NHTSA vs RevCarData

NHTSA's vPIC (vehicle Product Information Catalog) API decodes VINs and looks up makes, models, and manufacturer/WMI data straight from the US government's own vehicle registry, with no signup required. A fresh live fetch of the vPIC operation index in this run lists 24 `/api/vehicles/*` operations and confirms none of them is a recall lookup — that's a separate NHTSA product (nhtsa.gov/recalls), not part of this API, correcting a prior run's summary. A live GET and OPTIONS preflight against vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles/getallmakes both returned access-control-allow-origin: *, reconfirming cors "yes"; auth "None" and https were reconfirmed on the same calls. Responses are available in both JSON and XML via a format query parameter (XML is the live-confirmed default) — free, unlimited US government open data.

RevCarData is a global Year-Make-Model-Trim vehicle database covering EU, US, and Asian markets, exposing 38 structured spec fields — MSRP, powertrain, dimensions, and EV/battery metrics — via a REST API and CSV export. A live GET against its real API host, api.revcardata.com/api/v1/vehicles, returned a 401 "Missing X-API-Key header" error carrying access-control-allow-origin echoing the request Origin — reconfirming auth "API Key" and cors "yes" — over HTTPS. Its site offers a free sign-up-and-get-a-key tier alongside paid plans for higher volume — freemium.