The Used Car Index MCP Server

by theusedcarindex Your server? Claim it

answering

The Used Car Index is answering right now. Last checked 12 min ago. It exposes 4 tools.

Free NHTSA recalls, complaints and investigations per vehicle, recall alerts, dealer listing events.

Uptime history 4 days of history · worst day 97%

4 days agonow

100.0%

Uptime 24h

91 of 91 checks

Tools

read from the server

203 ms

Response time

average over 24h

open, no key

Access

streamable-http

What changed 4

Every tool that appeared, vanished or quietly changed what it asks for. Recorded since 8 October 2026. No other catalogue keeps this.

8 Oct 3 tool descriptions were rewritten compare_vehicles, listing_changes, vehicle_risk

8 Oct a tool appeared recall_changes

The Used Car Index does not always answer

Over the last week it answered 99.1% of our checks. We check every 15 minutes, so you hear about the next outage within the hour — not from your users.

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 12 min ago.

Claude Code Claude Desktop Codex Cursor VS Code

run in your terminal

claude mcp add feed --transport http https://api.theusedcarindex.com/mcp

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "feed": {
      "url": "https://api.theusedcarindex.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.feed]
url = "https://api.theusedcarindex.com/mcp"

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "feed": {
      "url": "https://api.theusedcarindex.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "feed": {
      "url": "https://api.theusedcarindex.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 4

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

compare

compare_vehicles

Compare recorded facts for several vehicles side by side, with factual orderings by complaints, recalls and available verified complaints-per-100k-sold rates. Unknown vehicles come back with database suggestions and unrated vehicles stay explicitly unrated. Counts reflect source coverage; no recommendation, verdict or safety ranking. The free tier compares up to 2 vehicles per call, paid plans up to 5.

listing

listing_changes

List observed dealer listing changes (new, price drop, relisted, delisted) with VIN, price, mileage, dates, source and link, filtered by vehicle, event type or date. Collector status separates an inactive feed from observed events. No photos or dealer-written text; delisted only means the listing was no longer observed, not that a sale completed. The free tier returns at most 10 events per call with no paging, paid plans up to 200 with cursors.

recall

recall_changes

List new and updated NHTSA recalls, investigations and complaint-count changes that this service recorded from the daily NHTSA bulk-file comparison, newest first, filtered by make, model, model year, type (recall, investigation, complaint_count) or observed date. Each change has the NHTSA campaign or action number, the record date, a short summary and a source link. These are published records, not a prediction, safety rating or advice. The free tier returns at most 10 changes per call with no paging, paid plans up to 200 with cursors and a vehicle watchlist.

vehicle

vehicle_risk

Look up the recorded risk facts for one make, model and model year: NHTSA complaint counts by system and subsystem, recalls, investigations, manufacturer communications, an optional verified complaints-per-100k-sold rate and source coverage. Separately labeled Jev model tags (model years 2012 and newer; about 43 percent of all complaints are tagged) carry per-label counts, shares and model confidence, which is not accuracy. Spellings and aliases resolve to the stored vehicle. A zero is confirmed only when coverage_complete is true. These are observed records, not a prediction, safety rating, verdict, repair advice or an individual vehicle history.

Endpoints

URL	Transport	State	Latency	Checked
https://api.theusedcarindex.com/mcp	streamable-http	answering	134 ms	12 min ago

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The Used Car Index — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can The Used Car Index do?

It exposes 4 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: compare_vehicles, listing_changes, recall_changes, vehicle_risk. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →

Is The Used Car Index working right now?

We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 91 of 91 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 203 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.

How do I connect The Used Car Index?

Copy the ready config from this page — we generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each with the file path that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.

Does The Used Car Index need an API key?

No. The Used Car Index completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 4 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.

How fast is The Used Car Index?

It answers our handshake in 203 ms on average, which is faster than 62% of all working MCP servers we measure. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.