Integrate vehicle history reports

Steps

1. Apply for partner access through the Carfax Business Development team at carfax.com/company/partners; Carfax API access requires a formal business agreement — there is no public self-service API or sandbox.
2. Once approved, obtain your API credentials and review the partner documentation; Carfax provides data feeds and integration APIs for dealer subscriptions, financial institution data products, and software platform integrations.
3. Authenticate API requests using the credentials specified in your partner agreement (typically an API key or OAuth 2.0 client credentials passed as a Bearer token).
4. To request a vehicle history report, submit the VIN to the Carfax report endpoint specified in your partner documentation; the response includes accident history, title events, odometer readings, service records, number of owners, and lemon law buyback flags.
5. Cache report responses with respect to your contract's terms on data freshness and re-query frequency; do not serve stale reports for high-stakes decisions such as loan origination or vehicle purchase.
6. For use cases where Carfax partnership is not feasible, implement the same integration pattern against an alternative provider (AutoCheck via Experian, VinAudit, or NMVTIS Title Check) that offers more accessible API access, while communicating clearly to users which data source is being used.