Reliability Data API

The same honest verdict the car pages show, as JSON. Pull a Buy / Caution / Avoid score for any used car, or the top-ranked models for a year or make. Read-only, built for badges and backlinks.

Endpoints

Base URL https://willitcar.com. Every response is JSON and sends permissive CORS headers, so you can call it straight from a browser.

Verdict for one car

GET /api/v1/verdict/{slug} — the slug is year-make-model, the same one in a car page’s URL.

curl https://willitcar.com/api/v1/verdict/2018-honda-cr-v

Returns:

{
  "vehicle": {
    "year": 2018, "make": "Honda", "model": "CR-V",
    "slug": "2018-honda-cr-v",
    "url": "https://willitcar.com/2018-honda-cr-v"
  },
  "verdict": "caution",
  "displayVerdict": "Caution",
  "score": 52,
  "confidence": "normal",
  "counts": {
    "complaints": 1180, "complaintsPerYear": 147.5, "severe": 22,
    "deaths": 0, "recalls": 4, "seriousRecalls": 1
  },
  "parkItRecall": false,
  "topIssues": [
    { "component": "STRUCTURE", "label": "Body & structure",
      "share": 0.19, "count": 224, "medianMiles": 41000 }
  ],
  "crashSafety": {
    "overallRating": 5, "frontCrashRating": 4,
    "sideCrashRating": 5, "rolloverRating": 4
  },
  "dataUpdatedAt": "2026-07-18T04:12:00.000Z",
  "source": "NHTSA",
  "badge": "https://willitcar.com/api/badge/2018-honda-cr-v",
  "attribution": "Reliability verdict by Will It Car (willitcar.com), from public NHTSA data.",
  "disclaimer": "Informational only, not mechanical or purchasing advice. …"
}

Any car in NHTSA’s catalog answers on the first call, even one nobody has looked up before — the verdict computes on demand, then caches. A model year that’s too new or too thinly reported comes back with confidence of too-early or limited-data, and a displayVerdict of “Too New” or “Unproven” rather than a confident word — use displayVerdict when you show a label to a person, and verdict when you need the raw three-way value.

Rankings

GET /api/v1/rankings — the best-scoring cars we’ve matured a verdict on. All query params are optional:

curl "https://willitcar.com/api/v1/rankings?make=toyota&limit=10"

Rankings only include matured records — a car with too little data to score honestly is left out of “most reliable” lists rather than padding them with a placeholder.

Verdict badge (SVG)

GET /api/badge/{slug} returns a ready-made SVG card — drop it in a forum post or listing with a plain image tag. Prefer this over the JSON endpoint for high-volume embeds; it’s a small cacheable image.

<a href="https://willitcar.com/2018-honda-cr-v">
  <img src="https://willitcar.com/api/badge/2018-honda-cr-v"
       alt="2018 Honda CR-V reliability verdict" width="300" height="76">
</a>

Rate limits

Up to 60 requests a minute per IP across the /api/v1 endpoints. Responses carry an hour of cache headers — cache them and you’ll rarely come near the limit. Over it, you get a 429 with a Retry-After header.

Using the data

• The underlying records are U.S. NHTSA data (public domain). The verdict, score, and groupings are ours.
• Please keep the attribution line and link back to the car’s url where you show a verdict, so a reader can see the full record and how it scored.
• Show the disclaimer: these are informational verdicts for a model, not advice about an individual vehicle. Don’t present a score as a pass/fail on a specific car.
• The money side of this site never touches a score. Neither should a re-published one.

This is a read-only view of public safety data, offered as-is with no uptime guarantee. Will It Car is independent and not affiliated with NHTSA. Questions or a higher-volume need: notify@willitcar.com.

See how the score is built →