🚗 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, 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
• 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

{
  "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):

{
  "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",
    "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:

{
  "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.

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.