Where our data comes from

1. Government records

• NHTSA vPIC. The VIN decode: year, make, model, trim, engine, drivetrain, body, plant. Authoritative, free, and effectively permanent, so we cache it for 90 days.
• NHTSA recalls, ratings and complaints. Open recall campaigns by campaign number and date, crash-test ratings, and owner complaints. Refreshed every 30 days.
• fueleconomy.gov (EPA). City, highway and combined figures, fuel type and annual fuel cost. Refreshed every 30 days.

A recall shows as open because NHTSA has no repair on file. A dealer may still have completed it, which is why we tell you to ask for the repair order rather than assume.

2. Listings, prices and odometer readings

Listing history comes from Marketcheck, a licensed aggregation of dealer inventory across roughly 40,000 dealer websites and the major classifieds. Each snapshot carries the seller, the price it was advertised at, the mileage shown, and the dates the listing was live.

What a vehicle is worth is computed from that same set, not from a valuation model: we take comparable listings of the same year, trim and drivetrain within 250 miles, show you the whole spread, and adjust for this vehicle’s own mileage and equipment. Listing data is cached for one hour, because prices move.

3. Title, ownership and accident records

Title status and state, registered owner counts, reported accidents and airbag deployment come from licensed state title files and the reported-claims file. Refreshed when a new record is filed against the VIN.

4. The written sections

The short answer, the plain-English scorecard and the negotiation line are generated from the record data by a language model, then constrained to the figures in the report. They restate and prioritise what the records say; they never introduce a fact that isn’t in the data above them.

Generated sections are cached for 7 days and regenerate when the underlying records change.

5. What we don’t do

• We don’t scrape Carfax, AutoCheck or any competitor’s report.
• We don’t buy or display personal information about previous owners.
• We don’t let a dealer edit, suppress or soften a record about their own inventory.
• We don’t present an absent record as a clean record. An empty section says we found nothing.

6. Corrections

If a figure is wrong, tell us and we’ll check it against the source within 10 business days. Where our copy is wrong we fix it and refresh your report at no cost. Where the source is wrong we pass the correction upstream and annotate the record in the meantime.