The VIN Decoder API returns the year, make, model and engine behind any VIN

Send a 17-character VIN and it returns the vehicle the manufacturer filed for it: the year, make, model and trim, the body class and vehicle type, the engine's cylinders, size in litres and fuel type, the drive type, the transmission, the country where it was built, the weight class (GVWR) and the manufacturer. The full record adds the doors, the engine model and horsepower where they are filed, the transmission speeds, the plant city and state, the safety equipment on file and the check-digit result.

From the official US vehicle records: the vPIC database run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), where manufacturers file the build data for the vehicles they sell in the US. It is the government's own record of how each VIN was built, read when you ask. A repeat lookup of the same VIN within 7 days is served from the cache.

It tells you what the manufacturer filed for that VIN: the vehicle as it was built. It does not say who owns the vehicle, whether it has been in an accident, what its mileage is or whether it was ever stolen, because the official records hold none of that. Use the decode to identify and describe a vehicle, and a vehicle history service to learn what happened to it afterwards.

2 credits per vehicle, about $0.01 on the Starter plan. You are charged only when a vehicle record comes back. A VIN the records hold nothing for, a VIN that is not 17 valid characters and a lookup the records could not answer all cost 0 credits, in the API, the dashboard and bulk jobs.

A VIN has exactly 17 letters and digits and never contains the letters I, O or Q. A VIN that breaks those rules cannot exist, so it is refused before anything is charged, with a message that says what is wrong, such as the position of an O that is probably a zero. Spaces and dashes are ignored and lower case is accepted, so a VIN copied off a windscreen label works as printed.

The ninth character of a VIN is a check digit worked out from the other sixteen. For a vehicle built in the US, Canada or Mexico it must match, so a mismatch almost always means a typo. Many European and Asian VINs never used one, so a mismatch there can be normal. Either way the VIN is still decoded, and the result carries check_digit_valid, vin_valid, a plain-English entry in warnings and, when the records suggest a correction, a suggested_vin.

You get found: false and a message that the VIN may be mistyped or the vehicle may never have been sold in the US, with a note about the check digit when it does not match. The call succeeds and costs 0 credits. If the official records cannot be reached at all, you get a retryable 503 error instead, so an outage is never reported as a vehicle that does not exist, and that costs nothing either.

Yes. Upload a CSV with a vin column and you get a row per vehicle with the year, make, model, trim, body class, engine, drive type, transmission, plant country, weight class, manufacturer, a Found column and the check-digit result. A row that is not a valid VIN fails without a charge. The price stays at 2 credits per vehicle found, however long the list is.

Vehicles built for the US market, such as cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles and trailers whose manufacturers filed them with NHTSA. A vehicle built before the 17-character VIN became the standard in 1981 is not covered, and an older or imported vehicle can have a partial record. A field the records do not hold comes back as null, never as a guess.

Yes. The free VIN decoder on 1Lookup decodes one VIN at a time with no account, reading the same official records. Use the API when you need to decode vehicles inside your own application, an intake form or a list.