Mercedes-Benz vs Smartcar

Mercedes-Benz's connected-vehicle API platform exposes telematics data, remote vehicle commands, a car configurator, and dealer-locator lookups behind an OAuth2 client-credentials/authorization-code flow — its own docs describe exchanging a Base64-encoded Client ID/Secret for a bearer token, correcting the stored auth from "API Key" to "OAuth". A live unauthenticated GET against the real api.mercedes-benz.com gateway returned no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header on any endpoint tested, reconfirming cors "no" — consistent with Mercedes-Benz's own documentation that the API doesn't support direct browser calls; https was reconfirmed. The platform offers a free sandbox/BYOCAR tier for testing against simulated and real vehicles, plus paid production tiers per API product — freemium.

Smartcar's Vehicle API lets apps lock/unlock vehicles and read odometer, location, and other telematics data from most late-model cars through a single OAuth2 integration across dozens of automaker backends. A live unauthenticated GET and OPTIONS preflight against api.smartcar.com/v2.0/vehicles both returned no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header — resolving the stored "yes" cors to "no", consistent with Smartcar's own docs, which say API calls must be made from a backend, never a browser; auth "OAuth" and https were reconfirmed via a 401 AUTHENTICATION error. Its pricing page offers a Free plan (1 connected vehicle, no credit card) alongside paid Growth/Enterprise tiers — freemium.