Cars.com Listings Scraper

What this Actor scrapes

cars.com's zip-centered search results and each listing's own vehicle detail page, for a make/model/distance/stock-type-filtered search -- one dataset row per vehicle. Point it at a ZIP code and optional make/model/radius filters, or paste a full search URL you built on the site yourself, and get back VIN, price, mileage, year, make/model/trim, engine spec, exterior/interior color, seller info, dealer rating, photos, and description, all normalized into one Pydantic-validated schema.

What we handle for you

• 🛡️ We rotate browser fingerprints on every request -- curl-cffi impersonates real Chrome, Firefox, and Safari TLS/HTTP handshakes, so nothing about the traffic looks like a bare Python script.
• 🌐 We route every request through Apify Proxy, with a fresh session on each run.
• 🔁 We retry with exponential backoff on rate-limit and block responses -- up to 5 attempts, re-impersonating a fresh browser profile each time, before we give up on a page.
• 🧱 We isolate faults per listing. One malformed card or one dealer's detail page that won't load logs a warning and gets skipped -- the rest of the run keeps going, and you always get a clear status message, never a silent empty dataset.
• 🧊 Clean, typed dataset rows -- every row is ResultRow-validated (Pydantic), VIN charset-checked, ISO-8601 timestamps, ready to export as JSON, CSV, or Excel.
• 💰 Pay-per-result pricing -- a small one-off warm-up charge, then you pay only for rows that land in your dataset.

Use cases

• Used-car price analytics and comps by make, model, and year.
• Dealer inventory monitoring -- diff successive runs to catch new arrivals and price cuts.
• Market research on price, mileage, and spec mix across a metro area.
• Lead generation from dealer names, locations, and inventory depth.
• Feeding a VIN-decode or vehicle-history pipeline with a clean, deduplicated VIN list.

Input

Paste this into the Apify Console, or send it as the run input over the API. Proxy settings are on by default; you rarely need to touch them.

{
  "zipCode": "90210",
  "maximumDistance": "50",
  "stockType": "used",
  "makes": [
    "toyota"
  ],
  "models": [
    "toyota-camry"
  ],
  "maxResults": 5,
  "fetchDetails": true,
  "searchUrl": null,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Output

One row per result, schema-validated before it is written. Export JSON, CSV, Excel or XML from the run, or read it over the API.

listing_idlisting_urlvinstock_numbertitlemakemodeltrimyearpricecurrencymileage_mifuel_typetransmissiondrivetrainengine_power_hp

{
  "listing_id": "704f8221-1111-2222-3333-000000000001",
  "listing_url": "https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/704f8221-1111-2222-3333-000000000001/",
  "vin": "4T1BF1FK5GU123456",
  "stock_number": "P12345",
  "title": "2023 Toyota Camry SE",
  "make": "Toyota",
  "model": "Camry",
  "trim": "SE",
  "year": 2023,
  "price": 24998,
  "currency": "USD",
  "mileage_mi": 18420,
  "fuel_type": "Gasoline",
  "transmission": "Automatic",
  "drivetrain": "FWD",
  "engine_power_hp": 203,
  "engine_displacement_l": 2.5,
  "cylinder_count": 4,
  "body_type": "Sedan",
  "exterior_color": "Celestial Silver",
  "interior_color": "Black",
  "accident_history": "No Accidents Reported",
  "one_owner": true,
  "location": "Beverly Hills, CA",
  "distance_from_zip": 4.2,
  "seller_type": "dealer",
  "seller_name": "Beverly Hills Toyota",
  "dealer_rating": 4.6,
  "photo_urls": [
    "https://platform.cstatic-images.com/xlarge/.../1.jpg"
  ],
  "description": "Certified Pre-Owned, one owner, clean history...",
  "posted_date": "2026-08-01T00:00:00Z",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-15T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

You pay only for results that land. Cap any run with maxTotalChargeUsd. See pricing & billing for worked examples.

Limitations

• maxResults is hard-capped at 1 000 rows per run -- split larger pulls across multiple runs.
• accident_history and one_owner reflect only the free badge text cars.com shows on the listing page -- this is not a purchased CARFAX or AutoCheck report, and we never buy or scrape one on your behalf.
• vin is emitted null whenever the site's value doesn't pass a strict 17-character VIN charset check (no I/O/Q), rather than handing you a malformed VIN.
• Detail-page-only fields (VIN, stock number, drivetrain, split colors, engine spec, accident/one-owner badges, dealer rating, photos, description, posted date) require fetchDetails: true; turn it off for a faster, cheaper search-card-only run.
• One search configuration per run -- no multi-search fan-out in a single call.
• We actively retry and rotate our browser fingerprint on any block or rate-limit response; on a genuinely hostile run the Actor fails loud with a clear status message instead of handing back a quiet empty dataset.