# Cars.com Scraper — Used Car Listings & Dealer Data | $1.99/1k (`glasswing/cars-scraper`) Actor

Scrape Cars.com listings at scale. Get pricing, dealer info, specs, media and market data from any search or listing URL.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/glasswing/cars-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Raffy](https://apify.com/glasswing) (community)
- **Categories:** E-commerce, Automation, Lead generation
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 31 total users, 3 monthly users, 97.4% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: 5.00 out of 5 stars

## Pricing

from $1.99 / 1,000 vehicle listings

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## 🚗 Cars.com Scraper

Extract clean, structured vehicle data from **Cars.com** — the #1 US automotive marketplace — from any search-result URL or direct listing URL. Works for every vehicle type: new, used and certified pre-owned cars, trucks, SUVs, vans, hybrids and EVs. Each listing comes back as one tidy record grouped into vehicle, pricing, dealer, history, features and media.

✨ **Try it:** paste any Cars.com search URL, hit run, and watch results stream into your dataset.

🛡️ **Reliable by design:** the scraper passes Cars.com's Cloudflare anti-bot protection automatically — no manual captcha solving, no extra setup.

### ⚡ Why This Scraper

| Capability | What You Get |
|---|---|
| 🔍 Search scraping | Pull every listing from a filtered Cars.com search URL — by ZIP, make, model, price, mileage, fuel type, body style and more. |
| 🎯 Direct listing scraping | Paste a single vehicle-detail URL and get its full record. |
| 🛡️ Anti-bot handling | Cloudflare verification is solved automatically on every run. |
| 🧹 Research-ready output | Normalized numbers, cleaned URLs, grouped sections, no repeated raw metadata. |
| 🏪 Dealer data | Dealer name, up to 3 phone numbers, address, latitude/longitude coordinates, stable dealer ID, rating, review count, website, hours and distance. |
| 💰 Market pricing | Price, deal badge, listed date, days on market, market range and a compact price history. |
| 📸 Images & features | Ordered vehicle photos plus equipment and options grouped by category. |
| 🔋 EV intelligence | Recurrent battery score, expected range, battery kWh, warranty, plug type and charging data when available. |
| 🌎 Wide coverage | Large searches are automatically split into price bands so you don't lose results to Cars.com's per-search cap. |

### 📦 What This Scraper Extracts

#### 🚙 Vehicle Details

- Year, make, model, trim, body style
- VIN, stock number, mileage
- Drivetrain, transmission, engine, fuel type, doors, MPG
- Exterior and interior colors
- Condition (New / Used / Certified Pre-Owned) and seller notes

#### 💰 Pricing & Market Data

- Listed price and deal badge (Great Deal / Good Deal / Fair Deal)
- Market price range and price-vs-market comparison
- Listed date, days on market and full price history

#### 🏪 Dealer Information

- Dealer name, address, city, state, ZIP
- Dealership latitude and longitude — map-ready coordinates on dealer listings
- Stable `dealerId` for grouping and deduplicating listings by dealership
- Business phone numbers, exactly as displayed on Cars.com
- Star rating, review count, website and opening hours
- Private-seller personal contact details are masked for privacy

#### 📜 Vehicle History

- Certified pre-owned, one owner, clean title
- No accidents, no open recalls, personal-use-only flags

#### ⭐ Features & Options

- Full equipment list grouped by category: Safety, Convenience, Entertainment, Exterior, Seating

#### 📸 Listing Images

- Primary photo, image count and ordered high-resolution photo URLs

#### 🔋 EV & Battery Data (bonus for electric vehicles)

- EPA range, expected range and charging times for EV and plug-in hybrid listings
- Recurrent battery health certificate (battery score, battery kWh, warranty, future range)
- Gas and diesel listings simply return `isElectric: false` — no empty EV fields

### 🛠️ How to Use

**1. Get your URL** 🌐 Open Cars.com, apply your filters (make, model, ZIP, price range, mileage, body style, fuel type…), and copy the URL from your browser.

**2. Paste it in** 📋 Add up to 20 URLs to `startUrls`. You can mix search URLs and direct listing URLs.

**3. Set limits** ⚙️

- `maxItemsPerLink` — listings to pull from each URL (default: 5)
- `maxItemsTotal` — total cap across all URLs (default: 20)

**4. Run** ▶️ Records appear in the Apify dataset in real time.

### 📥 Example Input

```json
{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?zip=60606&maximum_distance=9999&sort=best_match_desc",
    "https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/6c4c32aa-6102-4a45-80b3-e667a6b9d447/"
  ],
  "maxItemsPerLink": 5,
  "maxItemsTotal": 20
}
```

You can also pass a single direct listing URL to extract full details for one specific vehicle.

