NHTSA API

Overview

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request

GET https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles/DecodeVin/1HGBH41JXMN109186?format=json

Result

HTTP 200 · application/json · 11,759 bytes · compressed

Response time

1159 ms (median of 3) · fastest 234 ms

Transport

TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 · certificate issued by DigiCert Inc

Browser CORS

Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Recorded

2026-08-10

Fields Returned

Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles/DecodeVin/1HGBH41JXMN109186?format=json on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

{
  "Count": 140,
  "Message": "Results returned successfully. NOTE: Any missing decoded values should be interpreted as NHTSA does not have data on the specific variable. Missing value sho…",
  "SearchCriteria": "VIN:1HGBH41JXMN109186",
  "Results": [
    {
      "Value": "",
      "ValueId": "",
      "Variable": "Suggested VIN",
      "VariableId": 142
    }
  ]
}

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

const url = "https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles/DecodeVin/1HGBH41JXMN109186?format=json";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

url = "https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles/DecodeVin/1HGBH41JXMN109186?format=json"
headers = {}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, timeout=30)
response.raise_for_status()
data = response.json()
print(data)

curl "https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles/DecodeVin/1HGBH41JXMN109186?format=json"

What Can You Build?

// Fetch vehicle data
const response = await fetch(`https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api`);
const data = await response.json();
const vehicle = data.vehicle || data.data || data;
console.log('Make:', vehicle.make || 'N/A');
console.log('Model:', vehicle.model || 'N/A');
console.log('Year:', vehicle.year || 'N/A');

// Compare vehicle specifications
const response = await fetch(`https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api`);
const data = await response.json();
const vehicles = data.results || data.vehicles || data.data || [];
const items = Array.isArray(vehicles) ? vehicles : [vehicles];
items.slice(0, 3).forEach(v => {
  console.log(`🚗 ${v.make || ''} ${v.model || ''}: ${v.fuel_type || v.engine || 'N/A'}`);
});

// Search for vehicles
const make = 'Toyota';
const response = await fetch(`https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api`);
const data = await response.json();
const results = data.results || data.vehicles || data.data || [];
console.log(`Found ${results.length || 1} vehicles for ${make}`);
results.slice(0, 5).forEach(v => {
  console.log(`  ${v.model || v.name}: ${v.year || ''}`);
});

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

How This API Fails

We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.