list when there are none.
prior_use	Prior use CarMax discloses: Rental, Fleet, Leased Vehicle. Empty when none is disclosed.
badge	CarMax's card badge: Popular, Coming soon, Fast shipping, Price drop. Null on most cars.
image_url	The hero photo as CarMax sends it (400 px wide; change width in the URL for another size).

Honest nulls

A field CarMax did not send is null, never 0 or "". original_price, made_saleable_at, transfer_fee, trim, series, mpg_city, mpg_highway, ev_range_miles and badge are null when the source has nothing.

Reading a result as an alert

• New inventory: sort new-arrival, keep is_coming_soon false, diff on stock_number against the last run. Newest-first means the first page holds what changed since yesterday.
• Price drops: keep rows with price_dropped true, or diff price per stock_number between runs.
• Nearby only: set a radius. Nationwide lists every store's cars, with the shipping fee to bring each to you in transfer_fee.

Pricing

Pay per event:

• $0.002 per run (actor-start), charged only after your input is validated, so a run that fails on bad input costs nothing.
• $0.0007 per car row written (listing-scraped), i.e. $0.70 per 1,000 cars.

How it fetches

It calls the JSON API behind CarMax's own search page (www.carmax.com/cars/api/search/run), up to 100 cars per request. Measured 2026-10-12 from an Apify datacenter exit: HTTP 200 with JSON and no key, no cookie and no login, held over a 30-minute session. CarMax's edge (Akamai) answers some requests with an "Access Denied" page and HTTP 403: 15 of 92 probe requests (about 1 in 6; none in the first 24). It is not tied to a parameter: one URL was refused in one batch and answered in the next, while two others (a take=6 newest-first search for an unknown make, and mileage-high-to-low with take=6) were refused every one of the three times they were sent and answered once take changed. The actor treats a 403, 429 or 5xx as a refusal, rotates to a fresh address and retries; a refusal costs time and is never charged. An HTTP 400 is permanent and is not retried. How often a production run sees a refusal at volume is unmeasured.

Things worth knowing, all measured:

• Page size. take up to 100 works; 101 and above is HTTP 400. Each response carries about 200 KB of filter data on top of the cars, so the actor asks for 100 at a time.
• Totals. totalCount is exact but drifts by a few between requests as cars are sold and listed (64,327 to 64,348 within the same minute). A walk can show a car twice across a page boundary; it is returned once.
• Depth. Offsets 5,000 and 6,000 into a 6,113-car make answered normally; an offset past the end is HTTP 200 with no cars, which ends the walk.
• Not offered. CarMax's price, year, mileage and colour filters, and its free-shipping filter, are not inputs; this actor searches by make, model, ZIP and radius.