Added

• Purchase credits in $5 increments, with $5, $10, and $25 quick choices plus a custom amount.
• Preview the exact charge, current per-credit price, and rounded credit grant before confirming a purchase.
• Configure an automatic purchase amount and the credit balance that triggers it, using the account's default payment card.

Improved

• Subscription and purchased credit balances are shown separately. Subscription credits reset each billing cycle, while purchased credits remain available until used.
• Existing automatic recharge settings require confirmation before any new dollar-based automatic charge.

Notes

• Sandbox accounts cannot purchase credits or enable automatic recharge.

Added

• Ownership by phone — GET and POST /v1/ownership/phone. Start from a US 10-digit number (comma-separated list or a phones array, max 100) and get back the same identity, contact, demographics, and vehicle-history fields as Person. Same ownership entitlement and per-match billing as the other lookup types.

Added

• Monthly Checkpoint report emails: account health, usage trends, recommended next APIs based on what you're already calling, and your assigned contact.

Improved

• Now reaches every paying plan, including monthly — previously enterprise and annual only.
• API recommendations are scoped to your current usage, not a generic list.

Added

• Ownership is live. Look up who's linked to a vehicle by VIN, person, address, or ZIP — each with its own input fields in the dashboard, so you're not guessing what a mode expects.
• Every Ownership VIN result now carries first_observed, last_observed, and source_count — enough to judge whether a link is current and how many sources agree on it, before you act on it.

Improved

• Clearer field labels and a cleaner owner-details table in the dashboard.

Notes

• Enterprise only, for now.

Added

• A second data source now backs Vehicle Recalls, so more VINs return recall records, and coverage holds up even when one source goes down.

Improved

• Faster responses on Vehicle Recalls and License Plate Decoder.
• More consistent recall lookups, call to call.

Notes

• Backward compatible: the response shape is unchanged, so no code changes are needed.
• A VIN that came back empty before may return recalls now. If you cache results, refresh any VINs that previously returned an empty list.

Added

• Year Make Model Options: one call returns valid years, makes, models, or variants, so you can build a dropdown or validate input without hardcoding a vehicle list. See the product page.

Fixed

• modelCount is now always returned, and reads 0 rather than being omitted when nothing matches.
• API Search history now separates Year Make Model from Year Make Model Options, so you can tell which one you called.

Notes

• Shows up in Pricing, Usage, and API Search wherever your plan includes it.

Added

• Agents and other automated clients can now pay per call with x402, without provisioning or storing an API key. Call a supported endpoint with no key parameter, read the price and payment details off the 402 Payment Required response, pay, and retry with the payment header. Full walkthrough: Agentic Payments.
• Coverage extends to more routes, including Recalls by YMM and the rest of the recall workflows.

Improved

• 402 responses now spell out both ways forward — pay for this request, or authenticate with an API key — with a direct link to get one.

Notes

• Existing integrations are untouched. Send key=YOUR_API_KEY and normal API-key billing applies; x402 only kicks in when no key is present.
• Read the price from the 402 response instead of hardcoding it; it can change.
• Built for one-off agent lookups. For steady volume, a plan is cheaper — see Pricing.

Added

CarsXE APIs are now available on the RapidAPI marketplace, so RapidAPI subscribers can call supported endpoints through their existing RapidAPI plans and keys. Each listing includes a playground for testing requests before you integrate.

• Vehicle Specifications — docs
• License Plate Decoder — docs
• International VIN Decoder — docs
• Market Value — docs
• Vehicle History Report — docs
• Vehicle Recalls — docs
• Vehicles by Year, Make, Model — docs
• Lien & Theft Check — docs
• Vehicle Images — docs
• Plate Image Recognition — docs
• VIN OCR — docs
• OBD Codes Decoder — docs

Notes

• If you already use RapidAPI for other APIs, you can add CarsXE without setting up a separate CarsXE account.
• Request and response shapes match the direct API; swap in the RapidAPI host and X-RapidAPI-* headers (or use the playground) when calling through the marketplace.
• Prefer a direct integration? See Get Started for API key setup, or browse Integrations for SDKs and connectors.

Added

• data.recalls[].not_available_reason on Vehicle Recalls (GET /v1/recalls, API documentation). When the upstream source provides a reason that a remedy is not yet available, that value is now returned instead of being dropped during response mapping. The field is null when the source does not supply a reason.

Notes

• Additive, backward-compatible change. Existing clients can ignore the new field.
• Present when the primary US recall source supplies a reason for the VIN; other sources may omit it or return null.

Added

• Standalone documentation site at docs.carsxe.com with guided onboarding and sectioned navigation: Get Started, Products, Guides, SDKs, and Integrations.
• Interactive API Reference — test endpoints directly and see live results without leaving the docs.
• Signed-in API key support in docs, so you can reveal, copy, and use your key while trying requests.
• Full product documentation across the API catalog: specs, market value, history, recalls, plate decoding, recognition, images, year/make/model, and lien & theft.

Improved

• Clearer code samples with better language/tab labeling and reliable copy-to-clipboard.
• Light/dark theme support, including a keyboard shortcut to toggle.

Notes

• No action needed — links to our previous documentation redirect automatically to the new site at docs.carsxe.com.

Added

• New Recalls by Year, Make & Model endpoint (GET /v1/recalls-ymm) — check open recalls for a vehicle without needing a VIN. Useful alongside the VIN-based Recalls endpoint when you're checking an entire model line instead of one specific vehicle.
• Dedicated product page and API documentation, with multi-language request examples.

Fixed

• Common "no recalls found" cases now return a successful empty result instead of an error.
• Invalid year inputs are rejected more consistently.

Notes

• Visible in your dashboard usage and pricing views where enabled on your plan.

