Copart Scraper — Salvage Car Auction Search & Lot Data

Scrape Copart's public vehicle auction listings — search results or single lots — into clean, flat rows with VIN decoding, images, bid data and watchlist dedup. No login required.

Copart.com lists hundreds of thousands of salvage, clean-title and used vehicles at auction. This Actor reads Copart's own public search JSON API (the same endpoint the copart.com frontend calls) through a real browser session, so you get complete, structured lot data without an account and without brittle HTML scraping.

Who uses it

User	What they do with the data
🚗 Auto dealers & rebuilders	Track salvage inventory, current bids and sale dates to source vehicles below market
📊 Market analysts	Monitor pricing, damage mix and volume trends across makes, years and locations
🔍 Data brokers & lead generators	Build fresh vehicle/auction datasets on a schedule
🛠️ App & tool developers	Power VIN tools, auction aggregators, price-estimation models
🧑‍🔧 Exporters & parts businesses	Watch specific segments (e.g. flood cars, front-end hits) for new arrivals

What it does

• 🔎 Search URLs or lot URLs — paste any Copart public search-results URL (with your filters applied, including URLs that carry a searchCriteria payload) or a single lot URL like https://www.copart.com/lot/12345678/...
• 🧮 Structured filters — don't hand-craft URLs: pass make, model, yearFrom, yearTo, damageType, maxOdometer and the Actor builds Copart's server-side filters for you (make, year range and odometer range are pushed into Copart's own query; damage is matched before saving so you never pay for filtered-out lots)
• 🔑 VIN decoding, even when masked — Copart hides the last 6 VIN characters for anonymous visitors; this Actor still decodes manufacturer, country of origin, possible model years and plant code from the first 11 characters offline, and uses the free NHTSA vPIC API automatically when a full VIN is available
• 🖼️ Image URLs per lot — full-resolution photo URLs for every vehicle
• 💰 Bid & sale data — current bid, bid status, sale status, buy-today bid, auction name, sale date/time with timezone
• 🚚 Complete vehicle detail — odometer + status, primary damage, title type, engine, transmission, drive, fuel, color, body style, run-and-drive condition, keys, highlights, seller, estimated retail value, yard location
• 📦 Batch mode — process many start URLs in one run
• 🔔 Watchlist mode (onlyNew) — remembers lots it has already seen in a persistent key-value store and only emits fresh inventory on scheduled runs
• 🛡️ Proxy passthrough + retry/backoff — bring your own Apify proxy config; every API call retries with exponential backoff
• 📈 Up to 1,000,000 results per run — paginates Copart's API 100 lots per request

Use cases

Source inventory for a rebuild business

Run nightly with onlyNew: true on searches like "2019–2023 Toyota Camry under 60k miles" and pipe only fresh lots into a Google Sheet, Airtable, or webhook via Apify integrations.

Price & trend analysis

Export 10,000+ rows to CSV/JSON/Excel and analyze hammer prices, damage distribution and regional supply. Every row carries sale date, current bid, damage and location.

VIN intelligence

Even though Copart masks VIN suffixes publicly, the first 11 characters identify the manufacturer, origin country, model-year candidates and assembly plant — decoded automatically when enrichOutput is on, with no external dependency.

Auction alerts

Schedule the Actor every hour on a filtered search and get only new listings pushed to your system — ideal for rare models or specific damage types.

Why choose this scraper

Capability	This Actor	Typical Copart scrapers
No login / no cookies needed	✅	Varies
Uses Copart's real internal JSON API via a browser session	✅	Often fragile HTML parsing
VIN decode of masked VINs (first 11 chars)	✅ built-in, offline	❌
NHTSA vPIC decode for full VINs	✅	❌
Structured filters input (make/model/year/damage/odometer)	✅	❌
Batch of multiple start URLs	✅	Often single URL
Image URLs per lot	✅	Sometimes
Bid history fields (current bid, bid/sale status, buy-today)	✅	Sometimes
Watchlist mode with cross-run dedup	✅	❌
Proxy passthrough + retry/backoff	✅	Varies
Price per result	$0.02	$0.026+

How it compares

Actor	Price per result	Users	Notes
This Actor (technicaldost/copart-scraper)	$0.02 (+ $0.001/start)	new	Full feature set above: VIN decode, filters, images, watchlist, batch
parseforge/copart-public-search-scraper	$0.026 (+ $0.005/start)	~497	Solid baseline: search URL input, masked-VIN decode, flat rows
Other Copart actors on the Store	$0.02–$0.05/1K results or monthly flat	varies	Most are HTML-parsers without VIN enrichment, filters or dedup

You get every feature of the leading competitor plus images, structured filters, watchlist dedup, NHTSA decoding and batch URLs — for 23% less per result.

