Autotrader vehicle listing search API

Endpoint facts

Method

GET

API path

/autotrader/search

Auth

apiKey

Credits

3 credits/request

Platform

Autotrader

Response schema

#/definitions/autotrader.searchResponseDoc

Overview

Searches Autotrader for new and used car listings, returning normalized vehicle summaries (make, model, trim, year, mileage, pricing, images) plus the total matching count. Credential-free public data sourced from Autotrader's own server-rendered search page. Developers commonly use this endpoint for data enrichment, monitoring, research dashboards, internal automation, and agent-native workflows that need repeatable structured public web data. Authentication uses the documented Crawlora headers, and usage is metered with the credit cost shown on this page.

Authentication

Send your scraping API key in the x-api-key header. Use the console API Keys page to rotate or select the active key.

Billing

Endpoint usage is metered in credits. The plan prices, included credits, limits, and overage rates below match the active backend billing configuration.

Credit cost

3 credits/request

Charged response

Successful 2xx responses

Infrastructure behavior

This endpoint is executed through Crawlora's managed scraping infrastructure.

• Proxy strategy: managed automatically where needed
• Browser rendering: enabled for supported targets that require rendered HTML or JavaScript execution
• Browser cluster: supported dynamic workloads can be routed through distributed browser instances
• Retry behavior: automatic retry/fallback may be used depending on endpoint type
• Challenge handling: challenged pages or unusable upstream HTML are detected and surfaced clearly when they cannot be used
• Billing: credits are charged only for successful 2xx responses
• Observability: responses include request context where available

Browser cluster behavior

Some targets require real browser execution because the data is loaded through JavaScript, dynamic rendering, or interaction-like browser behavior.

For supported endpoints, Crawlora can route requests through a managed browser cluster. This allows Crawlora to execute JavaScript, load dynamic content, apply browser-level request behavior, and normalize the rendered result into JSON.

You do not need to operate your own Playwright, Puppeteer, Chrome, proxy, queue, or retry infrastructure.

Response behavior

- `total_count` reflects Autotrader's full matching-result count for the applied filters, not just `len(vehicles)`. - An invalid `condition`, `body_style`, or `seller_type` value returns `400` before any upstream request is made. - A search with no matching listings returns `200` with `"vehicles": []` and `total_count: 0`, not an error. - `pricing.no_price_label` (e.g. `"Contact Dealer For Price"`) is set instead of a numeric price when the dealer requires direct contact for pricing. - `stats` reports price and model-year aggregates (min/average/max) across the FULL matching result set for the applied filters, not just the returned page — useful for market-research callers who want the shape of the whole matching inventory. It is omitted when Autotrader's page does not carry this aggregate for the request. Example response: ```json { "code": 200, "msg": "OK", "data": { "total_count": 3392288, "page": 1, "page_size": 24, "vehicles": [ { "id": 754822172, "vin": "5GAEVAKS4TJ113378", "title": "New 2026 Buick Enclave Preferred w/ Power Package", "year": 2026, "make": {"code": "BUICK", "name": "Buick"}, "model": {"code": "ENCLAVE", "name": "Enclave"}, "trim": {"code": "ENCLAVE|Preferred", "name": "Preferred"}, "body_styles": [{"code": "SUV", "name": "Sport Utility"}], "mileage": {"label": "Mileage", "value": "1,111"}, "color": {"exterior_color": "Ocean Blue Metallic", "exterior_color_simple": "BLUE"}, "transmission": {"code": "AUT", "name": "Automatic", "description": "8-Speed Automatic"}, "fuel_type": {"code": "G", "name": "Gasoline", "group": "Gas"}, "listing_type": "NEW", "days_on_site": 252, "pricing": {"sale_price": 45235, "msrp": 53055, "display_price": 45235}, "url": "https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/vehicle/754822172" } ], "stats": { "derived_price": {"max": 289995, "average": 34521.5, "min": 1500}, "year": {"max": 2026, "average": 2018.3, "min": 1960}, "start_year": 1960, "end_year": 2026, "min_price": 1500, "max_price": 289995 }, "source_url": "https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/all-cars" } } ```

Error behavior

Crawlora does not silently return bad data when the upstream page cannot be used.

When possible, Crawlora returns structured error context so your integration can retry, back off, or inspect the request.

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