We believe public safety data should be easy to get. This page offers free recall data downloads — bulk copies of the official recall records that power this site. No signup, no paywall, no strings attached.
What’s in the recall data downloads
Our recall data downloads are cleaned, ready-to-analyze copies of the U.S. government’s official recall records. Each vehicle record includes the official NHTSA campaign number, the manufacturer that filed the recall, the makes, models, and model years covered, the announcement date, the number of units potentially affected, and the component category involved. The same identifiers appear on every recall page of this site, so anything you find in the download can be checked against the site — and against the government’s own record.
The data is compiled from the sources described on our data sources & methodology page: we store our own copy of the official records, refresh it automatically, and never edit the substance of what an agency said.
Vehicle recalls (NHTSA), 1966–present
The complete U.S. vehicle recall record: every campaign filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since 1966. The dataset behind this site currently holds 30,143 recall campaigns covering 74,746 vehicles.
Downloads are being finalized and will appear here shortly. When they go live, this page will offer the full dataset and per-decade slices, with a “data through” date stamped on every file.
Recall data downloads vs. the agencies’ own files
The agencies publish raw data too, and if you want the untouched source files, the links on our methodology page will take you straight to them. The difference with our recall data downloads is the cleanup: government flat files spell the same manufacturer several different ways, split related records across files, and change format across decades. We normalize the names, join the pieces, and ship one consistent, documented format — so you can start analyzing instead of scrubbing.
Who uses recall data
Bulk recall data serves people the one-recall-at-a-time lookup can’t: journalists checking how a manufacturer’s recall history compares to its rivals, researchers studying defect patterns over decades, used-car dealers screening inventory, attorneys establishing what was on the record and when, and developers building tools of their own. If you’re just checking one vehicle, the search on our homepage is faster — the recall data downloads are for working with the record in bulk.
Coming with our next data release
Food and drug recalls (FDA), meat and poultry recalls (USDA FSIS), and consumer product recalls (CPSC) — in the same clean, ready-to-analyze format, so all four U.S. recall categories can be downloaded from one place. Our analysis articles will also publish the dated snapshot they were computed from, so every published figure stays checkable.
File format, updates, and citing the data
Files are plain CSV — one row per recall campaign, with a companion file linking campaigns to every make, model, and year they cover. They open in Excel, Google Sheets, Python, or R without any special tooling. Each file carries a “data through” date in its name and header row, and the recall data downloads are regenerated from the live database on the same cycle as the site itself, so the download and the site never tell two different stories.
If you publish work built on these files, cite RecallTracking.com and the file’s data-through date. That’s not a legal requirement — the records are public domain — it just lets your readers check your numbers against the same snapshot you used.
Terms of use
The underlying records are U.S. government works and are in the public domain. Our cleaned and combined recall data downloads are free for any use, including commercial use and journalism. If they’re useful to you, a link back to RecallTracking.com is appreciated — it helps others find the data.
Questions about the data, or need a format we don’t offer? Reach us through the contact page.