Configure the run

Example 1 — filtered search, enriched, watchlist mode

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.copart.com/lotSearchResults/?free=true&query=toyota%20camry",
    "https://www.copart.com/lot/66231586/clean-title-2015-toyota-camry-se-fl-orlando-south"
  ],
  "filters": {
    "make": "Toyota",
    "model": "Camry",
    "yearFrom": 2018,
    "yearTo": 2024,
    "damageType": "FRONT END",
    "maxOdometer": 120000
  },
  "maxItems": 500,
  "enrichOutput": true,
  "includeImages": true,
  "onlyNew": true
}

Example 2 — quick single-search pull with proxy

{
  "startUrl": "https://www.copart.com/lotSearchResults/?free=true&query=honda%20civic",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "enrichOutput": true,
  "includeImages": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Tip: apply filters on copart.com in your browser, copy the resulting URL (it contains a searchCriteria parameter) and paste it as a start URL — the Actor replays your exact filters.

Output

One flat row per lot. Key fields: lotNumber, title, year, make, model, vin (as published; last 6 chars masked by Copart for anonymous users), odometer, odometerStatus, primaryDamage, currentBid, currency, bidStatus, saleStatus, buyTodayBid, saleDate, saleTimeLocal, saleTimeZone, auctionName, location, city, state, country, titleType, engine, transmission, drive, fuelType, color, bodyStyle, condition, hasKeys, highlights, seller, estimatedRetailValue, thumbnailUrl, imageUrls, url, sourceUrl, scrapedAt, and vinDecode (manufacturer, countryOfOrigin, possibleModelYears, plantCode, plantName) when enrichOutput is enabled.

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event monetization:

• $0.02 per result (each lot row saved to the dataset) — 23% cheaper than the leading competitor
• $0.001 per Actor start

Results	Cost
100	$2.00
1,000	$20.00
10,000	$200.00

You are only charged for rows actually saved — lots removed by your damage filter or skipped by watchlist dedup are never billed.

Free users

On the Apify Free plan you get a 10-result preview per run so you can evaluate the output schema and data quality before paying. Upgrade any plan for full volumes.

Run it

1. Open the Actor on Apify and paste one or more Copart URLs (or set structured filters).
2. Set maxItems, toggle enrichOutput / includeImages / onlyNew.
3. Click Start — results stream into the dataset as they are scraped.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect via API, webhooks, or schedule.

From the CLI:

$apify call technicaldost/copart-scraper --input='{"startUrls":["https://www.copart.com/lotSearchResults/?free=true&query=toyota%20camry"],"maxItems":100}'

Via API: POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/technicaldost~copart-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items with the JSON input above.

Use with MCP (AI agents)

This Actor is exposed on the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com), so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP clients can call it as a tool: "find 2020+ Ford F-150s with front-end damage under 100k miles on Copart" becomes a single tool call returning structured rows.

Troubleshooting

Q: The run returns 0 results for a URL that shows lots in my browser. A: Check that the URL is a lotSearchResults search URL or a /lot/ details URL, and that your structured filters aren't over-constraining (e.g. a damageType substring that doesn't match Copart's damage labels like FRONT END, HAIL, MINOR DENT/SCRATCHES). Copart's own filter URLs (searchCriteria=...) are replayed exactly.

Q: I'm being blocked / seeing retries. A: Copart uses bot protection. The Actor rides a real browser session and retries with backoff, but large runs should enable the proxy option (RESIDENTIAL group recommended).

Q: The VIN is shown as 4T1BF1FK1FU******. Can I get the full VIN? A: Copart masks the last 6 characters for anonymous visitors — no public scraper can recover them. This Actor still decodes manufacturer, country, model-year candidates and plant from the visible 11 characters.

Q: onlyNew returned nothing on the second run. A: That's correct — it means no new lots appeared for that start URL since the previous run. The seen-list lives in the copart-scraper-watchlist key-value store; delete that store to reset.

Q: How do I get more than 1,000 results? A: Just raise maxItems (up to 1,000,000). The Actor paginates 100 lots per API call automatically.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need a Copart account?	No. Only public data is collected.
How fresh is the data?	Real-time — the same API copart.com serves to browsers.
Can I scrape a single lot page?	Yes, paste any /lot/<number>/... URL.
Can I scrape many searches at once?	Yes, startUrls accepts a list; maxItems is the combined cap.
What formats can I export?	JSON, CSV, XLSX, XML, RSS — via the Apify dataset API/UI.
Does it decode masked VINs?	Yes: manufacturer, origin country, possible years, plant from the first 11 chars; full VINs go through NHTSA vPIC.
Is there a free trial?	Free-plan runs return a 10-result preview.
Can I schedule it?	Yes — combine Apify Schedules with onlyNew for a delta feed.