⌘K
Find a vehicle
RecallsCompareNewsPricing
Your vehicle
VIN decoderWindow stickerProblems by systemTitle brands
Federal filings
Service bulletinsOwner complaintsInvestigationsEarly Warning reportsWarranty extensionsDriver-assist crashesTrouble codes
Browse the record
GuidesRankingsAll makesQuarterly reportsWhat is in the data
Paperwork
Repair Claim KitCar CheckFor attorneysFor expert witnessesFor repair shopsRecall disclosure formRecall fix sheets
Tools and data
Recall WatchFleet VIN checkCost calculatorsCar crosswordAPI & data
Sign inGarage
Legal

Terms of use

These terms cover the WhichTrim website and, further down, the Vehicle Data API and the datasets. Using the site means accepting them.

Using the website

WhichTrim is free to read. You may read, print and link to any page, and quote from it with credit and a link back.

Information, not advice. The site organizes and explains public records and manufacturer documents. It is not legal, financial, mechanical or safety advice, and it cannot tell you whether one specific vehicle is covered by a recall — only a VIN lookup at nhtsa.gov/recalls or with the manufacturer can. Owner complaints are unverified reports.

No warranty. The site is provided as it is. Federal and manufacturer records can be incomplete or wrong, and the site inherits their errors; we correct our own when we find them (see the editorial standards) but do not promise that every figure is complete, current or free of error. To the fullest extent the law allows, WhichTrim is not liable for any loss arising from use of the site.

Fair use of the service. Do not copy the compilation in bulk or use it to build a substitute data feed — the API and the open datasets below exist for machine access — and do not try to overload, break or get around any part of the service. Search engines and assistants that follow robots.txt are welcome.

Links and advertising. Pages link to government and manufacturer sites and carry labelled advertising and disclosed affiliate links. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for what they say or do.

Changes. These terms can change; the version on this page is the one that applies. Questions go through the contact page.

The Vehicle Data API and datasets

The sections below apply to the API, Recall Watch and the published datasets, in addition to the terms above.

Computed comparisons

Compare verdicts (on the site and from /v1/compare) are arithmetic over public records and manufacturer documents using the weights you supply. They are information, not advice: WhichTrim does not test vehicles and makes no representation that a higher score is the right purchase for you. Every score is returned with the values it was computed from so it can be checked. When you republish a verdict, keep the weights and the WhichTrim attribution with it.

License

WhichTrim grants you a non-exclusive, revocable license to call the API and use responses inside your own applications and analyses for the duration of your plan. Free-plan use is limited to non-commercial projects and requires attribution.

Ownership

The underlying federal records (EPA, NHTSA) are public domain and WhichTrim claims no right in them. The compiled dataset — its selection, structure and arrangement, together with the derived fields, grades, transcriptions, narratives and identifiers created by WhichTrim — are its proprietary work product. Nothing in this agreement transfers ownership of it.

Restrictions

No resale, sublicensing or bulk redistribution of the dataset; no use to build a substitute data feed; no systematic extraction of the compilation; no circumventing rate limits or sharing keys across organizations. Cached responses expire after 7 days.

The open-data carve-out

Three of our published datasets are released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. You may copy, redistribute, remix and build on them, including commercially, provided you credit WhichTrim and link back. The restrictions above do not apply to these files:

Those are the only files carved out. Everything else — the full vehicle compilation, the per-vehicle JSON, the search index, the API and Recall Watch — keeps the terms above. We license only what we own: the underlying NHTSA text is public domain, and what CC BY covers here is our selection, arrangement and derived counts.

Data

Federal source data (EPA, NHTSA) are public domain and provided as-is. Manufacturer figures are transcribed from official documents and may lag mid-year changes. WhichTrim makes no warranty of fitness for safety-critical decisions; always confirm recalls by VIN at nhtsa.gov.

Billing

Plans bill monthly in advance through Stripe and can be cancelled from the dashboard; paid features continue to the end of the period. Business plans carry a 99.9% monthly uptime target with service credits on request.

Privacy

We store your name, email, sign-in provider id, keys and usage counts. See the privacy policy.

Questions: data@whichtrim.com