I Built a Free Vehicle Specs API Because Every Other Option Sucked

Simon wakelin — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 18:36:35 +0000

I needed vehicle data for a project. Towing capacity, tire sizes, bolt patterns. Simple stuff...

What did I find? Paywalls ($450/year for bolt patterns alone?), incomplete datasets, or government APIs missing half the fields I needed.

So I built my own.

What is 411 API?

A free vehicle specifications API with 65,000+ records across 5 categories:

Towing capacity (4,072 vehicles)
Tire sizes (6,237 vehicles)
Bolt patterns (4,714 vehicles)
Oil capacity (33,931 vehicles)
Horsepower & MPG (16,269 vehicles)

All queryable by make, model, and year. ~200ms response times from Cloudflare's edge.

Quick Example

const response = await fetch(
  'https://411-api.simonwakelin.workers.dev/v1/towing?make=Ford&model=F-150&year=2024',
  { headers: { 'X-Api-Key': 'demo-411-free-key' } }
);
const data = await response.json();
// { make: "Ford", model: "F-150", year: 2024, max_towing_lbs: 14000, ... }

Free Tier

100 requests/day with the demo key. No credit card. No signup.

For higher volume, it's on RapidAPI.

Why I Built This

I run a network of automotive spec sites (TowCapacity411, TireSize411, etc.) and needed clean, structured data. The existing options were either too expensive for side projects, missing critical fields, or required enterprise contracts.

Now I'm opening it up. If you're building anything automotive related, this might save you weeks of data collection.

DEV Community: Simon wakelin

I Built a Free Vehicle Specs API Because Every Other Option Sucked

What is 411 API?

Quick Example

Free Tier

Why I Built This

Links