Year Make Model Lookup API -- Australia's Vehicle Database

Not every vehicle identification starts with a number plate. Sometimes the car is unregistered, sometimes it is a customer on the phone, and sometimes you just need a well-behaved set of make/model/year dropdowns in a form. For that you need a vehicle database -- and assembling an accurate Australian-market one yourself is a surprisingly painful project.

What's in the database

PlateAPI's vehicle database covers 32,000+ vehicle records across 213 makes sold in the Australian market, spanning model years from the 1920s to current-year releases. It is the same dataset that powers our Shopify widget's manual selection mode, exposed as an API endpoint on all paid plans.

How the cascade works

The endpoint is a single URL that narrows as you add parameters -- exactly the shape you want for dependent dropdowns:

# 1. No parameters: list all 213 makes
curl -s "https://api.plateapi.com.au/api/v1/vehicles" \
  -H "X-API-Key: pk_live_YOUR_API_KEY"

# 2. Add make: list that make's models
curl -s "https://api.plateapi.com.au/api/v1/vehicles?make=TOYOTA" \
  -H "X-API-Key: pk_live_YOUR_API_KEY"

# 3. Add model: list the model's years
curl -s "https://api.plateapi.com.au/api/v1/vehicles?make=TOYOTA&model=COROLLA" \
  -H "X-API-Key: pk_live_YOUR_API_KEY"

Each response tells you which level of the cascade it is returning:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": [
    { "type": "model", "data": ["4 RUNNER", "86", "ALPHARD", "..."] }
  ],
  "total": 114,
  "duration_ms": 1.42
}

Queries hit a local database rather than any external source, so responses come back in milliseconds -- fast enough to populate a dropdown on every selection change without debouncing gymnastics.

It doesn't touch your lookup quota

Dropdown cascades are chatty: one customer filling out a make/model/year form fires three or four requests. Because of that, vehicle database queries do not count toward your monthly lookup allowance and have their own generous rate limit of 60 requests per minute. Your quota stays reserved for actual plate lookups.

Who uses it

• Auto parts stores -- the "shop by vehicle" dropdown fallback for customers who cannot or will not enter a plate
• Dealerships -- trade-in appraisal and enquiry forms with clean, validated vehicle input instead of a free-text field
• Workshops -- booking forms that capture the exact vehicle before the car arrives
• Fleet and insurance tools -- consistent vehicle normalisation across data entry

Pairing it with plate lookup

The two endpoints are designed to work together: offer rego lookup as the fast path -- plate in, vehicle out -- and fall back to the dropdown cascade when there is no plate to work with. Both return vehicles from the same underlying identification system, so a car identified either way looks the same to your application.

The endpoint is available on every paid plan, starting at $29/month. Full parameter documentation is in the API reference.