Python client for TheCarApi — live car auction inventory from Copart, OpenLane, Auto1, Encar, eCarsTrade, Schadeautos and CarVector in one API.
Search hundreds of thousands of live lots across Europe, South Korea and Japan. Filter by brand, model, year, mileage, fuel, price and damage state. Pull full vehicle detail, image galleries, price history, VIN history, market price references and landed import costs.
pip install carauctionsfromcarauctionsimportCarAuctionsClientclient=CarAuctionsClient(api_key="YOUR_KEY")
page=client.search(brand="BMW", year_from=2018, fuel="Diesel", limit=5)
forcarinpage:
print(car["car_name_en"], car["registration_year"], car["public_price_eur"], "EUR")
print(f"{page.total} matching lots")BMW 320d Touring 2019 14350.0 EUR
BMW 520d xDrive 2018 16900.0 EUR
BMW X3 xDrive20d 2020 24100.0 EUR
BMW 118d 2019 9800.0 EUR
BMW 330e 2021 27450.0 EUR
18342 matching lots
Keys are issued per customer, and a free trial key is available.
Once you have it, either pass it in directly or export it:
export CARAUCTIONS_API_KEY="your-key"client=CarAuctionsClient() # picks the key up from the environmentpage=client.search(
brand="Audi",
model="A4",
year_from=2017, year_to=2022,
kilometers_to=150_000,
price_from=5000, price_to=20_000,
fuel="Diesel",
gearbox="Automatic",
country="DE",
site="openlane,auto1", # only these sourcesdamaged=False,
buy_now=True,
sort="price_low",
limit=50,
)Every result row carries auction_id, site_name, clean_make, clean_model,
registration_year, mileage, hp, fuel_group, gearbox_group, public_price_eur,
buy_now_price, current_price, thumbnail_url, auction_end_at, is_broken and more.
iter_search handles paging for you and yields one vehicle at a time:
forcarinclient.iter_search(brand="Toyota", fuel="Hybrid", max_results=500):
print(car["auction_id"], car["public_price_eur"])lot=client.auction("openlane", "1234567")
print(lot["chassis_number"], lot["co2"], lot["cylinder_capacity"])
print(len(lot["gallery_images"]), "photos")
history=client.price_history("openlane", "1234567")
images=client.auction_images("openlane", "1234567")top_offers returns only cars priced below their market reference, with the reference
attached:
forcarinclient.top_offers(min_savings_pct=20, site="openlane", limit=10):
print(car["car_name_en"], f"-{car['top_offer_savings_pct']}%")client.vin_history("WBA8E9G50GNT12345")quote=client.calculate(price=15000, origin="KR", destination="BG", site_name="encar")
print(quote["breakdown"]["estimated_total"])client.brands() # every brand with countsclient.models(brand="BMW") # models for a brandclient.sites() # available auction sources + live countsclient.facets(brand="BMW") # all facets for a query in one requestclient.manufacturers() # manufacturer catalog| Source | Origin | Inventory |
|---|---|---|
| OpenLane | EU | Live auctions |
| Auto1 | EU | Live auctions |
| eCarsTrade | EU | Live auctions |
| Copart | DE | Live auctions |
| Schadeautos | NL | Live listings |
| Encar | KR | Live listings |
| CarVector | JP | Live listings |
Every failure is a typed exception carrying the API's message and the request id you should quote when reporting a problem:
fromcarauctionsimportRateLimited, PermissionDenied, InvalidRequesttry:
page=client.search(site="ebay")
exceptInvalidRequestase:
print(e.message) # "Unknown site 'ebay'. Valid sites: auto1, copart, ..."print(e.request_id)
exceptRateLimitedase:
time.sleep(e.retry_after)
exceptPermissionDenied:
print("Your key does not cover this endpoint")AuthenticationError, PermissionDenied, NotFound, InvalidRequest, RateLimited and
ServerError all inherit from CarAuctionsError.
The quota window from the last response is always available, so you can throttle yourself before you get a 429:
client.search(brand="BMW")
print(client.rate_limit.remaining, "requests left until", client.rate_limit.reset)Requests that hit a 429 or a 5xx are retried automatically, honouring Retry-After. When a
key is nearly exhausted you get one standard Python warning on stderr, so a long-running job
tells you before it stalls rather than after.
Full endpoint reference, field dictionary and response schemas: thecarapi.com/docs
MIT