### 📤 Output Schema

The actor returns one clean object per listing. URLs are cleaned, tracking parameters are stripped, and duplicate display-only fields are avoided. This shortened preview shows the shape (example values masked):

```json
{
  "listing": {
    "listingId": "1a2b3c4d-0000-0000-0000-1a2b3c4d5e6f",
    "listingUrl": "https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/1a2b3c4d-0000-0000-0000-1a2b3c4d5e6f/",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-11T12:33:04.891622"
  },
  "vehicle": {
    "title": "Certified 2024 Tesla Cybertruck Cyberbeast",
    "condition": "Certified Pre-Owned",
    "year": 2024,
    "make": "Tesla",
    "model": "Cybertruck",
    "trim": "Cyberbeast",
    "vin": "7G2XXXXXXXX000000",
    "mileage": 5637,
    "specs": { "fuelType": "Electric" },
    "ev": {
      "isElectric": true,
      "specs": {
        "expectedRange": 273,
        "epaRange": 320,
        "dcFastChargingMins": 22
      },
      "batteryCertificate": {
        "provider": "Recurrent",
        "score": 98,
        "scoreLabel": "Excellent",
        "battery": { "batteryKwh": 122.4, "batteryWarrantyMonths": 96 },
        "rangeEstimate": { "futureExpectedRangeMaxMiles": 264 }
      }
    }
  },
  "pricing": {
    "price": 98213,
    "dealBadge": "Good Deal",
    "daysOnMarket": 6,
    "marketRange": { "min": 93723, "max": 104243 },
    "priceHistory": ["06/06/26 | Listed | $98,213"]
  },
  "dealer": {
    "name": "Example Motors",
    "phones": ["(XXX) XXX-XXXX"],
    "address": "1234 Example Blvd, Houston, TX 77001",
    "city": "Houston",
    "state": "TX",
    "latitude": 29.76043,
    "longitude": -95.36980,
    "dealerId": "123456",
    "rating": 4.2
  },
  "history": {
    "certifiedPreowned": true,
    "oneOwner": true,
    "cleanTitle": true,
    "noAccidents": true
  },
  "features": {
    "Convenience": ["Adaptive Cruise Control", "Heated Seats"],
    "Safety": ["Backup Camera", "Blind Spot Monitor"]
  },
  "media": {
    "primaryImage": "https://platform.cstatic-images.com/xxlarge/...",
    "imageCount": 7
  }
}
```

For non-electric vehicles, the actor returns:

```json
{
  "vehicle": {
    "ev": {
      "isElectric": false
    }
  }
}
```

No empty EV battery certificate is created for gas, diesel or other non-EV listings.

### 💡 Use Cases

🚘 **Dealers & flippers** — Monitor competitor inventory, track price drops, and spot undervalued vehicles using price-vs-market data and deal badges.

📊 **Market researchers** — Build datasets across makes, models, ZIP codes and time periods for pricing analysis, inventory studies and trend reports.

🏷️ **Price-comparison tools** — Power real-time vehicle pricing widgets and apps with structured data.

📞 **Dealership lead generation** — Pull publicly listed dealer business contacts from active listings across a region.

🔋 **EV market analysis** — Electric listings include range, charging and battery-health data in the same feed — useful for EV reports and aggregators.

🔁 **Automation** — Trigger on a schedule and pipe results into Google Sheets, Airtable, Supabase or your CRM via Apify webhooks (n8n, Make, Zapier).

### 🔒 Privacy

This actor is built with responsible data collection in mind.

- ✅ Private-seller personal contact details are masked in all output records
- ✅ Dealer business contact data is retained only when publicly displayed
- ✅ No login, authentication or account credentials are required or used
- ✅ Only publicly accessible listing pages are scraped — no private or gated content
- ✅ Data is intended for lawful business purposes such as market research and pricing analysis
- ✅ Users are solely responsible for how they use the extracted data in their jurisdiction

### ❓ FAQ

**Can I scrape a specific vehicle by its listing URL?** Yes. Paste the direct listing URL (e.g. `https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/...`) into `startUrls`.

**Can I scrape multiple cities or ZIP codes in one run?** Yes. Add one search URL per ZIP or region to `startUrls` (up to 20). Each is scraped independently up to its `maxItemsPerLink` limit.

**Does it work with Cars.com filter URLs?** Yes. Apply any filters on Cars.com (make, model, year, price, mileage, body style, fuel type…), copy the URL, and paste it in — the scraper respects your filters.

**How do I get more than 10,000 results from one market?** Split your search into filter buckets — for example price bands under $20k, $20k–$40k, over $40k — then combine the datasets. The actor also auto-splits oversized searches into price bands for you.

**Do I need to solve captchas or configure proxies for anti-bot protection?** No. The actor passes Cars.com's Cloudflare verification automatically on each run.

**Do listings include the dealer's coordinates?** Yes. Dealer listings include `dealer.latitude` and `dealer.longitude` (plus a stable `dealer.dealerId`), taken from the dealership's own Cars.com profile — ready for maps, distance calculations and geo analysis. Private-seller listings never carry coordinates, and the rare dealer without a resolvable location simply omits the fields.

**Does every electric vehicle include battery data?** EV and plug-in hybrid listings include a battery certificate only when Cars.com exposes a supported battery report. Other EV data (range, charging) is included whenever available; non-EV listings return `isElectric: false`.

# Actor input Schema

## `startUrls` (type: `array`):

Add Cars.com search result URLs and/or direct listing URLs. Maximum 20 links per run.

## `maxItemsPerLink` (type: `integer`):

Maximum listings scraped from each input URL. Hard maximum is 10,000 per link. To scrape more, add multiple links.

## `maxItemsTotal` (type: `integer`):

Maximum listings scraped across the whole run.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?zip=60606&maximum_distance=9999&sort=best_match_desc"
  ],
  "maxItemsPerLink": 5,
  "maxItemsTotal": 20
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "startUrls": [
        "https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?zip=60606&maximum_distance=9999&sort=best_match_desc"
    ],
    "maxItemsPerLink": 5,
    "maxItemsTotal": 20
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("glasswing/cars-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "startUrls": ["https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?zip=60606&maximum_distance=9999&sort=best_match_desc"],
    "maxItemsPerLink": 5,
    "maxItemsTotal": 20,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("glasswing/cars-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?zip=60606&maximum_distance=9999&sort=best_match_desc"
  ],
  "maxItemsPerLink": 5,
  "maxItemsTotal": 20
}' |
apify call glasswing/cars-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,glasswing/cars-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/Yp9EBbfFvh9bhObso/builds/Sv0nZBbX5FnYcZeac/openapi.json