Breaking Changes

• Supported website languages are now limited to English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Portuguese (Brazil).
• No longer supported: Afrikaans, Czech, Danish, German, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Slovak, and Simplified Chinese.
• Affected locale URLs now redirect to English.

Added

• Automatic quality filtering for Vehicle Images results, on by default — prioritizes real, relevant vehicle photos and removes many irrelevant or low-quality images.
• A validate=false request option to turn filtering off when you want the fastest, unfiltered results.

Improved

• Smarter ranking for relevance and quality; duplicate or near-duplicate images are reduced.

Breaking Changes

• Default response behavior changed: requests are now filtered by default, so you may receive different images — and sometimes fewer than 10 — unless you explicitly set validate=false.

Notes

• If your integration depends on the exact prior image set or count, add validate=false to preserve the old behavior.

Fixed

• Organization invitation limits (cooldowns and daily caps) are now enforced consistently, reducing cases where invite attempts were incorrectly blocked.

Improved

• Increased backend capacity for organization invitation processing to improve stability during heavier usage.

Fixed

• Billing reminder and payment-failure emails now keep the "Update payment method" link (to billing settings) usable for up to 7 days, instead of it going stale.

Added

• Report generation and delivery is significantly faster for one-time vehicle reports — part of the ongoing work on the report experience launched Apr 15.

Added

• When the primary decoder can't return full vehicle details for a non-US VIN, Specifications and International VIN Decoder now automatically fall back to our international decode source, so more non-US VINs return complete results instead of a partial response.

Added

• Billing grace period after a failed renewal payment — API access stays active for 7 days for established customers (3 days for newer accounts) while you update your payment method in billing settings.
• Automatic card-expiration reminder emails at 30, 15, and 7 days out, with a direct link to update billing details.

Notes

• Reduces surprise service interruptions from expired cards or failed renewals.

Added

• Plan Fit view in the developer dashboard — compares your current plan against better-fit options and lets you switch plans directly.
• Self-serve API billing threshold change requests in billing settings, with status tracking and the ability to update a pending request.

Notes

• Good self-serve tools if you're weighing plan changes or a billing threshold adjustment.

Added

• OpenClaw quickstart guide, including setup steps, example prompts, and troubleshooting guidance.
• OpenClaw added to the Integrations directory for easier discovery.

Added

• Interactive pricing calculator — choose a plan, enter expected monthly usage, and see estimated subscription and overage costs in one place.
• A "Try the pricing calculator" link on the Pricing page.
• A pricing FAQ clarifying that failed API calls are never billed and don't count against your quota.

Fixed

• Overage estimates no longer get inflated by APIs that aren't available on your selected plan.

Notes

• Good self-serve tool if you're trying to estimate what your usage will cost before committing to a plan.

Added

• Revoking or rotating an API key now invalidates it right away, instead of the key possibly continuing to work for a short window until an internal cache entry expired. Manage your keys from the developer dashboard.

Notes

• No action needed — this is a background reliability improvement to how key changes propagate.

Added

• EU regional access via a dedicated hostname (eu-api.carsxe.com) and /eu routes, for lower latency on: International VIN Decoder, Plate Decoder (v1/v2), Plate Recognition & VIN OCR, and Vehicle Images.

Improved

• Faster request speed for Europe-based customers on supported /eu endpoints.

Notes

• No action needed to benefit from the latency improvement — just point EU traffic at eu-api.carsxe.com or the /eu route for supported endpoints.

Added

• Plate decoder support for Romania and Taiwan.
• Improved results for the Netherlands, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Portugal.

Fixed

• Restored reliable Estonia plate lookups (now including VIN details when available).
• Fixed a Canada plate-lookup routing issue and an Albania connection issue.

Improved

• Plate decoding automatically falls back to alternative data sources when a primary source is unavailable.

Notes

• See the full list of supported countries, or check out the Plate Decoder product page.

Added

• Overage Charges control in billing settings — choose whether API access continues past your monthly limit, with overage billing applied.
• Confirmation prompts when turning overage on or off, to help prevent accidental billing changes.
• Direct links from over-quota warning emails to the developer dashboard to manage this setting.

Breaking Changes

• New accounts now start with overage charges turned off by default. Once your monthly quota is reached, requests pause until you enable overage in billing settings or your usage resets. Existing accounts keep their current overage setting and are not affected.

Notes

• Failed or paused requests due to reaching your quota are not billed and do not count against quota.

Added

• Browser-based sign-in flow for CLI setup — sign in and connect your API key automatically, without manual copy/paste.
• The authorization page now closes automatically shortly after a successful sign-in.

Fixed

• Authorization flows that could previously get stuck or fail to return to the correct page after sign-in.

Added

• A richer AI-readable documentation feed with clearer product coverage, use cases, and pricing details, so AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) can answer questions about CarsXE more accurately.

Notes

• Relevant if you're building an AI agent/assistant that references CarsXE, or you've noticed AI tools giving outdated answers about the product.

Added

• Bulk Recall Batch — submit up to 10,000 VINs per request (as vins, csv, or csvUrl, and combinable) and retrieve results from either the API or the dashboard.

Notes

• Useful for fleet operators and any customer checking recalls across many vehicles at once, instead of one VIN at a time.
• See the Recalls Batch product page for pricing and use cases.

Added

• One-time vehicle reports at reports.carsxe.com — search by VIN, license plate, or YMM (with optional trim selection), then buy a single report without a subscription or API key.
• Report-ready email notifications with a direct link to your purchased report.

Improved

• License plate decoding falls back to an alternate provider when the primary lookup can't return results, so more report searches complete successfully.

Notes

• This is the report experience that later shipped bulk recall support (Apr 16) and got significantly faster report generation (Jun 5) — see those entries for what's changed since launch.