ProblemsByVin vs Smartcar

ProblemsByVin's Data Center publishes derived, CC BY 4.0-licensed datasets built from NHTSA's owner-complaint and recall record — a reliability scorecard, failure-mileage quartiles, and post-warranty failure patterns — as weekly-refreshed CSV and JSON downloads plus a machine-readable /data/catalog.json manifest. A live GET against both the docs page and the catalog endpoint returned access-control-allow-origin: *, reconfirming cors "yes"; no key was required, reconfirming auth "None" over HTTPS. The datasets are free to use, republish, and remix with attribution — free.

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.