Autotrader API

The Autotrader API searches US car listings around a ZIP code and returns one row per vehicle — title, year, make, model and trim, price and MSRP, mileage, body style, fuel and drive type, exterior colour, the full specification pairs, the VIN, days on site, a photo and the listing URL.

You anchor the search on a five-digit ZIP and optionally narrow it by condition, make and model. Each result is read from Autotrader's server-rendered payload over the TLS tier through a US residential exit — roughly 25 to 38 vehicles a page — so no headless browser is involved. Listings priced "Contact Dealer For Price" keep that label in no_price_label instead of a fabricated number.

$0.001 per delivered listing, up to 75 listings per run. Nothing delivered means nothing charged.

How the Autotrader API works

You pass a zip, pick a condition (all-cars, new-cars, used-cars or certified-cars) and optionally a make and model. The collector runs that search and pages through the results, parsing each vehicle card into a flat row.

Two details shape how you read the output:

Building a cross-market classifieds pipeline? The Kleinanzeigen collector handles the German classifieds side with a comparable row shape.

Inputs

The one required input is zip, a five-digit US postal code the search radiates from. condition filters by new, used or certified; make selects a brand and model narrows within it (model needs a make alongside it). max_results caps the run at up to 75 vehicles and defaults to 25.

What one listing looks like

Each vehicle is one flat row. price and msrp are numbers, so a new-car search lets you compute discount off sticker directly, and no_price_label covers the contact-for-price cases. vin gives you a stable key to dedupe across runs and dealers, mileage and days_on_site are typed for filtering, and specifications preserves every label-value pair the listing published.

What the Autotrader API costs

$0.001 per delivered listing (

per 1,000). Nothing delivered means nothing charged, and the $2 monthly free credit covers roughly 2,000 listings here. Volume tiers take up to 30% off.

$0.001 per delivered listing,

per 1,000. Sweeping 50,000 vehicles across a set of metro ZIPs each day is $50 a run at list price, and volume tiers reduce it. Because you are billed per delivered row, narrowing by make and model both sharpens the data and trims the bill.

The free monthly allowance is $2 of usage, about 2,000 listings at this price, with no card needed. GET /v1/scraper/collectors returns the exact per-row price your key is charged.

Autotrader API vs an official dealer feed

Autotrader does not offer a public consumer-listings API. The programmatic access that exists is trade-facing — dealer inventory and syndication integrations that require a dealer or partner relationship and are scoped to your own stock, not the whole marketplace. A shopper, analyst or researcher who wants to read what is listed near a ZIP has no official endpoint to call.

This collector fills that gap by reading the same public search a car buyer sees. There is no dealer account to secure and no syndication contract; your QuantumProxies key is the only credential. You receive the fields on the public listing — price, MSRP, mileage, specs, VIN — rather than a private back-office feed, which is what market and pricing analysis actually needs.

Versus scraping Autotrader yourself

Fetching one Autotrader results page is straightforward. Keeping a national sweep alive is the hard part:

  • Bot protection escalates. Datacenter IPs are flagged quickly, and once a subnet is burned you cannot tell an empty ZIP from a blocked fetch — so a busy market looks empty.
  • The spec grid varies. Different vehicle types and dealers expose different spec labels; a parser that expects a fixed set drops fields or breaks on the exceptions.
  • Pagination and radius. Results come 25-to-38 a page and the effective search radius shifts with inventory density, so consistent coverage takes care to get right.

Handing it over gives you a typed schema and a bill that only moves on delivered rows. If you would rather keep your own crawler and just want dependable US exits under it, the residential proxies are the network this collector runs on.

What people build with it

Used-car pricing models

Pull a make and model across several metro ZIPs and regress price against mileage, year and trim to build a live valuation curve for a segment.

New-car discount tracking

Filter to new-cars and compare price with msrp to see how far below sticker dealers are actually transacting in a region.

Dealer inventory and aging analysis

Use vin to dedupe and days_on_site to measure how long stock sits, spotting the vehicles and dealers most likely to negotiate.

Limits, search radius and the legal bit

One run returns up to 75 vehicles for a ZIP-anchored search; broader coverage means more ZIPs or tighter make/model slices rather than one endless page. Runs are independent and parallelise up to your plan's rate limit — 60 requests a minute on pay-as-you-go, up to 1,200 on the top tier. This collector reads the search result card and its spec grid; it does not pull the dealer's full photo gallery or contact form.

Legally: vehicle listings are shown publicly to every visitor, and collecting public data is generally lawful in most US jurisdictions, but Autotrader's terms restrict automated access and your downstream use carries its own obligations. This is not legal advice — get advice for your specific situation.

FAQ

Is there a free Autotrader API?

Autotrader has no public listings API, free or otherwise — only trade integrations for dealers syndicating their own stock. This collector reads the public search near a ZIP and includes a $2 monthly allowance, about 2,000 listings at $0.001 each, before any charge.

Do I need an Autotrader API key or dealer account?

No. There is no Autotrader developer key or dealer relationship required, because the marketplace exposes no public API. You authenticate with your QuantumProxies key and the collector reads the public results directly.

Does it return the VIN and full specifications?

Yes, when the listing publishes them. The VIN lands in its own field and the complete label-value spec grid is returned in specifications, alongside promoted columns for mileage, body style, fuel type, drive type and colour.

How do I search a specific model near me?

Pass your five-digit zip, set make and model together, and optionally a condition like used-cars. The search radiates out from that ZIP, and each row carries the dealer distance context Autotrader shows.

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