Look up all consumer complaints filed against a specific vehicle by make, model, and year using the NHTSA Complaints API
domain: api.nhtsa.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Call GET https://api.nhtsa.gov/complaints/complaintsByVehicle?make={make}&model={model}&modelYear={year} with values matched to NHTSA's product taxonomy
For a specific complaint already identified by its ODI number, call GET /complaints/odinumber?odinumber={odinumber} instead
If the exact make/model spelling is unknown, discover valid values first via /products/vehicle/makes?modelYear={year}&issueType=c and /products/vehicle/models?modelYear={year}&make={make}&issueType=c
Map a VIN to make/model/year via the vPIC API first if starting from a VIN, since there is no VIN-direct complaints endpoint
Parse each complaint record for components, crash/fire/injury/death flags, and summary text to feed into downstream risk scoring
Known gotchas
api.nhtsa.gov has no VIN-based complaints endpoint despite that being the most common starting point in insurance/valuation workflows — a vPIC VIN decode is a required first step
Parameter and value matching is case-sensitive per NHTSA's own documentation note — an unexpected casing mismatch on make/model returns an empty result set rather than an error
The discovery endpoints use issueType=c for complaints and issueType=r for recalls — using the wrong issueType silently returns the wrong taxonomy
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